[POV Ryan First-Person] [Tense: Present]
06:00 a.m. – At Technologia Lab, Frosthaven, Aurelthorn. (10 February 2026)
Stone floor bites at my bare feet as I step in, clothes still damp and clinging.
The lab smells like cold iron and ink. Better than the river.
I drop the bucket, strip off the wet shirt, hang it on the peg by the stove that never burns hot enough. Water drips from my hair onto the flagstones.
A thin breeze snakes through the window slit.
Everyone in the wash‑spot outside the walls stood hunched over, cursing the cold, breath pouring out white. Their skin went red, then purple. The bravest of them managed about thirty seconds under the water before screaming.
Me?
Nothing.
The river might as well be lukewarm dishwater.
I scrubbed mud off my arms this morning while a farmer two steps away whimpered like the world was ending, and something in my head told me—
(This is wrong.)
I drag a towel over my shoulders, glance at my fingers. No goosebumps. No tremor. Just clean.
"Safe from Cold," I mutter at the empty room. "Thanks for the perk, mystery HR."
I don't really register temperature anymore. My body doesn't talk to me about it. Cold doesn't register. Heat… barely.
Safe from Fire stacks on top of that like some cheat code.
Once, that sounded great. Now I realize I can walk face‑first into a furnace and feel nothing. The only reason I don't is because my brain remembers that glowing orange is bad, even if my nerves don't.
Fun.
I roll my jaw.
Teeth click, neat little line.
Normal humans get what, 32 teeth?
I have 48.
I found out after picking Safe from Doubt. Bit into a chunk of black bread and felt crumbs jam into a corner that shouldn't exist. Went to the bucket, spat, ran my tongue along the back row.
Extra ring, grown in clean, no pain, no crowding.
Reality over‑optimized my chewing system.
(You'll never question that you bargained a 2,000‑gold payment down to a single coin on that deal.)
"That's crazy," I murmur. "I buffed my DPS by speccing into philosophy."
Safe from Wounds sits under that, quiet and smug. Lungs clear, no nodules, breathing like I'm a healthy gym dude and I've never even experienced smog. I didn't know how sick I'd been until it stopped hurting.
And then there's Safe from Fatigue.
My favorite productivity buff.
I grab the stool with one hand, haul it over, sit hard.
I can work without sleep now. No crash, no spinning room, no panda‑eye selfies. Body just… keeps going. Muscles obey. Hands don't shake.
But if I skip sleep long enough, my skull starts itching from the inside, and I get more aggressive, less self‑control, less restraint.
Not pain. An electric crawl. Like my brain wants to reboot and the OS refuses the shutdown command. Whole head hums, just under the bone.
Less human, more process. A daemon in the background that never exits.
Doing my own thing all the time, every hour, every shift, every crisis. It's insane. Heroes in games get to log off. I just… continue.
"What I actually want," I tell myself, "is one normal human life. Sleep. Hunger. Being tired. Warmth that feels like warmth."
My voice bounces back thin and small.
"Because right now I don't even know what I am anymore."
I fish in my pocket and pull out a gold coin, thumb running along the stag.
I started testing Safe from Doubt back when I first got this power, in Dawnspire.
Held a coin like this, flicked it up, told myself out loud,
"Every time I toss this, it lands heads."
I meant it. Pushed the thought like a rule into the back of my skull.
Flick.
Heads.
Once is luck.
Twice, three times, four—
By the tenth throw it still hadn't rolled tails.
I could feel something in my fingers adjusting in micro‑moves, changing the spin without my conscious say‑so, like my body hacked its own physics to keep the statement true.
And yet a part of me still sits here, muttering, (Coin's biased. You just suck at statistics.)
"In a few seconds, a nuclear bomb will land on my head."
I said it while sweating profusely, but nothing happened.
Safe from Doubt works like that. It rearranges the weight of belief inside me and inside whoever listens. The more I speak rules, the more the world bends to fit them—within reality limits.
I turn the coin over in my palm, then shove it back into my pocket.
