Table of contents
Into the Unknown
The Bazaar of Equivalent Exchange
The Eternal Fusion
From Unknown to Unknown
Into the Unknown
To the west, an ocean stretched beyond the edges of the world, a boundless expanse of abyssal blue where the sun's rays kindled a perpetual, shimmering mist. From the heart of those endless waters, the air itself stirred. It gathered the breath of the sea, the taste of the salt, and the weight of the impending journey. Something called to it—a spirit of adventure born from the endless blue, ready to leave its cradle, learning the shape of its own body.
And thus, the mist-laden wind was born—tasting of salt, surging with the force of a gale.
With that power, it surged eastward from its cradle until the endless blue yielded to the gold of a coastal shore. There, it drank the heat from the sun-baked dunes, growing light and buoyant. Its spirit, now unburdened, sparked a new dream: to ascend, to touch the cold, mystical cosmos above. And from the mountain range before, it saw not an obstacle, but a path to the heavens above.
And so it rose. It climbed the shoulders of the mountain, a desperate ascent towards the stars. But the thin, high air stole its warmth, and its mist bled away with every string of altitude conquered. An icy heaviness seeped into its core. Yet, the dream—the memory of the cosmos—was etched into its very being, and it pushed on.
The peak was a betrayal. There was no gateway to the stars, no escape to the heavens, only a frigid, freezing, airless prison. Its dreams shattered, the last of its ambitions stolen by the mountain's white crown. All that remained was despair. It fell, no longer a rising spirit, but a raging, anguished wind, torn from its grace. Thus, the mist-laden wind was forged anew into a dry, cold tempest, leaving the memory of the ocean frozen upon the peak.
At the foot of the mountain, it met green-haired giants standing valiantly on a single trunk. Raging, it launched an assault, battering the moss-covered skin of the trees. The giants were bulwarks against its fury. They did not fight back; they cooed and soothed, absorbing the rage into their rough-hewn bark. And in their fortitude, they danced, their massive bodies leaning but holding fast, a testament to roots that ran deeper than any tantrum.
And so, its ire spent, the Western Wind drifted downward from the wooded highlands. It was no longer a gale or a raging spirit, but a cool, gentle breeze, its great cosmic ambition humbled into simple motion. It carried not despair but a new symphony—the melodic tale of the forest and premonition of adventures to come.
With simple motion, it slipped into Ashburn, a small, sequestered town in the middle of bustling nowhere. Here, it felt an echo. Not of the cosmos, but of the same longing that had once driven it to climb. Here, it met humans; wild, free spirits with aspirations leaning towards the heavens.
The breeze, now a gentle witness, wove through the market stalls of the town's main thoroughfare. Here, the deep earthly scent of fresh farm produce hung rich in the air. To the traders—haggling, boasting, chasing their worldly ambitions—it whispered the secrets of the ocean's depth and the giants' patience. They did not hear, their minds buzzing with the noise of coin and reputation.
But, the world around them heard. The hairs on their heads danced to its silent tune. Shirts and skirts fluttered against will. The leaves of trees embellishing Ashburn rustled in a unified, whispering sigh, replying to their forest brethren.
Having delivered its message to the unheeding, the wind drifted from the market's energy. it swirled into the town square. Here, the heart of Ashburn beat a slower, much more harmonious rythm. Cobblestones, worn smooth by generations, radiated a soft, evening warmth. At its center, stood an ornate fountain of weathered grey stone, where stone serpents coiled eternally towards a spire that spilled a constant, chattering stream of water onto a basin below.
The square was a painting of antique tranquility, bounded by cobblestones and quaint, low-built shops with frosted windows. But on its far side stood a structure that shattered the ancient charm: a building of polished dark stone and sweeping glass. A single, sleek, modern script above the entrance spelled out its purpose: McGan's Gym.
Opposite the gym, just across the worn cobblestones, the wind found a final, resting curiosity. There, in the parking lot, a beast of steel and glass lay in a slumber of polished steel and darkened glass. Its sleek form, a sculpture of dormant speed, absorbed the evening sun, holding the light like a promise of power and silence. It was a creature of a different world, sleeping amidst the ancient stones, anticipating the touch that would summon its heart to a purr and its spirit to the open road.
The beast of elegant steel reflected the gym's sleek lines, a distorted image of dark stone and glass that shivered and reformed as the door slid open with a hushed hydraulic sigh.
Mia Monroe stepped out and the world shifted to meet her.
A vibrant, electric energy buzzed just beneath her skin. She had seen him. The simple fact made the air seem more vivid, the colours of the fading day more saturated. She paused on the worn cobblestones, her training shoes solid on the ancient ground, and took a deep breath. The breeze—cool and gentle—kissed her skin, and her fatigued muscles sighed. For a fleeting second, she wished she were on the mansion's roof, alone with this splendid wind and the dizzying feeling in her chest.
