Max's room hummed with the glow of a single ultrawide monitor, a pale rectangle glued to his face. Stale air hung heavy—salted chips, old pizza crust, the ghost of energy drinks. Click, click, clack. His fingers tap-danced on the busted keyboard like they were trying to kick the bucket before he did. The game on-screen—a famously awful platformer everyone loved to hate—jerked and stuttered. Predictable. Broken. He knew where it would cheat. He knew how it would lie.
He also, annoyingly, loved it.
The chair squeaked as he leaned back, surveying the "battlefield"—empty cans, crumpled wrappers, a tilt of light catching dust like drifting sprites. A mountain of defeats. A few tiny flags of victory. The world outside was school bells and small talk and teachers doing the same old song-and-dance. In here, the rules at least admitted they were unfair. Max smirked. "You wanna be under the weather about it or beat the level?" he muttered. Right. Beat it.
The game glitched—screen tearing into a strip of gold before snapping back. "Uh—what?" He froze, breath caught. For a heartbeat, he wasn't hunched; his spine lifted, shoulders opened, chin tilted toward the poster-speckled ceiling. Somewhere, his hands didn't press keys but, like, gripped something that mattered. A blade. A staff. Powers tingling up his arms like static. The thought hit with a melancholy sweetness. Dangerous. Thrilling. Real. And oh boy, he'd wanted that for a while now, hadn't he?
His phone buzzed—brr—skittering across the desk like a beetle with a bad plan. Riley: brooooo new drop tonight, hop on!!! The follow-up came fast: whee, they added grappling hooks! The third: yay, we're speedrunning! Marcus chimed in, more measured: Come play with us for an hour. The physics are actually interesting. It won't, y'know, cost an arm and a leg.
Max's thumb hovered. He could almost hear Riley's exuberant voice, see Marcus's raised eyebrow. Good guys. They tried. They cared. He liked them—loved them even, in that quiet, affectionate way you don't spill the beans about because, duh, feelings. He swiped the notifications away. "Later," he said softly. "I'm busy." With what? With a piece of cake that refused to be a piece of cake.
Another glitch, a shiver of gold under the pixels. He paused the game. The room pressed in; the monitor reflected his face back at him—eyes rimmed red, hair doing whatever, mouth tugged in a weary line. He wasn't heartbroken about life. Not despairing. Just… apathetic-tilting-nostalgic when he imagined "more." He wanted danger he could touch. He wanted to bite the bullet, not click the mouse. "Aah," he sighed. "If I could just—"
Hours later, after school, his backpack slung loose, Max cut through the older part of town. He did this sometimes to cool off his brain. Today the clouds were a heavy blanket. The smell—mmm—rain working its way into old stone.
The colour seemed muted, like the world had turned the brightness down, then highlighted the edges. He felt enchanted? A little spooked? Both. The road bent, and—
He stopped dead. "Huh."
Tucked between a neon bubble tea place and a dry cleaner, he knew by smell alone that it was a bookstore he'd never seen before. No—out of place didn't cover it. It looked older than the street. The sign above the door was carved in dark wood, letters rubbed down by a thousand fingers.
He took a step closer. Another. Then paused, Go in or call it a day? His stomach fluttered. A hopeful thrill. A sombre warning. "Once in a blue moon," he whispered. He reached. The door gave with a sigh.
The bell chimed—soft, not tinkling but… measured, like a note behind a note. The scent of old paper, dust like dried lavender pressed around him. Row on row of shelves, the books leaning on each other.
"Welcome," said a voice, dry as folded parchment.
She emerged from behind a stack that might have been a counter—an elderly woman with hair the colour of snowmelt. Her eyes, though, were violet. Not a trick of light. Not a contact lens vibe. Violet like bruised dawn. There was a serene air about her, patient, a touch amused, like she'd watched a dozen boys like him wander in and a dozen worlds fold open. Max felt his pulse trip. He wasn't scared exactly. Just… wary. Intrigued. Repulsed by the thought of getting tricked, enchanted by the possibility he wouldn't be.
He cleared his throat. "Uh—hi."
She looked him over without hurry, then glanced aside. Max's gaze followed. The shop's labyrinth opened, then narrowed, then the lady presented a small table, with a single book upon it.
"Transmutatio Animarum," she said, as if announcing tea. "The traffic of souls."