"Enough," I tell myself. "No more parlor tricks."
I drag on a dry shirt, the weave rough on my over‑tuned skin, and cross to the workbench.
---
The lab is the same bare box as last night. Thick walls. Chalk dust in the corners. My half‑finished Arithmetic for a Fantasy World sits on the table, ink drying on the last chapter. The lamp is cold now, glass smoked from the all‑nighter.
Chill air curls around my ankles. I register it only as information.
Medieval dark age. No hot tap. No filtration plant. No gas. Just a river that might carry dead bodies, tannery piss, and plague gods downstream, and a prayer that nothing rotten floated by when I washed.
I took a dump in the river and just hoped nobody downstream was using it—and desperately prayed that whoever lived upstream hadn't had the same brilliant idea.
If I want clean water, I have to build it from scratch—the entire water‑supply system, wastewater treatment, and filtration.
If I want stable light, I coax it out of tallow, oil, and the river's force bottled behind a dam.
This world is ruled by brute strength, blind superstition, and magic. It will gladly put a torch to an entire town if you're different.
To them, a new wave is pure horror.
For me, it's a fact no one can deny.
Safe from Fire means burns don't kill me. Safe from Wounds means cuts knit like some horror‑movie alien healing factor.
The only weird part is I didn't get some neat RPG stat window—it's more like a stack of cheat codes I can earn every time I almost die, which makes the whole game less fun if I lean on them too hard… but if I barely touch them, I probably just end up dead.
"If real life came with cheat codes, would you use them?"
I glance at my pile of work.
Universal measurement standards—done.
Arithmetic book—done enough to send a draft to Aidan when the ink finishes curing.
Paper machine and printing press—parked in my sketchbook, waiting for materials and time.
(I've given them flows and tasks.)
"What's the one thing this world has that I don't?" I mutter.
My eyes slide to the door. I remember a man called Aemond—dressed like a wizard—telling me about mysterious things.
Magic.
---
The rune stone sits in the palm of my hand, weighty as guilt.
"Actually, I feel like I've seen this somewhere before."
Palm‑sized oval, dirty gray. On one face, grooves cut into a curling sigil, lines sharp and deliberate. The etching holds a faint reddish sheen when I tilt it near the slit of light.
I got it from a slice of Odrik Stoneveil's inventory I happened to come across. When I asked Bromar what it was called, he said it was a rune stone. Price: about a month's rent.
I never fired it. I wanted to see the pattern first.
I set it on the table and pull a sheet of parchment close, nib scratching as I copy the sigil line for line.
One glyph. One function.
I remember Aemond explaining runes in careful non‑answers. Regulated by the military and the mages. No carving without a mage. Rune‑chains for siege and ward walls, maybe for golems.
Murdock grumbled once that runes were for armor and blades.
On Earth, I had copper traces and silicon wafers. Board layouts. Each piece a tiny program.
Here, they carve commands into stone and steel.
Fire runes glow red. Water ones, blue. Wind, pale green. Earth, muddy ocher.
Arrange them in a line on a sword, you get a sequence of effects. Stack them in a spiral on a staff, you get a spell profile. Put them in a door, you get a lock keyed to a specific puzzle password.
"It's like a smart key for your house, but made of magic."
Magic as hardware.
"Magic circuitry," I breathe.
What do they run on? Mana? Leyline pressure? The user's own life? Self‑charging crystals?
Why is all of that locked away behind the military, the mage tower, and the temple?
As far as I know, only Aurelthorn uses it. I've never seen Drakensvale or Belmara use it.
But if I spread rune literacy too far, I don't just build better golems and fancy swords. I accelerate technology. An industrial magic base and a full telecommunication web for my empire.
First step: information.
Who in Frosthaven actually works with runes and isn't locked in a magic tower?
The old dwarf at the forge. Murdock. He etched ward‑marks along his furnace rim by habit. Muttered, once, that he'd seen rune‑etched armor split a man and the rune burn out in the same breath.
Knowledge plus disgust.
Good.
