The manor was dead.

  It was 11:00 PM. In my old world, this was prime operational time. Here, it was silent and dead.

  This world, for all its magic, was primitive.

  At 10:00 PM, the household shut down. The “artificial light magic” Had faded. It seemed that magic, like the people, needed to rest.

  Or, more likely, it was just too draining to maintain.

  The night belonged to candles and torches.

  For the past week, my “boring” poetry lessons had been a perfect cover. From my window, I had cataloged the guard patrols.

  Their patterns were lazy and predictable.

  The night guards were a separate unit from the day. They were colder, less inclined to chat, and followed a strict, repetitive loop.

  A two-man team passed my door at 11:05 PM. A second team crossed the main hall at 11:20 PM. There was a fifteen-minute blind spot. More than enough.

  I had the tools. During my “bratty” performance, I’d complained about the dark. I’d knocked a candle and a box of matches into a waste bin, then “fished” them out, claiming I was “helping.”

  Marin, flustered, bet she's just been happy I wasn’t screaming.

  The “illogical” child was the perfect cover for the “logical” operative.

  Now, I was ready.

  I sat up in bed. My new, light body moved without a sound.

  I slid to the floor and pressed the side of my head to the door.

  Vibration. I felt them before I heard them. Thump… scrape… thump… scrape. Heavy boots. One of them had a dragging right foot. They were five seconds from my door. I held my breath as the footsteps grew louder, thump… scrape… thump… scrape- then it began to fade. I counted. …ten… nine… eight… They were at the end of the hall. I didn’t move. I waited. I waited for the other sound. The one I’d timed.

  Clang.

  The distant, muffled tap of a pike on stone. He did it every time due to boredom.

  Now.

  I opened my door. The halls were silent, lit only by a single, distant torch. I stepped out. I didn’t run. I moved. Old training kicked in: heel-to-toe, a light, rolling step that minimized sound. My small, twelve year old body was an asset here. Less weight, less noise.

  I reached the grand staircase.

  I didn’t take the stairs. Stairs creaked. I swung myself over the railing. For a second, I was airborne. I let myself drop, catching the railing of the floor below with a one-handed, silent grip. The flexibility of this new body was… impressive. I swung down, landing on the marble floor like a drop of water.

  No sound.

  I bolted for the library. The doors were unlocked.

  This family was arrogant. They locked their daughter in, but not their most valuable possession. Or perhaps, they knew no one would dare.

  I didn’t care. Arrogance was just another key.

  I slipped inside.

  Click.

  The door settled back into its frame. I was in.

  It was pitch black. A heavy, suffocating, absolute darkness. The air was cold, still. The smell of old paper and leather polish was thick.

  I pulled out my tools.

  Scrrra-TCH.

  The quiet broke on a single crack. I froze. I listened.

  Nothing.

  I lit the candle. A small flame trembled. It reached no farther than my face.

  “Good,” I whispered. “No one seems to be here.”

  I kept to the plan. History. Religion. Magic. I lifted what I needed. Heavy leather, dust packed in the folds. No one had touched them in months. I took them to the farthest table and set the candle between them.

  Time to re-format my OS.

  I opened "Theories on the Somatic Vessel and the Aether" Dust lifted. Ink bled in tight columns. I moved line to line. The text kept folding back on itself. Theories and contradictions.

  “Magic,” the book stated, “is both logical and illogical.”

  what.

  “It is the Will of the user, imposing itself upon the framework of reality.”

  I scoffed. "So, reality is negotiable. Got it"

  I kept reading. The book said most magic users relied on the Fundamental Elements: Fire, Water, Wind, Ground, and Light. Seems standard.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Then, it got interesting.

  “There are two types of Mana,” the text read. “One: The Anima. The Fuel of Life.”

  “Scholars have long debated this form, as it is unusable for somatic magic. It is the wellspring of creation, the force that binds all living things. It is the reason for life, and is none usable.”