Her gaze fell upon the waiting car. Vera was already there, holding the door open, a silent summon back to reality. Mia slid inside, the familiar starlight smell embracing her. As the door thudded shut, she let the excitement flood back, building castles in the air of her mind, each one more elaborate than the last…
Meanwhile, inside the gym, Cedric's hand rested on Zane's shoulder—a weight of approval, of something paternal. In another context, with different clothes, they might have been father and son at a wedding, celebrating some long-awaited union. But here, in their identical gym attire bearing McGan's crest, they were simply employer and instructor, caught in a moment that felt larger than it was.
Zane Ling. One instructor among several, yet Cedric's thoughts returned to him again and again like a tide to shore.
Was it the girls? The way they flocked when Zane taught, filling the membership rolls, their laughter bright as coins dropping into his register? Or was it the Monroe girl—the daughter of Ashburn's wealthiest blood—who had chosen his gym, his instructor, booking private sessions week after week? Zane claimed they weren't close despite sharing classrooms for years. Just a client who wants privacy, he'd said. But why Zane? Trust, perhaps. Rich girls that age built walls and only opened gates for the familiar, the known, the safe.
The hand on Zane's shoulder grew leaden with unspoken things. Cedric pulled it back, suddenly aware of how it must seem—this lingering touch, this weighted silence. There had been words he'd meant to say, a specific phrase of praises, but they'd scattered like mist before he could catch them.
His fingers found his wallet instead, that brown and shabby companion, leather worn soft as skin from years of opening and closing. He'd bought it at Sybyl Antiques back when the world was different, when he'd had different dreams. Now it held the day's purpose.
One, Three, Seven… His thumb moved through the bills with practiced efficiency, the arithmetic running silent beneath conscious thought. Ten thousand Cordian Coronas, crisp and worn in equal measure, pressed together into Zane's palm. Cedric folded the young man's fingers over the currency, making the transaction solid, real.
"You did a great job today."
Zane's fingers closed around the bills, their worn texture familiar as a handshake. The calculations were already running—rent due in five days, the nursing home's monthly invoice, the groceries that couldn't wait. Ten thousand Cordian notes translated instantly into time: another month of his father's care, two weeks of decent meals, the electric bill paid before the shutoff notice.
The shoulder touch—he'd felt it land like a too-heavy bird, awkward and lingering. He didn't like people in his space, didn't like the weight of unsaid things pressing down on him. But money was money, and if Cedric needed to make fatherly gestures to feel good about paying bonuses, well. That was a small price for a large need.
Still. They'd agreed on the payment part, not the shoulder part.
He let the thought pass, unspoken, as he pocketed the notes.
"Thanks, boss."
The words came easily, professionally. Gratitude without intimacy. Exactly the boundary he needed.
Zane pushed the locker door, watched it swing shut, heard the lock click. Finally. Done. Every muscle sang its quiet hymn of pain, a steady ache that started in his calves and didn't stop until it reached his skull. Two hours of Finance Literature—mental quicksand, each minute dragging him deeper into derivative markets and capital allocation theories that felt about as relevant to his life as astrophysics. And the "recovery" gym session? Recovery implied healing. This had been punishment.
He hitched his backpack higher. The strap dug into his shoulder.
And then there was Mia.
Am I doing it right? Can we go a little higher? Hey, attention here.
Her voice bloomed in his memory, sharp and bright and relentless. Sixty minutes of that. Sixty minutes of her buzzing around every set, every stolen moment of focus he had tried to horde, chattering with that performance-edge enthusiasm that made his jaw clench even now, blocks away from the gym. That laugh—heavens, that laugh—still clung to him like smoke he couldn't wave away.
Why book private sessions with him when she clearly despised his existence? Middle school surfaced, unwanted. Her voice, younger but just as cutting—
Move out of the way, Twig.
Girlish giggles then… Soon after, the name lean Ling followed him around every corner. The nickname had stuck to his ribs for years…
TING! TANG! TING-TING!
The sound cut through thought like a blade through silk. Not a sound—a pronouncement. A resonant gong that had no visible source, filling the evening air with metallic scripture, each ring a ripple in the fabric of what was supposed to be possible. His senses didn't just heighten—they detonated. Every nerve ending became an antenna reaching for something his rational mind refused to name.
His body turned before his brain caught up.
And there it was.
A coin. Rolling down the incline of the Street in an elegant, twirling descent. Not falling—dancing. Each revolution a deliberate gesture, a ballet performed by physics that had forgotten its own laws. The coin moved like water flowing upward, like time running backward through its own machinery.
