The next morning, he descended the stairs wearing Zayden’s face with somewhat more conviction than the night before.
He had spent the wakeful hours between darkness and dawn building a foundation — cataloguing what he knew, mapping what he needed, deciding what he could not afford to reveal.
Zayden’s body remembered its habitual slouch.
He chose not to indulge it.
Hash noticed immediately.
He stood in the kitchen, already dressed for work — dark brown hair slightly unkempt, grey eyes sharp above the rim of a mug.
Tall and broad-shouldered in the way of men who had carried real weight before they were fully grown, he filled the small space with a quiet, dependable gravity.
Even motionless, he gave the impression of someone who had long ago decided that collapse was not a viable option.
“You look different this morning,” he said, studying Zayden with unhurried attention.
“More energy than you’ve had in weeks. Healthier.”
“Better rest,” came the calm reply.
“Perhaps that was all it was.”
Hash’s expression eased — something genuine and relieved passing across his face.
“Good. Take care of yourself. We need you here.”
Zyla appeared behind him with a plate of bread, pressed a few coins into Zayden’s palm — groceries for dinner, she reminded him — and watched him with eyes that were still worried despite the smile she was performing.
He took the coins and stepped outside before she could ask the questions sitting just behind her expression.
Amber City in the morning was layered and strange.
Cobbled streets, timber-framed buildings, the smell of bread and iron and livestock.
A world untouched by everything he had once considered ordinary.
But the sunlight here was wrong in the best possible sense — it didn’t fall so much as breathe, warm and vibrant, making the air feel faintly alive.
The mountain ranges visible beyond the eastern edge seemed to glow from within like something that had been lit and never fully extinguished.
A medieval world powered by elemental magic and governed by nine churches that keep the power to themselves.He walked and catalogued.
And someone in this world just tried to kill the boy whose body I’m occupying.
At the Sunlight Academy of Medicine, Mark Musk’s seat was empty.
He registered the absence without reaction.
Filed it.
A friend who was missing was either sick, or something worse.
Given what he knew about the poison on Zayden’s table, the odds were not encouraging.
On the walk home that afternoon, he felt it.
The particular prickling awareness of observed movement.
The subtle displacement in the natural flow of foot traffic — a pause that matched his own pause, a turn that echoed his own turn, three beats too late to be coincidence.
He had felt it that morning too.
Same person.
Persistent.
He kept his face forward, his pace unhurried.
Made three unnecessary turns through the older quarter of the market.
Then ducked inside a small fortune-teller’s tent to break the line of sight.
Inside, the tent was dim and still.
A single glass globe rested on a low stand at the centre, perfectly clear.
Then it ignited.
White light erupted from it without warning — pure, overwhelming, far more than the tent’s walls should have been able to hold.
Within the radiance, a shape began to coalesce.
Not quite human, not quite anything with a name — vast and calm and impossibly present, radiating a sanctity that pressed against his chest like a hand.
A sound rose alongside it, low and resonant, words in no language he recognised, yet they sank directly into something deeper than thought.
What is this.
Then cold mist curled under the tent flaps.
It moved with intention.
It found his lungs before he could react.
His strength drained away like a tide going out.
His thoughts scattered.
The light died.
He hit the ground.
When awareness came back, his body felt like wet clay.
Through a gap in the canvas, he caught a brief glimpse of a figure standing in the crowd outside — still, calculating, watching.
And then he registered the expression on the man’s face.
Surprise.
Genuine, unguarded surprise.
Whatever the mist was supposed to do, it didn’t do it completely.
The figure turned and dissolved into the market crowd before he could see more.
He pushed himself upright, drew a measured breath, and took stock of himself.
Not a hallucination.
None of it.
The globe, the figure, the mist — all of it real.
And the person who had released the mist had expected him to stay down.
They know something.
And they know it about me specifically — or about this body.
He collected Zyla’s groceries, returned home, handed them over without explanation.
She gave him a long, searching look but said nothing.
He went upstairs.
He had barely reopened the diary when the knock came.
Hard, unhurried.
The rhythm of authority that doesn’t expect to be kept waiting.
“Coming!” Zyla called from below, voice bright but threaded with nerves.
He stood.
The door opened.
Three tall officers filled the threshold, their silhouettes throwing long shadows across the modest living room floor, as though the night itself had dressed up and walked inside.
He came down the stairs before Zyla could speak.
