It was dusk in Room 12, West Annex, Lucian's room, obviously.
He stepped inside, locked the door, and scanned the space from the doorway. Narrow rectangular room. Iron-frame bed. Small rickety wood desk. The wardrobe. The cast-iron wood-burning stove in the corner.
He was still in what he'd worn to Ground 4. The worn black-and-silver blazer, silver trim frayed at the cuffs. White shirt, top two buttons undone. The dark tie pulled loose somewhere between the arena and the shed. Sleeves still rolled to the elbow.
Dust on his trousers. Dust on his boots.
He looked at the door for a second, the thin iron latch, the gap under it wide enough for a rat and dragged the wardrobe across the floor until it sat against the frame. The boards groaned the whole way.
Then he started the sweep.
The smell should have been cold stone and dry dust, old soot from the stove, and dry pine drifting in through the window from the Backwoods.
Except that five days ago there'd been sulfur in this room, and lavender oil, and he hadn't noticed either of them until it was already too late.
So he checked.
His ash-gray eyes did the room left to right without hurrying.
His nose worked with them, sorting the air the way a hound did: cold stone, dust, soot, pine, his own scent of pepper and woodsmoke and mineral salt, a ghost of needlerat blood near the stove.
Clean. All of it.
"Haah… exhausting."
Eventually, after finding nothing suspicious, he let out a long breath and dropped into the chair at the desk. The wood creaked and shifted under him. One leg was shorter than the others; he rested his heel on the brace without thinking. Dark charcoal hair fell over his brow, and he didn't push it back.
He looked out the window at the Backwoods and let the silence sit.
Too many things had happened. He'd just transmigrated, and everything had luckily followed the script, except someone had been spying on his room, and Travis had suddenly challenged him.
When he turned it over in his mind, it made no sense. Even now, he couldn't figure it out.
Why the fuck did he challenge me? Just because of the brotherhood?
For now, Travis and Derrick, those two houses were unfamiliar to him. But from what he'd heard, House Cole had been ground down and absorbed into the Holt fraternity back in Travis's first year.
"Ha. My head hurts just thinking about it."
His lips twitched. Maybe the reason didn't need to be more complicated than that. Challenging a Rank 1 with a broken house while he himself was Rank 2 Peak was easy enough.
Maybe because of that, Travis could boost his own prestige, remove a future problem like Lucian, lower Lucian's image in the eyes of others and his fiancée, and curry favor with House Holt all at once.
What did they say in those cultivation novels again? One of Lucian's eyebrows went up. Currying favor, I think?
He shook his head, took a deep breath, and narrowed his eyes.
Work first.
He struck a match and lit a single candle.
First, Karin's job. The quarry. Four days.
Simple words on their own, but combined with the quarry, and she said there was a fucking fissure? What the fuck... when did that happen? Wouldn't it blow up?
Just thinking about it, his relaxed brow narrowed and the veins appeared again.
I'm not perfect. My memory's already going soft.
A vein pulsed in his forehead. What he remembered was the first-year midterm combat practical Arthur's role, the one where he'd shine.
Seraphina's role, the observer. The upcoming tectonic surge. The breach. The academy cover-up. The outcome.
That was all.
He couldn't possibly remember every instructor's name, every minor character, the exact rift coordinates, the exact monster species, how many students died, which students, or when in the exam the breach hit.
Midway? …Tsk. It's already a miracle I remember that much after bingeing four hundred and fifty chapters in one night.
He leaned forward, elbows on the desk, and reached for a pencil and a torn-off scrap of coarse butcher paper.
Back then it had been an achievement not to waste more time on one novel. Bingeing one in a night was satisfying enough to move on to the next.
Now he regretted it completely.
"Just write it down."
He hurried, afraid the memories were getting blurrier by the minute. The first thing, of course, he would write in English, the modern alphabet of Earth. He wasn't one of those omniscient protagonists who remembered every plot point. Writing was just a way to dredge up certain deep memories.
Yet when he wrote, his pen paused.
Right, how come I suddenly understand the language and writing of this world?
The thought came out of nowhere. He shook it off and focused.
The first words:
S.L. = FINAL BOSS. OBSIDIAN CIRCLE. DO NOT PROVOKE.
He looked at the words and nodded. Besides using the modern alphabet of Earth, he'd also shortened the names. Who would know if someone actually managed to decipher it?
SL stood for Seraphina Lysander. Obsidian Circle was the cult, a shadow syndicate operating beneath the kingdom's surface.
"Hopefully every time I look at this, it'll trigger something from deep in my memory."
He nodded to himself and kept writing.
MONTH 1: SECTOR 01 PRACTICAL → BREACH.
A.V. = HERO MOMENT.
HOUNDS - FOUR-JAWED. ?NAME?
~DOZEN+ CASUALTIES.
AV obviously stood for Arthur Vance, the original protagonist.
He kept writing, more and more, until he looked up at a full page of alien text. His wrist was sore. The fingers holding the pencil were hot, maybe from pressing down too hard.
"Perfect. I think."
He tilted his head, nodded, then folded the paper into a tight flat square, knelt by the cast-iron stove, and levered up the loose granite hearthstone. He slipped the paper into the dry soot cavity underneath, pressed the stone back down until it sat flush, and wiped his hands on his trousers.
His mind was clear now.
Next. Training.
He set the candle stub on the desk and cupped his hand around the flame until it caught. It would cast a shadow on the far wall, and that was the point.
He'd learned in the Backwoods that watching his own silhouette was the only way to catch the wobble. He couldn't see his own back. He could see what his back was doing.
The light came up small and yellow and did almost nothing. Desk, pencil, a foot of floor. Beyond that, black.
He pulled his boots off and set them by the stove, then stepped out onto the floorboards in his socks and pushed the chair back against the wall with his heel.
Cold. That's cold.
He shivered and gritted his teeth. The West Annex held the day's chill in its stone and gave it back all night, and it was well past the point where his breath had started showing.
Then he settled.
First Pillar. Grounded Center.