I tuck the rune stone into my pocket, fold the parchment with the copied sigil, slide both into my notebook.
---
09:10 a.m. – At Frostlight Square, Frosthaven, Aurelthorn. (10 February 2026)
At the window slit, Frosthaven lifts out of the morning frost.
Smoke threads up from chimneys. Carts rattle past on the main road. Somewhere, someone yells at a mule.
It looks… almost normal.
But a few shutters that used to sit open stay closed. One man who always swept the lane at first light isn't there. Could be sickness. Could be war drafts. Could be nothing.
(You're overthinking it.)
"Time to talk to a dwarf about magic."
I head straight, angling toward Murdock's forge.
---
10:00 a.m. – At Murdock's Forge, Frosthaven, Aurelthorn. (10 February 2026)
The hammer noise is wrong before I even reach the door.
As in, there isn't any.
No clang, no Murdock swearing at an apprentice. Just wind hissing down the lane and a cart axle complaining somewhere behind me.
I stop under the soot‑smudged sign.
The forge door sits shut. Shutter half‑latched. Chimney cold. A thin skim of last night's frost still clings to the sill.
Murdock lets his fire die about as often as our pen‑nib line slows.
I rap my knuckles on the plank.
"Murdock? It's Ryan."
Silence soaks that up.
I knock again, harder. Wood thuds, hollow.
A woman across the lane drags her boy inside and slams her shutter. No hello, no wave. Just gone.
The hair on my neck lifts.
I wrap my hand around the iron ring and shove.
The door doesn't move. Barred from inside.
"Come on, old man…"
I lean in, ear to oak. Nothing. No cough, no curse, no shift of boots.
Bootsteps crunch behind me.
"Shop's closed."
Male voice. Young. Tired.
I turn.
Human guy, maybe my age. Broad shoulders under a leather apron two sizes too big, dark hair bound back with a bit of cord. There's coal dust on his cheek and purple hollows under his eyes. He carries a crate of horseshoes like it weighs nothing, but his grip is too tight on the handles.
His gaze flicks over me. Plain tunic, backpack, no obvious weapons.
"You want to see my boss, come back another day."
"I want Murdock."
"Yeah." His jaw works. "So do I."
He shoulder‑bumps past me, sets the crate down by the wall with more care than it deserves, then straightens and wipes his palms on his apron.
Up close, I recognize the shape of his nose, the way he stands. I've seen him in the periphery before hauling coal, pumping the bellows while Murdock yelled corrections. We never traded names.
His presence was as bland as my own during my college years.
Safe from Spotlight—power gained through impulsive decision‑making is like starting every relationship all over again.
He stares at me like I'm here for the first time.
"You're…?"
"Ryan Mercer." The word tastes wrong now.
Blank.
The lack of recognition hits harder than it should. Months of furnace design, the first nibs, and to him I'm just another stranger at the door.
I pull a breath in, smooth.
"I was expecting his fire to be up by now."
"My boss is ill." His mouth tightens on the word. "Has been since last week. You hear nothing?"
"I just got back into town."
He studies me a heartbeat more, then shrugs like the verdict doesn't matter either way.
"I'm Otto. No house. He took me on from the rope‑walk. I keep the stock turned, sharpen what I can. No orders, though."
"Because he's sick."
"Because the whole damned town's going sideways."
He glances up the lane, like the stone has ears.
I tilt my head.
"Sideways how?"
"Too many fires for a small hearth." He leans against the wall, folds his arms. "Folk dropping. Not from blades, not from cold. Just… going thin. Skin like candle wax, eyes all wrong. Can't stand in the sun without swaying."
"Anemia," I murmur.
"Eh?"
"Blood loss," I translate. "Like they bled out without blood."
He nods once, slow.
"Priest from the temple said 'plague of weakness.' He weighs flour, not souls. I call it… wrongness." His fingers rub his forearm, as if remembering a chill. "My neighbor Harl big bastard, swung hammers since he was old enough to walk came back from carting late, sat on his step, and told me he couldn't feel his legs."
