Year 742 of the Wang Calendar, late autumn.
In the old district of Tricolor Flag City, there was an alley so nameless it might as well have been invisible. At its end stood a bookstore. It had no signboard, only a faded wooden plaque by the door, its engraved lettering nearly worn smooth: Karl's Used Books.
Aiden Wright had been working at this bookstore for three years.
He had started helping out at twelve—not because he loved reading, but because old Karl was the only person willing to take him in. Aiden was an orphan. He had grown up in a church-run orphanage, run away at ten, and spent two years wandering the old district's alleys, until old Karl found him curled up outside the shop during a downpour.
"Come in," Karl had said. "Help me move some books."
And just like that, Aiden had a place to live.
Now he stood before a bookshelf on the second floor, wiping dust from a row of spines with a damp rag. Sunlight filtered through the window, cut into beams by the floating dust, falling on his hands, on the books, on the floor. The whole shop smelled of paper and mildew—a scent that could make you drowsy if you breathed it too long. But Aiden was used to it.
"Aiden!" Karl's raspy voice came from downstairs. "Sort through that new batch of old books and put them on the empty shelf downstairs."
"Got it."
Aiden set down the rag and started down the creaking wooden stairs. On the wall at the stairwell's turn hung a faded oil painting of Tricolor Flag City, said to have been painted fifty years ago by some artist. Aiden walked past it every day, never giving it a second look.
Behind the counter downstairs, Karl hunched over his ledger, counting. He was in his sixties, with graying hair, reading glasses held together with a string around the broken temple, and a gray apron stained with ink that he seemed to wear every day. His fingers were rough, ink ingrained under his nails—he looked as old as his shop.
Beside the counter were three cartons of books just picked up from the flea market. Most of them had been sold for scrap—covers torn, pages yellowed, print blurred. Occasionally a valuable one would turn up, and Karl would rebind it, put it on the second‑floor shelf, mark it with a modest price, and wait for someone who knew what they were looking at to come along.
Most of the time, no one came.
Aiden crouched down and began pulling books from the first carton. The first was full of ordinary travelogues and cookbooks—nothing special. The second was mostly religious pamphlets, their covers stamped with the emblem of the Church of the Holy Light: a dove with wings spread, a sun clutched in its claws. The emblem was everywhere in Tricolor Flag City—on church spires, on officials' chests, on the first page of every textbook.
The third carton.
Aiden reached into the third carton and his fingers touched something cold and solid. He looked down. It was an old book bound in dark brown leather. The cover had no title—only an indentation worn almost smooth. It was larger than the other books in the carton, much heavier, like a flattened brick.
"What's this?" Aiden lifted it out, feeling a film of dust thick enough to write in.
Karl looked up, frowning. "That one? The flea market vendor threw it in with the rest. Said he found it in some old house's attic. Nobody wanted it, but he couldn't bring himself to toss it."
"Think we can sell it?"
"Who'd buy a book without a title?" Karl went back to his ledger. "Put it in the bottom corner with the old ledgers nobody wants."
Aiden didn't put it back right away.
He didn't know why, but his fingers lingered on the cover. The leather felt strange—not like cowhide or sheepskin, but something he had never touched before. And there was a smell to it. Not mildew, not the sourness of old paper, but something older, heavier—like earth deep underground, like something that had been buried for a very long time.
Hesitant, he opened the cover.
The first page had no writing—only a few scratched‑out marks, as if someone had deliberately scraped away whatever had been there. He turned further. The pages were yellow and brittle, their edges curled; each turn produced a faint crackle, like the paper was groaning.
On the fifth page, finally, there was text.
It was written in an old script, and Aiden had to squint to make it out:
"… First Year of the Sacred Calendar, autumn. The Great Unifier, Aldric, was crowned in the capital's Holy Sanctuary, ushering in a new era for mankind. From that time forth, darkness receded and light descended…"
Aiden frowned.
Aldric? The legendary "Unifier"? Every history textbook's first chapter told his story—three thousand years ago, he united the warring kingdoms, established the Church of the Holy Light, led humanity out of a dark age. The date of his coronation was set as the first year of the Sacred Calendar, the year before what was now called Year 1 of the Wang Calendar.
But this text said "First Year of the Sacred Calendar."
The official histories all said the Third Year. Aldric had been crowned three years after the unification wars ended; the first three years were a "transitional period." Every schoolchild in Tricolor Flag City learned that.
A difference of two or three years—maybe a mistake?
Aiden read on. The passage continued:
"…On the day of his coronation, emissaries came from every direction. Chieftains of the northern ice plains offered white bearskins, fishermen of the eastern isles offered a pearl crown, and the nomadic king of the western desert offered a sword of gold. Aldric stood atop the Holy Sanctuary, receiving the acclamation of multitudes, his voice like thunder, his presence like the sun…"
Wait.