  “This theory,” it continued in a smaller script, “is supported by the Elven Royals of the dark wood, who, it is claimed, can use their Anima to connect to the very ‘soul’ of the forest.”

  Anima = soul battery. Unusable. Got it.

  I flipped the page.

  “Two: The Aether. The Usable Mana.”

  the author wrote, “This is the true mystery. The Aether is the force we use to perform magic. It is both logical and illogical, a bridge between the Anima (our Will) and the world.”

  “A mage may use the Aether in a logical way: drawing upon the natural heat of their own body and extending it, using the Aether as a conduit to create a small, warm light.”

  My mind latched onto that. Okay. Thermodynamics. Biokinesis. Rules. I can work with rules.

  “A mage may also use the Aether in an illogical way: creating fire from nothing. A violation of all known principles, save for the principle of ‘Will’.”

  I stopped.

  Zero in. Something out. That is a red flag and yet It’s what I saw Marin do.

  She hadn’t extended the candle’s fire. She had pulled it into her palm. and un-made it.

  This world’s fundamental physics… they were wrong.

  A dull throb pressed behind my eyes. This was harder than I thought.

  I forced myself to read on.

  “It is stated that if the magic you create is still connected to you, it will not harm you. A fireball held in the palm is an extension of the self. It is ‘you’.”

  “But once you release that magic, once you throw the fireball, it becomes autonomous. It is no longer ‘you’, and it will burn you as it would any other.”

  That, I understood.

  I closed the magic book. My hand trembled.

  It was not a guide. It was how the world is built. The mind I brought from home resisted it. Magic failed in me because I did not believe. I kept using laws this place never wrote.

  I don’t need to learn magic, I whispered into the vast, dark library. I need to re-learn everything.

  I was an operative in a land where reality itself was a suggestion. My old OS wasn’t just incompatible. It was a liability.

  I needed a full re-format.

  I rubbed my temples. This twelve year old body was not built for this. Exhaustion weighed on me.

  But I wasn’t done.

  Enough philosophy. If I’m going to survive, I need to know this worlds people.

  I pushed the magic book aside and pulled the next one toward me. The title was simple: The Age of Man: A Chronicle.

  “All right,” I muttered, opening the heavy cover. “Let’s find out who these bastards really are.”

  I turned the page.

  The introduction was a mess it was a layered, contradictory history of too many factions.

  I read, cataloging groups.

  First, the Natives. The “Rakamaju,” from the southern sand-lands. Ruled by an enigmatic Goddess in a state of Great Order. My mind reminded me of the IDIO. I knew what iron-grip order looked like. It wasn’t pretty.

  Then, a schism. A group called the “Seekers of Freedom” politely left Rakamaju. The Goddess let them go.

  Weird. Why? It wasn't stated here in the book as to why.

  The Seekers went to live in the Green Elven lands, peacefully.

  Then, the Chaos. “Year Zero.” The Aesorian continent sinks, Divine Punishment. Coincidentally, the Rakamaju Goddess vanishes. Order collapses into chaos.

  The Rakamaju Natives, now “The Forsaken,” attacked the Seekers. They needed a scapegoat. They blamed the Seekers, claiming they were swayed by the Oguilder, some devil, and their sin drove the Goddess away.

  Then, the Transformation.

  “The Birth of the Beastmen.” The text’s bias dripped. Not of awe but disgust. It described an attack. A village. A girl fusing with a “demonic being.” The Sun Fox.

  “This… thing,” the author wrote, “…‘reached out’ and corrupted the bloodline of all the Seekers, tainting their human forms with ‘beastly features’.”

  A forced, mass-scale alteration. Genetic or divine. A new species born from war.

  The Forsaken saw proof the Oguilder was turning them into devils.

  The Green Elves, treacherous, said the book, declared the “tainted” as divine and took them under protection.

  So the continent was already in a massive “pick a side” war, Natives vs. Beastmen and Elves, before my ancestors even showed up.