"When was that?"
"Four nights past." Otto's throat flexes. "Two mornings ago, he never came out. Door stayed shut. No smoke."
Vampire. The word hangs there in my Earth brain with fangs on.
Belmara's favorite export.
I keep my face neutral.
"Anyone leave town?"
"Some tried." He snorts. "The Magic Tower posted a boy on a barrel in the square, shouting orders. 'Stay inside after dusk. Do not quit Frosthaven. Do not take this sickness to other towns.'"
Of course. Quarantine by herald.
"Tower doing anything else?" I ask. "Healing? Wards?"
Otto barks a humorless laugh.
"Tower exploded, friend."
That word digs in.
"Exploded how?"
He gestures vaguely east, toward the upper quarter.
"Red light in the night. Bang like the sky split. Half the glass in the lane cracked. I was at Frostlight Square when it went. Hair on my arms stood up, teeth hurt. Saw a flare off the top of the Tower, then smoke. Next day they nailed a board at the well. 'Curse from above. Stay put. Let the mages work.'"
"Did they… actually work?"
"They sent a clerk to count fevers." Otto's lip curls. "That's work to them."
I picture Aemond's calm eyes, his careful words.
"Where's Aemond now?"
"High mage?" Otto lifts a shoulder. "With the King. South. West. Wherever the war is. We only had four in the Tower, they said. Aemond's the one with rank. Others are book‑boys with glow‑tricks. They're the ones that shouted, 'One town sick better than ten towns.'"
Neat little utilitarian slogan. Makes my skin crawl.
"When did all this start?" I press. "The Tower blast, the pale people?"
He squints at the frost on the sill like it's a calendar.
"Tower went loud five, six nights ago. First folk started stumbling a day before that. Call it a week."
A week.
The doomsayer's voice from the market in my memory rips through: THE LAND WILL DROWN IN DARKNESS THAT WORSHIPS THE RED MOON...
I swallow.
(Why something like that might be happening now.)
"You think it's a plague?" Otto's eyes search my face, hungry for something solid. "Some say curse. Some say demons from the north. Some whisper Belmara's shadow‑folk are feeding on us. I don't care which. I just want my boss to sit up and swear at me for putting too much fuel in the furnace."
(It's strange. When I arrived, I walked into Frosthaven like normal. But if I try to leave, they'll slam the gate. If this really is an epidemic, they'll lock the borders and I'm stuck.)
"You thought about leaving?" I ask him.
"First night." His jaw hardens. "Packed a sack. Got as far as the South Gate. Guard captain waved the Tower writ and told us if we step outside and carry 'curse‑air' to Dawnspire, he'll have our names nailed to the post. I've seen a man nailed before. I came back."
"Good," I say. "You stay. Whatever this is, scattering vector carriers to every village on the map is how you turn one bad fire into a forest burn."
His brow furrows.
"I understood none of that."
"Wash your hands. Don't invite strangers in after dark." I tick them off on my fingers. "Simple enough?"
"That I get."
I let the silence breathe, then nudge.
"I came for something else, you know. Runes."
His face goes blank again.
"Rune‑craft? That's mage business. I swing hammers, I don't scratch glyphs. Master knew a ward mark or two for his hearth."
Figures.
"So no one here who can teach a layman?" I gesture at the cold forge. "Even the notion of what fuels them?"
"Ask the Tower," Otto mutters. "If they're not too busy looking down on commoners."
I bite down on a sigh.
(Failed.)
"Then I'll ask Murdock," I say. "I still need to see him."
Otto straightens fast, hand lifting like he's going to block the door.
"He's resting. Temple man said no visitors. He… doesn't remember folk clean either now. Fever does that."
It lands—the second little cut in as many minutes.
Murdock forgetting me isn't fever. That's Safe from Spotlight bleaching out my existence from anyone.
Rationally, it makes sense. Emotionally, it feels like erasing the prologue of my own story.
I step closer, eyes on his.