"Wow." He stepped closer, breath shallow. The leather was warm under his fingers, not slick but textured like bark. He traced the spine—mmm—and felt something thrumming, a golden pulse like the game's glitch but solid, inside the world, inside him. He wanted it in a way that made his chest tight. Real. It would be real.
"You desire," the woman murmured, "an adventure you can touch."
Max's laugh was small and sincere. "Gah—yeah." The word shivered with a hopeful heat. "But, like, it's probably—uh—too much."
Her smile was a thin ribbon. Not kind. Not cruel. Knowing. "The price," she said, "is twenty."
He blinked. "D'oh." Twenty? What—some kind of gag? It should have cost—what—trust, blood, a promise to kick the bucket at midnight? He dug in his pocket and found a folded twenty, softened by time and laundry. His hand shook. "This is—honestly—ridiculous."
"Take it with a grain of salt," she offered, eyes steady. "Or do not take it at all."
He looked from the bill to the book. The weight of yearning tipped him forward. The choice was his. No coercion, no high-pressure pitch, no jump on the bandwagon nonsense. He extended the money. His fingers brushed her palm; her skin was cool, like stone just out of shade.
He left with the tome wrapped in brown paper. The bell gave a small, satisfied hmm as he stepped out. When he glanced back, the window reflected only him and a smear of sky. The sign was more unreadable than before. "Right," he said. "Weird." Phew.
Home was quiet. A note on the fridge: Late shift. Leftovers. Don't burn the midnight oil. <3. Perfect. Max carried the book to his room like a stolen secret. The monitor's glow felt shallow now; he clicked it off. Darkness settled, then candlelight rose—four stubby whites arranged in a rough circle on his desk, flames testing the air. Incense—something resinous from a dusty drawer—bled a slow perfume. The sound in the room changed; silence sharpened until even his breathing sounded like footsteps in snow.
He opened the book.
The pages were thick, edges deckled, text flowing like a river of ink that occasionally surged into diagrams—circles within circles, a delicate geometry of intent. The instructions were clear, if odd: a name offered, a boundary drawn, blood acknowledged, and words older than the city outside. Max set the paper wrapper aside, palms slick. He wasn't naïve. He knew danger. But hope beat like a drum. Kill two birds with one stone—prove he wasn't just a kid at a screen, and, maybe, step into the story.
He pricked his finger with a pin from a corkboard—ow, ow—watched a bead form, glossy and red, a tiny planet with its own gravity. He held it over the central diagram. The candlelight trembled. His heart did too.
The drop fell. It touched the page and vanished as if swallowed by thirsty earth.
The symbols hummed. Not metaphorically. A real vibration whispered into his bones. The circle lines brightened—faint at first, then stronger, like veins filling with light.
Max began to speak. The Latin rose from the page and into his mouth like it had been waiting there. "Transmutatio animarum. Aperi viam. Lux aurea—" His voice shook, then steadied. Words in a cadence that felt both foreign and utterly his.
Golden light seeped from the book's edges, staining the wood, the carpet, the air. It climbed the walls like dawn in fast-forward. The monitor, black as a lake at midnight, caught the reflection and threw it back, an echo. Max's cheeks were wet and he didn't remember crying. Devastated by the beauty, maybe. Overjoyed by the terror. His body felt weightless and heavy, both at once.
"Ooh," he breathed. "Wow." He stood—when had he stood?—and the diagram's light pooled around his sneakers. A circle within the circle brightened, then bloomed like a flower.
In the blooming, he heard a sound—not music, not words. step now or never. He thought, briefly, of his friends. Of texts unsent. Of a life he would return to or not. The ache was tender, affectionate, a little forlorn. He smiled anyway. "I'm coming," he said, voice small, zealous.
The book's pages flipped of their own accord. Wind from nowhere rushed his hair back. "Argh—" He held the desk, knuckles white, then let go. He floated—no, he stepped forward, and the floor met him like a promise. Light wrapped his limbs, threaded his veins, kissed his eyelids until all he saw was gold on gold. He was a boy in a cheap chair with a broken game. He was a traveller whose name had just been called.
There was a final chime—bell-like, familiar, the bookstore's note snuck into his room—and then everything folded inward, then unfurled. The circle yawned into a path.
Max took it. He didn't look back. Not because he wasn't afraid—he was; furious with fear, ecstatic with it—but because the door ahead was open and the ball was, irreversible. He stepped into the golden world, heart pounding, eyes wide, mouth forming a word he'd been saying his whole life without ever hearing it.
"Yes."