It was beautiful beyond any mundane standard, beyond the reach of ordinary adjectives. An ephemeral sight that felt like it might evaporate if he blinked, if he breathed wrong, if his disbelief grew too heavy. The surface was gold—not the dull gold of jewelry store windows, but gold the way sunlight is gold when it hits ocean spray, when it illuminates dust motes in abandoned churches, when it promises alchemy might have been real all along.
An 'S'-shaped symbol was engraved on its face, etched in radiant majesty—not merely carved but sung into the metal, each curve a calligraphic prayer in a language he'd never learned but somehow recognized in his bones. The symbol seemed to breathe, to pulse with meaning just beyond the threshold of comprehension, like a word on the tip of consciousness that would explain everything if he could just…
The edge was immaculate, sharp and clear as broken time, reflecting the dying evening light in fragments—amber, rose, violet—each color a small apocalypse. A glimmer of something other caught in its revolution: not just light, but promise. Not just reflection, but revelation.
The coin rolled closer.
His apartment—thirty minutes north, cramped and dim and full of unpaid bills—felt suddenly like it belonged to someone else's life. Someone who hadn't heard the gong. Someone who hadn't seen metal move like prophecy.
His hand reached out. No thought. Just movement. Fingers extending toward the spinning edge.
The moment stretched.
Mia's laughter echoed somewhere in the back of his mind. Razor's task waited in tomorrow like a trap. The wind asked its eternal question about where things came from and where they were going.
All of it compressed into this: his fingerprint about to meet burnished gold.
The coin spun. Gold, shadow, gold, shadow.
His finger touched its edge.
The Bazaar of Equivalent Exchange
The darkness didn't arrive like a storm. It arrived like an answer.
The void opened beneath him—not through concrete, not through earth, but through the lie that solid ground had ever been real, that the world had ever been anything but theater built over an abyss.
The hole bloomed with terrible grace, petals of absolute nothing unfurling from the point where his finger met gold.
Zane didn't fall.
The universe exhaled, and he was the breath.
---
No ground. No sky. Just dark in every direction, perfect and complete, and yet—his shirt was still visible. Pale fabric floating in nothing. The abyss granted sight without light, a terrible gift.
Air scraped into his lungs. His heart hammered against his ribs like something trying to break free. He was breathing but it felt like drowning. He flailed, desperate for momentum, for anything to push against.
Nothing. No anchor. Just a slow, helpless spin.
Then he saw it.
A blue orb. No larger than an egg. A cerulean galaxy captured in liquid glass, pristine stars suspended inside, pulsating, twinkling silent songs. It hovered. Perfect. Impossible. Just within reach.
And far away—the coin. The damned coin that had brought him here. Forever beyond his grasp now.
What was the blue thing? The question burned. He wanted to know. Needed to. But the coin had taught him something about touching unknown objects, hadn't it? The coin had led him here. What could the orb do? Lead him somewhere worse?
He kept his hands to himself. For now.
---
Silence pressed against his eardrums. Not the absence of sound but the presence of silence, a weight that made his own heartbeat seem obscenely loud.
The cerulean sphere pulsed. A visual heartbeat. It called to him—not with voice but with pull, gravitational, tempting. It promised answers. It hummed with potential that made the void feel less empty and more... waiting.
What are you? A key? A deeper prison? A soul trapped in glass like his?
The coin had been passive. Metallic deceit. This was different. This felt alive. Its presence seemed to carve out a small domain of is in the infinite is not.
To touch it might mean annihilation. Or transformation into something he couldn't comprehend.
His fingers curled into a fist. The desire to reach out ached in his arm, physical and demanding.
But he held fast. He wouldn't grab. Wouldn't grasp.
For now, he'd only witness.
---
How long? Seconds? Hours? Time didn't work here.
His thoughts started circling, desperate for something solid to grip. Razor's collections—he'd miss them. The nursing home bill. His father's face, slack and distant in that sterile room, tubes and monitors keeping him tethered to a world he barely inhabited anymore. All of it unreachable now, separated by this absolute nothing.
The orb pulsed again.
Maybe it was the way out. Had to be, right? What else would just float here, offering itself like salvation?
His hand drifted forward. Not a decision—instinct. Reflex. Because what the hell else was there? Die here in the dark or die touching something beautiful?
His father's face flashed behind his eyes. Tubes. Monitors. That steady beep that meant still alive, still waiting for you.
His hand stopped. Curled. Drew back.
But the math was simple. Stay here: slow death, maybe madness, definitely nothing. Touch the orb: unknown. And unknown beat nothing. Unknown was at least a chance.