“I am Zayden Everhart,” he said, voice steady.
“What is the matter?”
Zyla spun around, eyes wide with panic.
“Zayden, no — stay back, please!”
The lead officer raised a gloved hand.
“Officer Harry Carl, Citizen Security Force of Amber City. You are being taken in as a suspect in the poisoning of Mark Musk — your close associate.”
The name hit like ice water.
Mark.
Same poison.
Same method.
Too clean, too deliberate.
He kept his face neutral.
Beneath the surface, threads of suspicion pulled tight.
“I will come with you,” he said evenly.
“I want to know what happened to my friend.”
Zyla’s face crumpled.
She rushed forward and seized his arm with desperate strength, tears already running hot down her cheeks.
“Brother, no! Hash isn’t home yet — wait for him, please! I can’t lose you too!” Her voice broke, raw and real, carrying the terror of someone who had already lost too much and knew exactly what another loss would cost her.
He placed a gentle hand over hers.
“I’ll be alright, Zyla. If I’m delayed, you and Hash come for me. I’ll be back soon.”
He watched her face as he said it.
The effort it took her to let go.
He filed that too — filed the warmth of it somewhere he hadn’t expected to feel anything.
They clamped wooden restraints around his wrists.
The joins glowed faintly, tightening with an unnatural click.
Outside, a horse-drawn cart waited.
The ride began normally enough — then accelerated to an eerie, frictionless speed no ordinary horses could have managed.
Elemental power.
The rider’s badge.
He watched everything.
The interrogation room was dim and cold.
A single lantern threw restless shadows across stone walls.
Officer Harry Carl sat opposite him.
“What were you and Mark doing at the ruins in the Bright Mountains?”
“I don’t remember.”
Harry gave a silent signal.
Another officer entered — Manher Steve, two badges gleaming on his chest in green and purple.
He released a sweet, curling mist into the air without a word, then pressed his palm to Zayden’s forehead.
The scent invaded like fingers reaching into the skull.
Consciousness wavered.
Now.
Something in him surged — instinctive, fierce.
He shielded the recent memories, burying the fortune globe and the radiant figure deep, feeding Manher only faded and harmless fragments.
His body went limp.
In the dark that followed, something strange happened.
As Manher’s energy sparked at his fingertips, Zayden felt a faint and hesitant pulse that didn’t belong to him.
A foreign presence brushed against his shielded memories — not aggressive, but curious.
For one split second a hazy image surfaced: a dark chamber, the same mist, the same purple-green glow.
Then it vanished.
Ten minutes passed.
When Manher finally withdrew his hand, his voice carried an edge of unease he couldn’t quite hide.
“Nothing of significance. The recent memories appear inaccessible. Almost as if… deliberately sealed.”
Harry’s frustration was plain.
He paced, boots loud on stone.
“That’s not normal. Someone erased those memories. But how? And how do mere students know of the Aethernal System?”
Zayden remained perfectly still, absorbing every word.
They have no idea I’m listening.
Five minutes later, Harry shook his shoulder.
“Questioning is complete. Your brother and sister are outside.”
The moment he stepped through the door, Zyla crashed into his arms, face buried in his chest, tears soaking through his shirt.
“Are you okay? Did they hurt you? I was so scared, Zayden, I was—”
Hash stood behind her, one steady hand on her shoulder.
“Easy, Zyla. Give him room. We’ll talk at home.” Short.
Practical.
Certain.
Dinner passed in heavy silence.
After a long pause, Hash asked quietly: “What happened to Mark?”
“I don’t know,” Zayden replied.
“Only that it was poison. They told me nothing more.”
Hash studied him for a moment, then nodded.
“Go rest.”
Alone in his room, he sat at the table with the dark pressing in at every window.
Whoever killed Mark knew about their investigation into the Aethernal System.
They didn’t want survivors.
And those coloured badges — what power do they truly carry?
More importantly — that echo during Manher’s probe.
That curiosity.
That wasn’t the technique of a man following orders blindly.
That was something personal.
He would wait.
Returning to the ruins now would be suicide.
He was being watched.
Four days, he decided.
Then the ruins.
Outside his window, Amber City settled into its quiet night, unaware of the thread that had just been pulled — and everything it was attached to.
New worlds are exciting until reality arrives.
Survival often comes before answers.
What would you do if everything familiar vanished overnight?