Thomas spent the rest of the first day in a state of quiet, vibrating terror. He forced himself to walk out of the bedroom, his feet finding heavy leather boots that sat by the door. Every step felt like he was walking through a movie set. The hallway was lined with torches that had long since burnt out, leaving the smell of soot and cold grease hanging in the air.
He found himself in a large hall where a few men were eating at a long wooden table. They looked up as he entered, their faces hardening. One of them, a man with a scarred lip, nodded curtly.
"The steward is in the yard, my lord," the man said, his voice rough. "He is not pleased about the state of the grain."
Thomas didn't answer. He didn't know what a lord was supposed to say about grain. He walked past them, his heart racing, and slipped into a small alcove behind a heavy tapestry. He pulled his phone out.
His thumb flew across the screen. He typed a frantic query into a search bar: symptoms of a stroke or waking hallucination. He read through the list. Difficulty speaking, confusion, loss of balance. He felt confused, certainly, but his balance was fine. He looked up a map of the area. The satellite image showed a dense forest and a river, but no roads, no power lines, no cities. He zoomed out. There was nothing for hundreds of miles but wilderness and small clusters of stone.
"I am in the past," he whispered to the screen. "I am actually here."
He spent the second day testing the limits of his invisible tool. He walked into the courtyard, the mud sucking at his boots. He held the phone up, pretending to shade his eyes from the sun. Through the camera lens, he could see the world in high definition. He used an app to identify the plants growing near the wall. Stinging nettle. Burdock. Plants that people used for medicine because they didn't have anything else.
He saw a child crying in the corner of the yard, clutching a swollen leg. Thomas felt a pang of modern guilt. He sat on a stone bench, his thumb scrolling. He searched for leg injuries, then for infection. He found a guide on how to clean a wound using boiled water and clean linen. It seemed so simple, yet as he looked around the filthy courtyard, he realized it was a miracle they didn't all have sepsis.
Victoria found him there, her shadow stretching across the dirt.
"You have been sitting there for three hours," she said, her voice like a whip. "You have not spoken to the steward. You have not looked at the books. You are staring at your hand again, Thomas. People are starting to whisper."
Thomas looked up at her. She was beautiful in a way that felt sharp, like a polished blade. He saw the way her hands were clenched at her sides. She wasn't just angry; she was afraid of what his behavior meant for her own safety.
"I am thinking, Victoria," Thomas said, trying to modulate his voice to sound like the man in the mirror. "There is a lot I need to fix."
"Fix?" she laughed, a short, bitter sound. "You have never fixed anything in your life. You have only broken things. If you are going to play the role of a holy man or a fool, at least do it in the solar where the servants can't see you."
He wanted to tell her then. He wanted to show her the screen, to show her the world he came from, but the fear was too great. What if she thought he was a demon? What if she called for the men with the axes?
On the third night, the guest arrived. A minor noble with a loud voice and a thirst for wine that Thomas's body apparently shared. Thomas sat at the high table, a cup of sour ale in his hand, watching the fire crackle in the hearth. He felt like a ghost haunting his own life. The noble was talking about a tax dispute, his words a jumble of names and places Thomas didn't recognize.
Thomas pulled his phone out under the table. He searched for the name of the noble. Nothing. He searched for the name of the manor. Nothing. He was in a gap in history, a place too small and insignificant to be recorded.
He looked at Victoria, who was sitting beside him. She was navigating the conversation with a practiced ease, smiling when the guest laughed, nodding when he complained. She was the only thing in this world that felt real to him, even if she hated him.
That night, after the guest had slumped into a drunken sleep, Thomas stood in the center of their shared room. Victoria was unlacing her bodice, her back to him.
"I can't do this anymore," Thomas said.
Victoria stopped, her shoulders tensing. "If this is about the wine, Thomas, I don't want to hear it."
"It isn't about the wine," Thomas said. He walked over to her and held his hand out, palm up. The phone was there, glowing with a picture of a sunset over a modern skyline he had taken a year ago. "Look at my hand, Victoria. Tell me what you see."
She turned, her eyes flicking to his palm. "I see a man who has finally lost his mind. I see an empty hand."
Thomas took a deep breath. "I am going to tell you why you can't see what I see. And then I am going to tell you how we are going to save this place."