What choice did he really have?
His fingers uncurled.
Reached.
The orb waited, patient as infinity, its stars twinkling their silent invitation.
Zane reached for the orb. The decision had already been made—not by thought, but by necessity. Wait and dissolve into madness, or act and face whatever came next. Escape or death. Not that he minded eternal peace, if it came to that. His hand moved forward, no longer under conscious command but driven by something deeper—survival instinct, or perhaps its opposite.
His fingers touched the cerulean surface.
The orb shattered.
It didn't break so much as unmake itself—fragmenting into white shards that pulsed with their own light, each piece a captured star rendered in crystalline glass. They hung suspended for a heartbeat, twinkling in the void like a galaxy caught mid-explosion. Beautiful. Impossibly, terrifyingly beautiful—the kind of sight that carved itself into memory, that would haunt the space behind closed eyes forever.
The shards didn't wait for him to admire them.
They erupted forward in a rush, a swarm of luminous fragments that converged on his chest with terrible purpose. The first impact drove the air from his lungs—a collision of light and matter that shouldn't have had weight but did. Then another. Another. They crashed into him frantically, desperately, each shard disappearing into his flesh as if his body were no more solid than water.
No pain. Just the overwhelming sensation of intrusion, of being filled with something that didn't belong.
When the last shard vanished beneath his skin, silence fell.
Not the oppressive silence of the void—this was different. Absolute. A silence so complete it swallowed even the sound of his own heartbeat, his own breath. Every sense sharpened to a razor's edge, every nerve firing in confused alarm, his entire being held in the grip of terrible anticipation.
Then—light.
It burst before his eyes without warning, a luminous blue that conquered the darkness with casual authority. A panel materialized in the space where the orb had floated, translucent and glowing, its edges sharp as cut glass. The air around it seemed to shimmer with heat that wasn't heat, presence that wasn't quite physical.
Silver runes crawled across its surface—symbols that weren't Cordian, weren't any language he'd ever seen, and yet somehow he understood. The meaning bypassed his eyes entirely, arriving directly in his mind like memory rather than sight. He didn't read them; their meaning simply began to seep into his awareness, unfamiliar yet somehow intimate, ancient yet speaking directly to something fundamental in his bones.
At first, it was just impressions—fleeting fragments his conscious mind couldn't quite grasp. Balance. Exchange. Fusion.
He focused, his mind latching onto the symbols, and the concepts wove themselves into a framework. A system. A mechanism for trade. The scope of it was dizzying, vast and undefined, promising everything and nothing in the same breath.
Then, as if a final lock had clicked open, the full message resolved in his mind with the clarity of a remembered dream. The unfamiliar became familiar. Suddenly, he could read the runes.
『The Equilibrium Shifts. A New Will Enters The Balance』
『The Grand Exchange Awaits Your Offer』
『Boon』
✧The Bazaar Of Equivalent Exchange
『Sacrifice』
✦Eternal Fusion
He blinked. Blinked again. The runes remained unchanged, patient and implacable, waiting for a response he didn't have.
The panel looked straight out of fiction. One of those interfaces from the web novels he'd devoured in stolen moments between jobs—the kind where protagonists stumbled into godlike powers, where ordinary people became extraordinary through systems that defied all logic and physics.
But those were fiction. Stories cobbled together by writers with too much imagination and too much time. They didn't manifest in reality. They didn't appear in voids beyond space, didn't shatter into light and crawl beneath skin.
He looked again.
『The Equilibrium Shifts. A New Will Enters The Balance』
What did that even mean? Was he the will? Then if he was... The entity—no, the interface. System. Web novels called it that. The system had to be the equilibrium.
But what sort of system was this? The ones in fiction just handed out godlike powers, quests and rewards like candy. This offered a transaction. Some Bazaar of Equivalent Exchange—a mechanism that would let him acquire anything, so long as he sacrificed something of equivalent value.
Wait. It was offering *itself*. That had to be it. It offered itself for the sacrifice of Eternal Fusion.
Eternal Fusion. He already knew the meaning behind those words he mysteriously, somehow understood. The knowledge was lodged so deep in his mind it terrified him, sent shivers cascading down his spine—terrified him more than the void embracing him.
Yet it was simple. Gain the system. Fuse with it forever.
The panel remained, steady and undeniable. The runes continued their patient shimmer, conveying meaning through pathways he couldn't explain.
He had to be dreaming. The thought arrived with desperate hope attached.
His fingers found his forearm, pinched hard. His nerves shrieked in immediate protest—sharp, bright pain that traveled up his arm and lodged itself in his awareness. Real pain. Unmistakable and entirely physical.