If Safe from Spotlight has the same brain‑affecting flavor as Safe from Doubt, there should be a way around it. If Safe from Spotlight hides memories of me in some dark corner, maybe Safe from Doubt can pry that corner open. Like if I say—
"You will remember me."
I'm trying to come up with some trick that makes people remember my original name, exploiting the conflict between Safe from Doubt and Safe from Spotlight. I don't know if it will work. I can only wait until tomorrow and hope he still remembers my name.
Otto's mouth opens for another protest.
Safe from Doubt curls through my tongue, quiet and cold.
"I'm not just some passerby," I tell him. Each word drops like a nail driven home. "I am Ryan Mercer of Technologia. I designed the nib molds he cursed over, the furnace he rebuilt. I stood at that anvil with him the night the first steel turned right in the die. I am his partner and his friend. If he can see anyone, he can see me."
The air shifts between us.
Otto's shoulders sag half an inch. His eyes unfocus, then refocus like someone flipped an inner memo in his brain.
"Partner," he repeats, softer. "Right… I remember Master grumbling about a mad ink‑merchant. Kept him up past midnight."
(There it is.)
The Authority might hand him my memories, or it just sands off the edges of doubt until the path of least resistance is "believe."
Because the power all comes from the same source. Imagine you're writing code with a team, and one of those idiots ships a bug and calls it a feature. Then, during the code migration, that jerk disappears. Someone has to fix the mess, overwrite the old function, make it better—or worse.
That idiot is Safe from Spotlight. The poor bastard cleaning it up is Safe from Doubt.
He looks at the barred door, then back at me.
"Fine," he breathes. "But you don't shout, and you don't touch him without asking."
He lifts the bar. Wood groans.
Inside, the forge feels wrong.
Not just cold—dead. Tools hang in their places. The anvil waits, bare. No half‑finished blades, no forge‑lined curses hanging in the air.
We cross the main room. Otto steers me toward the back, past the quench tub that still smells faintly of oil and blood‑iron, to the small side door I never bothered with before.
His hand tightens on the latch.
"You sure?" he asks without looking at me.
No.
"Yes."
He pushes.
The room beyond is small, stone‑floored, walls lined with old crates and a single narrow shelf. A slit window leaks a tired gray light onto the center table.
Murdock lies there.
Someone laid him out neat, beard combed, rings in his braids gone dull. A sheet covers him from chest to boots. His arms rest at his sides, thick fingers laced like he's holding an invisible hammer.
His skin isn't the red‑brown I remember, warmed by fire and fury. It's the color of melted tallow. Lips sunk, cheeks hollowed. His eyes are closed, but the heavy lids don't suggest sleep.
The air smells of cold iron, old sweat, and the faint metallic tang of a room scrubbed too clean.
Otto's voice drops to a whisper.
"He wouldn't wake yesterday morning. I found him like this. Priest said 'plague takes the strongest first.' I told him Master never took to bed a day in his life. Priest didn't have an answer."
My gaze tracks to Murdock's throat.
No knife wound. No bruising. Just two small, round marks high under the jaw, almost hidden by beard like something pressed in and drank.
I grip the edge of the table. Knuckles go white.
My brain tries to splice two images together.
Murdock barking "Show me the way, then," over the glow of the furnace… and this wax doll on stone.
They don't fit.
"You stubborn old bastard," I mutter.
My voice comes out thin.
He never even saw the press running off river power. Never tasted the beer on earth to see his reaction. I walked off to build an empire, confident he'd be here as my anchor.
Now he's a cooling piece of meat under my eyes.
The room tilts.
Otto collapses beside me, tears welling up in his eyes as he realizes his beloved teacher is gone.
All my plans for rune‑tech, magical circuitry, industrialized wards—they all hinged, quietly, on one dwarf who'd stood beside my madness from day one.
Technologia has become self‑sustaining, but losing someone like him means losing another friend in this world.
And he's gone.
"Otto, I think you should come to Technologia. And if you have a family, I'd like you to bring them along. I'm going to call all the employees and their families to the company, because this disaster is more than just a pandemic."