  Then, the Aesorians.

  “The Aesorian Landfall.” My people. The Chosen of the Prophet, fleeing the sinking continent. They landed in a three-way war and became the fourth faction.

  The book traced two Aesorias. The first arrived long ago, the Colonizers. The second washed up later as the Chosen, and from them the Theocracy took shape. In the gap, a crime. An old-line Aesorian violated the Prophet and held the child up as right to rule forming the first kingdom.

  This was not a chronicle. It was an order of battle. Green Elves and Beastmen. The Forsaken. The Aesorian Theocracy. The Aesorian Empire with its Colonizers. Five banners.

  A total tactical nightmare.

  Then, the Weapon. How did the Aesorians win?

  “The Miracle at Aelgarde: The First Otherworlder.”

  My blood went cold.

  A girl named Sariel Aelgarde, from a magic school, “in a moment of desperation, accidentally conjured a soul from beyond the veil.”

  An Otherworlder.

  He was at first weak, but grew in power at an alarming rate. A critical note, cramped in the margin:

  “…it was observed that the very laws of reality seemed pliable to him. He did not ‘use’ Aether as a native-born mage; he imposed his own foreign logic upon it.”

  I stopped. One hard thump in my chest.

  He imposed his own logic.

  My problem, my “old OS” blocking me, I wasn’t supposed to re-format it.

  I was supposed to impose it.

  My old OS was the weapon.

  I’d been trying to learn their rules, but this hero had used his own.

  Everything changed.

  I read on, mind racing. The hero, “the Beacon,” stopped the Great Continental War. He sided with no one, a shining beacon for peasants and all who sought peace.

  Then he vanished, alongside the summoner, Sariel Aelgarde.

  A later footnote, sour with bias: “It is believed the Beacon, a being of pure logic, was corrupted by the Elven-sympathizer Sariel and fled his holy duty to Man.”

  Smart man. He either died, or realized he was a pawn and ran.

  The text turned dark.

  “The secrets of Conjuration, however, were ‘secured’ by the Empire from Sariel’s younger brother, ensuring the Aesorian advantage.”

  Anger flared, sharp and hot. Secured. I knew that word. Tortured. Leveraged. Broken. The Empire hadn’t learned a new skill. They’d stolen it. From a child.

  The rest was predictable. With hero-summoning secured, the war resumed. The Aesorian Empire, now dominant among humans, pushed back.

  The campaign turned to the Umbral Wastes, the territory of the Dark Elves. The book lied, smoothly.

  “The Dark Elves, who had long aided our enemies with shadow-magic and poison, were finally ‘pacified’ and brought to order.”

  No. They were neutral. I’d read that in the previous summary. A land grab, pure and simple.

  Name of that land: the Olaspin March.

  I flipped to Noble Houses. To my family. D’Arden.

  Not just brutal. Specific.

  “House D’Arden was granted the Olaspin March, the newly conquered Dark Elf territory, to pacify and hold for the Empire.”

  “This ‘Great Service’ has led to the rumor of the ‘D’Arden Curse’.” The author, a loyalist, bristled. “The ‘Curse’ is slander by soft-hearted liberals and Elven-sympathizers. The D’Ardens are not jailers. They are Wardens, holding back the darkness for the good of Man.”

  I leaned back. The candle flame flickered in my eyes.

  The protests confirmed the truth.

  Jailers.

  So. This is the reality: I’m a Chosen Aesorian, living as a jailer on Dark Elf land, in a kingdom that borders the Beastmen and the Green Elf alliance, while the Rakamaju Natives plot a holy war, and the Aesorian Empire itself is built on a lie.

  “A complete, tactical nightmare,” I whispered.

  And I… I’m an Otherworlder. Just like the Beacon. Except they don’t know I’m here. I am a weapon, off the books.

  A slow, cold smile, my smile, spread across this new face.

  “What a perfect place to hide.”