Not a dream, then.
Had he just... picked his way into fantasy? Reached through reality's skin and found something stranger underneath? The absurdity of it threatened hysterical laughter. But the void pressed close around him, patient and eternal, and laughter died before it could form.
What good was fantasy here? What use were godlike powers in oblivion's embrace? He'd trade every system, every supernatural gift, for a single doorway back to the mundane world—to debt collection and gym classes and his father's labored breathing.
Unless.
Unless it could help him leave.
The thought sparked like flint on steel. Yes. That had to be it. The system—whatever it was—had to be his escape route. Why else would it appear here, in this nowhere place? The universe, he suspected, was rarely so poetic as to hand out fantasy interfaces for mere decoration. They came with purpose. Function.
His eyes, heavy with a fear that was slowly crystallizing into resolve, returned to the shimmering panel, to the transaction that still waited for his answer.
What choice did he have, really? Stay here and slowly unravel, or step forward into the unknown and hope it led somewhere—anywhere—else?
The Eternal Fusion
"I accept the sacrifice."
The words left his mouth, a quiet surrender that the void seemed to swallow the moment it was born. The silence that answered was so complete he wondered if he had spoken at all, if the decision had been nothing more than a tremor in his soul. He might have repeated it, just to hear the sound of his own resolve, but the panel vanished. Not with a fade, but a cessation—as if it had never been.
Then… pain.
It erupted from his insides, a hot, seething agony that tore through the very fabric of his being. This was not the mere intrusion of the shards; this was an unraveling. It felt as if his soul were being dipped in molten reality, his nerves burning and wailing a hymn of pure, undiluted suffering. His body, or the memory of it, was being unmade at a cellular level.
A sharp, shrill scream tore from his throat, a sound that felt too small and mortal to disrupt the void's silent symphony. It took a moment for him to recognize the source—his own voice, screaming. The sound echoed in the oblivion, a fleeting testament to his suffering.
Yet it lasted only a moment—a prelude, a final, violent protest from the man he was before the fusion.
The silence, dethroned for a single beat, rushed back in to reclaim its domain.
What followed was a cool, gentle sensation, a refreshing wave that washed through him, reminiscent of the wind that had presaged his plunge. It was so profoundly soothing that the memory of the pain already felt like a hallucination, a bad dream screamed into a pillow. The deep-seated ache in his muscles from the gym, the psychic fatigue from the void, the constant, low-grade stress of his life—it all dissolved. Nothing became tranquil. A serene atmosphere embodied everything he had ever yearned for. Peace bloomed in the absence of his own heartbeat.
Then, from the center of his chest, a single drop of blue liquid—not the orb's cerulean, but a deeper, slightly glowing blue—bloomed through the white fabric of his shirt. It parted from him slowly, and began to move through the space between where he floated and where the panel had been.
It hovered, a single, mesmerizing sphere of blue liquid, capturing his entire attention. The substance within danced with a smooth, flowing cadence, holding a miniature cosmos in its shimmering form.
It didn't stop there.
Tendrils of the same mesmerizing blue stretched from the fabric of his shirt, flowing in slender, intelligent strands until they touched the hovering sphere. The sphere swelled, the new liquid merging seamlessly, adding to its dazzling spectacle. It grew, pulse by silent pulse, until it settled into a perfect, self-contained bubble of viscous, blue liquid. It was a captured droplet, a hair's breadth from spilling, yet it held its perfect, globular form through some unseen, gentle magic. Its body was a deep, translucent azure, and from within its core emanated a soft, bioluminescent glow that swelled and receded in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. Within its depths, swirls of lighter sapphire and aquamarine drifted lazily, like ethereal clouds in a miniature sky, never mixing fully, always shifting in a silent, eternal dance.
The orb floated patiently before Zane, its surface a perfect, tensioned meniscus that shimmered with a liquid sheen. It felt less like an object and more like a presence, a dense, conscious liquid contained within a single, breathtaking sphere of glowing blue.
As if it had been waiting for the spectacle to end, a new panel shimmered into existence. It was strikingly similar to the first, save for the runes that now glowed with a softer, more welcoming light. This time, he didn't need to focus to decipher them; their meaning unfurled in his mind like an ancient scroll he had mastered in a forgotten life.
『A New Turn And Gifts Are Born. The Grand Bazaar Bestows Upon Its Eternal Patron』
『Boons』
✧Solitary Aide
✧Orb Of Expertise Conceived [2]
✧Grimoire of Space Unseen
Zane's eyes gleamed. Splendid. Truly spectacular. This time, the Bazaar offered gifts without demanding a sacrifice. The rewards were unexpectedly generous: a personal assistant to help run the Bazaar, orbs that granted skills through pure information, and finally, a book that contained infinite space within its pages—though, sadly, it could only store a single item per page.