Tribes from the northern ice plains? A pearl crown from the eastern isles? A nomadic king from the western desert?
Aiden's finger stopped on the page. A strange sensation crept up from the base of his spine, like a cold breath on the back of his neck.
The textbooks didn't say that. According to the textbooks, only the capital's nobles and the church's priests were present at Aldric's coronation. The north was still a wilderness then; the east and west were only later "civilized." The textbooks emphasized: The Unifier's greatness lay in spreading the light of civilization to every corner of the continent by his own power. At that time, those barbarians had no civilization at all.
But this book said "emissaries came from every direction." Not conquest—pilgrimage. Not spreading civilization—civilizations that already existed.
A mistake? No. This wasn't a mistake. This was a completely different story.
Aiden turned to the next page, wanting to read on, but his finger brushed against a bump in the paper's edge—something wedged between the pages. He carefully opened it wider.
A dried‑out thing slipped out of the binding and fell into his palm.
A strand of hair.
No, not ordinary hair. It was thicker than a normal person's hair, deep gold in color, reflecting an almost unnatural metallic sheen in the sunlight. And it was stiff—stiff as a copper wire—yet oddly resilient.
Aiden stared at it for three seconds.
Then the world exploded.
Not a real explosion—his field of vision ripped in two. One half was the present: Karl doing accounts behind the counter, sunlight sifting through the dust, shadows lying quietly on the floor. The other half was—
Somewhere else.
He saw a vast hall, its ceiling so high he couldn't see it, its walls inlaid with glowing stones that gave off a cold, lake‑blue light. In the center of the hall stood a raised dais, and on it a man wearing a robe he had never seen before—a robe the color of flowing gold. On the man's head was a crown, not gold but silver‑white, set with—
Aiden blinked, but the image didn't disappear. It unfolded before him like a play staged inside his skull. He heard sounds—not real sound waves, but something poured directly into his awareness: bells, singing, and the roar of a crowd. That roar was like a tidal wave, crashing against his consciousness wave after wave.
He saw the crowd. Countless people, in all kinds of clothing—some he recognized: the fur coats of the north, the shell necklaces of the eastern isles, the long robes of the west—and some he didn't recognize at all, unsure if they were even human. Tall figures stood at the edge of the crowd, their skin silver, their eyes like twin flames.
A coronation.
It was a coronation.
But not the one in the textbooks. Not the modest ceremony with only nobles and priests in attendance. This was something grander, more ancient, more—
Aiden's fingertip brushed the end of the strand of hair, and the image shattered, like a mirror smashed from the center. The sounds, the lights, the crowd—gone, as if they had never been.
He jerked upright, his knee hitting the edge of the carton, the pain shooting through him. But it was drowned by the chaos in his head.
"What's wrong?" Karl looked up, frowning.
"I…" Aiden stared at the strange hair in his palm, then at the old book. "I just saw something."
"What?"
"The coronation. Aldric's coronation." Aiden's voice trembled. "It was different. Completely different from what the books say."
Karl put down his pen, removed his glasses, and looked at him steadily. His expression was odd—not surprise, not confusion, more like… wariness?
"Put that book down," Karl said, his voice suddenly calm, not at all like his usual tone.
"Mr. Karl, I really saw—"
"Put it down." Karl rose, walked around the counter, and came to Aiden. His movements were slow, but carried an undeniable force. He took the old book from Aiden's hands, closed it, turned, and placed it in a drawer beneath the counter. He locked it.
"What's in that book?" Aiden asked.
"Just an old book." Karl had his back to him.
"But what I saw—"
"You saw wrong." Karl turned around, his expression back to its usual mix of weariness and impatience. "You've been sorting books all day; your eyes are playing tricks. Go rest."
Aiden opened his mouth to argue, but Karl had already sat back behind the counter, picked up his pen, and returned to his ledger. The motion was exactly like his everyday self—as if the tension of those few seconds had never happened.
But Aiden knew those seconds had been real.
He looked down at his palm. The strand of hair was gone, but his fingers still remembered the feel of it—cold, hard, like touching something that shouldn't be touched.
And in his mind, the image still echoed: the man on the dais, the silver‑white crown, the silver‑skinned figures…
And those cheers. In those cheers, the crowd hadn't called him "the Unifier." They hadn't called him Aldric.
They had called him something else.
Aiden hadn't caught it. The vision had shattered too fast.
But he knew that name was not in any textbook.
He looked up at the drawer beneath the counter. Karl had already put the key in his apron pocket and pressed his hand over it, as if protecting something.
Outside, the sunlight had turned orange‑red, the dust drifting lazily in the light beams. Everything looked the same as always—the old bookshop, the old books, the old dust.
But nothing was the same.
Aiden didn't know that this evening, the church bells of Tricolor Flag City would ring three seconds later than usual. Only one person would notice those three seconds.
And what he had touched was far more than a strand of hair.