His gaze drifted to the luminous sphere suspended before him. Where was the other orb? The Bazaar had specified two. Also, where was the Grimoire?
As if in answer, the azure and aquamarine light within the sphere stirred, and a voice—clear and resonant, as if spoken from inside his own skull—filled the silent chamber of his mind.
«Hail the wise patron. Your courageous choice has awakened this lowly aide from nothing. I, your eternal servant, implore upon the patron to bestow a name upon this aide of yours.»
Zane nearly jumped, a phantom reflex in a body that no longer needed such mundane reactions. The voice; Cordian, perfectly enunciated and at full volume in his consciousness, had startled him. His heart should have been hammering against his ribs, but it wasn't. The fusion had changed him, quieting the frantic bestial rhythms of his old self, and in his shock, he failed to notice the profound stillness in his own chest.
His head turned, a useless gesture in the featureless void, looking for the source. Only the panel, the glowing sphere, and the lonely, forgotten gold coin shared the expanse with him.
It had to be the sphere. Since when did skill orbs talk?
Unless.
Yes. That had to be it. The sphere wasn't a skill orb at all, but his newly acquired Solitary Aide.
*Phew. I thought there was some ancient monster in the abyss with me.*
The assistant wasn't ugly by any standard, though Zane hadn't expected a physical form. He had imagined a discreet voice in his head, or perhaps a spectral pet. But a slime? Was the universe jesting with him?
No sooner had the thought formed than the sphere began to change. It morphed, its liquid light reshaping itself, pulling from the very fabric of his imagination. It streamlined, gaining a sleek, segmented body of purest white, adorned with icy blue rings. Two small, rounded horns sprouted from its head. It was his imaginary spiritual animal, a creature born from daydreams and private solace—Nyx.
Nyx?
How could this be? His lifelong mental companion, a secret he had never shared, now manifested in reality. What had he gotten himself into? The world, or whatever lay beyond it, was bending to the shape of his mind. The thought made his eyes gleam with a light fiercer than before.
The silkworm—now undeniably Nyx—floated through the space, moving with a gentle, undulating grace until it came to rest on his shoulder. It nuzzled against his neck, a cool, smooth pressure that felt both alien and intimately familiar. It was the exact proportion he had always envisioned: about ten centimeters long, a perfect, living sculpture of his own creativity.
The aide had asked for a name. He already had one, pulled from the hidden vault of childish dreams he'd long told himself to forget.
"Nyx."
The word left his lips, and the void itself seemed to acknowledge it.
"Yes. Nyx is your name, starting today."
Or had it always been that way? A flicker of suspicion crossed his mind. Was this his own will, or the influence of some unseen entity—a god, fate, a programmer of this cosmic game? He had never believed in such things, but now, faced with a figment of his soul made real, he could not help but doubt the very architecture of his own self.
---
But that was a pondering for another day. He didn't care if there was a fate, a god, or some ultimate programmer. With the Bazaar, he could trade for anything—even fate itself, or so he thought. Now, a more immediate curiosity burned within him.
"Nyx? I have two questions. First, can you read my mind? If so, please stop. I don't like people in my head, let alone spiritual animals or whatever you are."
A pause, a consolidation of his second question in the newfound silence of his thoughts.
"Second, where are the other rewards from the system?"
His eyes swept through the void before settling on the distant, lonely coin. He wasn't thinking about it; his mind was now an antenna, tuned solely to the frequency of an answer.
«Wise patron, I dare not read your mind. This lowly servant can only aide you with operating the Bazaar. As for your second question, you can summon the Grimoire of Space Unseen with but a thought.»
The response was unexpected but within the scope of his new reality. Yet, before he could 'summon' the grimoire, another question surfaced, sharp and necessary.
"You say you can't read my mind. How is it that you can speak directly into it? And why did you transform into that exact form just now?"
«Sorry, wise patron, I never meant to offend your lordship. If my communication irritates you, I will cease at once. Ever since my birth, this is the only form of communication this lowly servant can make. Unlike you, wise patron, I lack the vocals to muse. As for your second question, I am but a mirror of your soul; I can only take the form as you will. I will no longer irritate you.»
"Wait! Wait! You do not irritate me. I was only inquiring. If you have no capability of reading my mind, all is well."
His personal assistant was… weird. Why was it behaving like a chastised child? And with every cryptic response, his curiosity only grew, a tangled knot he felt compelled to unpick.
"Also, what do you mean by a mirror of my soul?"
«Wise patron, sorry if my response did not meet your expectations. By mirror, I mean I am you, just without your memories.»
*What?!*
It kept getting stranger. And more interesting. How could his personal aide be him? Was it some sort of joke? Not a funny one. But Nyx seemed to revere him so profoundly he couldn't fathom it jesting. Unless… it was all a stupid act to fool him? Well, it was surely doing a great job, as he was half-tempted to believe it.
Still, it was an eternal aide. He could always interrogate the nature of its existence later. Now, a more primal need dominated his thoughts.
"Is there any way to leave this place?"
It was good to have a Bazaar with all sorts of cool abilities, but it would be infinitely better to be free under the sun—or even the streetlamp-lit night. Anything was better than this consuming abyss.
«Wise patron, there are two methods to leave this dimensional storage space. Unfortunately, only one is accessible to you currently. You can depart by using one of the skill orbs housed within the Grimoire. The patron is currently limited in what he can exchange with the Bazaar. You must increase your level to gain greater exchange privileges.»
Zane's spirit leapt. There was an actual way out. What truly surprised him was the revelation—he wasn't in a formless abyss, but a dimensional storage space. The term itself clicked pieces into place. If this was a storage space, then the coin was a doorway. And its primary function… was to store the Bazaar itself.
That could wait. All of it could wait. His focus narrowed to a single, burning point, sharp as the edge of the coin that had brought him here.
Leaving.
And as for the limits of the Bazaar? The fact that he couldn't yet trade for anything and everything? Nyx said he could gain more privilege. He didn't yet know how to increase his level, but the 'how' was a problem for the future. No more distractions. His entire will bent toward the work at hand.
His attention turned inward, toward the silent command to summon his reward.
From Unknown to Unknown
With just a mental command, space warped. It distorted like a glitch in reality, a ripple in the fabric of the real. The void itself thickened, a palpable, intense heaviness seeping into the non-air, as if the universe had just gained a universe more of weight.
Then, a book materialized beside the glowing panel. It was leather-bound, its cover shifting through a spectrum of colors—deep emerald bled into midnight blue, which then ignited into burnished gold. It emitted an iridescent glow that captivated the eye, a lighthouse in the nothingness. A pressure of immense, ancient power radiated from it, making the space feel dense and sacred.
Zane reached forward, his movement cautious in the heavy air, and grasped the book. It settled perfectly in his hand, its spine resting against his palm as if crafted for his grip alone.
The cover flipped open at his will, obeying his mental command with fluid precision. There was no resistance, no hesitation; using the grimoire felt as natural as breathing.
The first page was a canvas of snow-white, upon which a golden orb was depicted. As Zane stared, the illustration transformed, becoming vibrant and hyper-realistic, as if he were gazing at the actual object floating just beneath the page's surface.
It wasn't merely a ball, but a mass of golden, swirling mist that exuded a majestic, mystical aura. Within its depths, ancient runes—different from the system's script—danced between the silken tendrils. They were holographic, emitting a cool blue glow that pulsed with otherworldly energy. As Zane focused, he could feel the profound depth of information they contained, layers upon layers of knowledge waiting to be cracked open.
Recognition was instantaneous. This was a skill orb.
He reached his consciousness into the page, the sensation like dipping his mind into warm, thick honey. He mentally grasped the orb and drew his awareness back, pulling the conceptual weight of the skill with him. Focusing his intention on the empty space beside the book, he willed the panel away and positioned the skill orb in the void.
The moment it occupied that space, information began to cascade through the surrounding nothingness.
The air itself felt thick with knowledge, pressing against Zane's skin like an invisible weight. He locked his gaze on the orb, and immediately, understanding flooded his mind in a torrent. The fundamental laws of space unfolded before his consciousness—complex geometries, dimensional mathematics, theories of adjacency and folding that made his head spin. Through this brutal, forced enlightenment, he could suddenly sense the architecture of his prison. He was in a pocket dimension, and outside it existed a much larger, resonant realm.
The silky, mist-like energy within the orb began to stir, lashing out like ethereal ribbons that wrapped around his body. Wherever the energy touched his skin, it penetrated, and with each absorbed particle, another foundational law of trans-dimensional travel was seared into his mind. He felt his consciousness expanding, straining at its very seams. Each passing moment was a battle against the absolute limit of his mental capacity.
After what felt like an hour of continuous, violent upload, Zane's head throbbed with sharp, stabbing pains. His mind, raw and overloaded, simply could not process another byte of cosmic data.
He wrenched his gaze away, gasping. The mystical energy retracted instantly, resuming its eternal dance within the orb's confines. He had absorbed only a fraction—a single drop from an infinite ocean—and yet his brain was completely, utterly saturated.
Despite the psychic assault, a new power stirred in his core. He now possessed the fundamental principles needed to travel between worlds. This void was a small pocket dimension nested within a larger one. When Nyx said he was in a dimensional storage space, he had concluded that he was still on Earth. Therefore, the "outer" world had to be home. This dark storage space was the inner sanctum. It reminded him of the grimoire's pages, though the Grimoire's space felt infinitely more vast than both dimensions combined.
He could perceive the existence of these layered worlds, though not their contents. More importantly, he could feel the connections between them, the ley lines of reality he could now navigate.
The space he occupied maintained a primal link with the mysterious coin. There was an extremely small micro-dimension within it, sharing a powerful, resonant bond with his current location. Zane could sense the intricate web now—a perfect triangle of spatial relationships binding the coin, this pocket, and the world outside.
He withdrew his consciousness from the dimensional sensing, and the perception of connected worlds vanished. The loss was physical. A crushing headache invaded his skull without warning, excruciating and precise, like hot needles driven through his temples. His mind reeled, chaotic flashes of unconsolidated information cascading behind his eyes in violent, nonsensical waves.
For ten agonizing minutes, he endured, until finally, the pain subsided. The knowledge had been forcibly integrated, carved into the bedrock of his being.
As the last echo of the headache faded, a familiar panel materialized before his weary eyes.
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『With Every Expertise Reigned, A Path Is Trodden. The Grand Bazaar Bestows Upon Its Eternal Patron』
『Boon』
✧100 Exchange Echoes
『Craft Revelation』
⁀➷Realm Traveler
「A silent strand, to worlds unseen」
The Bazaar was proving itself quite poetic. Now, he understood his new skill not as raw data, but as a revelation, a verse in a cosmic epic. The currency, too, was a marvel—Exchange Echoes, resonances of all transactions lost to time. The meaning bloomed in his mind with a single glance, deepening his awe for the entity he had fused with.
Now, with the skill Realm Traveler thrumming in his veins, the only thing left was to leave this damned place. If only it were so simple.
His desire was straightforward: to step from this storage space into the outer world that enveloped it. But his newly acquired skill defied such simplicity. It could only enable travel to realms outside the universe, never to locations within it. At his current proficiency, he could journey between planes and realms, but the storage space was located inside the primary plane. He was a prisoner in a room within a house, given a key that only opened doors to other cities, not the hallway outside.
The only faint hope of returning home was a desperate gambit: journey to another realm, and then attempt to return, hoping against the odds he would land on Earth, in Ashburn. The probability was infinitesimally small. The skill could only transport him to a habitable point within the vast expanse he targeted. How many habitable worlds were there in the infinite? The math was a funeral dirge.
Still, a thread of hope remained. He could always increase his skill's proficiency later. If he survived. Now… now, he just had to leave this damnation of a hole.
His gaze fell upon the coin, beautiful and hateful. He loved it for the Bazaar it had given him—that sweet, beautiful treasure found in an abyssal trove. With it, he could exchange for his father's health. He didn't know the price, but the mere possibility made his heart clench with a fragile, desperate hope. After three years in a sterile room, his father could be cured.
The smile was brief, washed away by a grim resolve. Now was not the time for hope. It was time for a leap of faith into a hungry unknown. Habitable did not mean safe. He might be serving himself to a star-beast for dinner.
What lay beyond the universe? A childhood question was now a terrifying reality. Realms dotted the void, their contents a mystery he was about to solve. Soon enough, he might die, attacked by an alien horror. Or find himself in another habitable void, or a desolate world with only oxygen to recommend it. He would then trade his precious Echoes for food until he had none, then his clothes, and then… he would simply cease. Better to stop thinking and act. On the brighter side, if he didn't die, an adventure awaited him unlike any other.
He reached his consciousness out into the layered space, feeling the vast, grand universe beyond the storage space's membrane. Beyond that, he felt the True Void—not the neat darkness of his prison, but an absolute nothingness, seething with potential. And within that nothing, strands. Endless in number, elongating from the edges of the known cosmos, each attuned to a different frequency. Some were too potent for his will to grasp, requiring a higher mastery of his skill. Others were malleable but led to nowhere—uninhabitable dead ends. A rare few welcomed his psychic touch, promising somewhere… somewhere habitable. Too many options, each a possible gateway to death or deliverance.
Yet one called to him. It shone brighter than the rest, pulsing with a resonant frequency that felt like a summons. It might be a siren's call, death welcoming him with open arms, but an instinct deeper than reason told him to reach for that strand.
He pulled.
The void did not so much shatter as it simply… ceased to be relevant. He became one with the strand, a note in a silent song hurtling through the abyss, and then, he was nothing.