The First Crack

Days had passed since Nathan woke in Mason’s fortress, and they blurred together into one long smear. Meals with a silent audience. Training yards that rang with steel. Endless hours in Mason’s room, pretending to study tomes he couldn’t understand.

Today was no different. He sat hunched at the warlord’s desk, half-buried in books. The cracked leather bindings reeked of dust and ink—the kind of academic funk he used to joke about back in college. Now the smell just made his stomach churn.

The runes sprawled across the page glared up at him like static. He could see them, half-recognize shapes, but the meaning slipped through his fingers like oil. He traced one with a fingertip, hoping for the same freak accident that let him read the Bestiary Log, but nothing stirred.

Come on. Highlight me. Translate me. Do your magic-book thing.

Nothing.

In frustration, he started doodling in the margin—stupid little spirals, shapes he thought looked magical. For a second—just a second—the ink seemed to flare. A pulse, faint as candlelight. Nothing. Nathan’s chest tightened.

What the hell…

He snapped the book shut, his hand tingling where the pen had been. If this was Mason’s idea of homework, no wonder he turned into a homicidal bastard.

Slumping back in the chair, Nathan glared at the desk like it had personally wronged him—then let his mind drift, not to the runes or the stale ink-smell, but to Ronan.

Nathan had started to notice the way the man moved pieces without ever being asked. A tilt of his chin, a flick of fingers, and problems simply… evaporated. A tray appeared. A quarrel in the hall went still. Doors opened before Nathan even thought to reach for them.

And the others? For all their stone faces, Nathan had begun to catch glimpses when they thought the Boss wasn’t looking. A bark of laughter in the training yard. Dice games played with scraps of wood. A dirty joke that made even the youngest choke on his drink before schooling his face again.

They were killers, yes. But killers with names. With habits. With lives that didn’t begin and end with blood.

He remembered the morning he’d tried dismissing the men, fumbling it out like an awkward teacher excusing class: You’re dismissed. Go on, shoo.

They’d been lining the walls of the hall while he ate, silent and watchful as statues—as usual. Most had actually shuffled toward the doors in confused silence—until Ronan leveled one look across the room. One frown, carved in stone, and every mercenary froze. Nathan had practically melted into his chair under the weight of it. Ronan hadn’t said a word, just turned his gaze back like: Don’t try that again.

Yeah. Fun breakfast memory.

He hadn’t meant to fumble it so badly. Mason’s mask—cold, commanding—slipped through his hands every time he tried it on. Still, he kept forcing it, because the alternative was letting them see him. Traditions, rituals—half of them felt designed just to watch him squirm.

The thought lodged sharp in Nathan’s chest: Ronan was handling him, protecting him even, like he knew something was different. And for all the dread pressing in from every corner of this fortress, Nathan couldn’t help the flicker of relief. He was grateful for it.

The memory hadn’t fully faded when a knock rattled the door. Then Ronan filled the frame—broad shoulders, eyes sharp as ever.

“You should spar today,” he said, voice a low rumble.

Nathan’s stomach flipped. Great. Because nothing says fun like putting Mason’s terrifying murder-body to the test in front of an audience.

Ronan didn’t wait for argument. One nod, and Nathan found himself ushered through corridors that spilled into the fortress courtyard. The clang of steel grew louder with every step, a rhythm that made his pulse race for all the wrong reasons.

The training grounds stretched wide, dirt rings scarred with old duels. Blades flashed, boots churned the soil, mercenaries moving like parts of a single, lethal machine. Every eye turned as Ronan guided him forward.

And then Nathan was in the ring, a sword pressed into his grip.

“Physical sparring,” Ronan had said flatly, as if that explained everything. No augments, no tricks. Just steel.

His opponent was new—Caldris, younger than most, still carrying the eager sharpness of someone desperate to prove himself. His stance was crisp, movements drilled into him until they looked natural. Nathan envied that.

The spar began, and the body surged forward with strength that wasn’t his. The blade swung fast, powerful—too powerful. The impact rattled up his arms, and he stumbled a half step even when he landed the strike. Caldris absorbed it, eyes widening slightly at the force, before darting back in with a counter.

Nathan parried late, sloppy, but still on his feet. His chest felt like it should be burning—but the body he wore pushed on, steady in a way his own never could.

The men watching didn’t cheer. They didn’t jeer. Just silence—judging.

Caldris circled, patient, then lunged again. Nathan answered with another wild swing, and this time the raw power shoved the younger man back on his heels. Nathan blinked, shocked he’d landed anything at all.

Strength. That was all he had. No precision. No elegance. Just a borrowed body built to endure.

And even that wasn’t enough to look like Mason.

When the spar ended—Caldris bowing respectfully despite Nathan’s clumsy footwork—Ronan stepped forward. He gave Nathan a long, unreadable look.

“You’ll do,” he said simply. Then, after a pause: “There’s a new dungeon half a day from here. Word is out already. Adventurers will strip it bare if we wait too long.”

Nathan wiped sweat from his forehead, trying not to look like he was about to collapse. The word dungeon hit like ice water, dread crawling straight down his spine. But even with his pulse skittering, he caught the weight in Ronan’s voice. Not mocking. Not condemning. Just… steady.

For a brief second, Nathan almost felt grateful. Not for the fight, not for the dungeon waiting ahead, but for the fact that Ronan hadn’t torn him open in front of the others. That steadiness was something he could lean on—though he’d never admit it.

But—what if this one wasn’t goblins? What if it was one of those nightmares he’d read about in Mason’s Bestiary Log, things with mana, things that twisted flesh and shadow?

He forced his lips into something like a grin, the mask Mason would have worn. But inside, every part of him shook.

“Great,” he managed, his voice thin. “Can’t wait.”

The Guild Hall hummed with voices, boots grinding grit into the floor, the air thick with sweat and stamped paper. Adventurers pressed shoulder to shoulder at the counters while scribes scrambled to keep pace, sealing documents with wax that stank of resin.

Ronan cut through the noise to a clerk. Nathan lingered by the entry, half-hidden in the press of bodies, doing his best impression of furniture. The place buzzed with contracts and maps, requisitions rattled off like grocery lists. One clerk’s voice carried clear over the din:

“…final muster scheduled in one month. All parties to assemble for the southern incursion. Elevated threat—multiple beast signatures confirmed. Containment priority…”

Nathan’s gut clenched. A month? Whatever that was supposed to mean, it sounded like armies marching into hell. And he wasn’t planning to still be here when it happened. The sooner he figured out how to run—back to Seoul, back to anywhere—the better. Let them throw their bodies at monsters. He’d already done that once.

He shifted his weight and caught sight of something he hadn’t seen much in the fortress: women. A pair of clerks, yes, but beyond them—two sword-wearing adventurers laughing quietly with their companions. Another group passed through the hall, three women among them, armor scuffed from travel. Nathan frowned. He hadn’t seen many mixed parties here. Why suddenly so many?

A scrap of overheard talk gave him the answer. “…Calvesset banners—sent another company through the pass. Ties are strong with Eryndral since the marriage, you know. Half their adventurers are women, seems like…”

Nathan filed it away. Not that it mattered to him—except that for the first time he realized he might not be the only one drowning in unfamiliar company.

Then the air shifted. Conversation thinned like prey going still. Kieran strode in from a side corridor, shoulders squared, uniform cut sharp, storm-gray eyes sweeping the hall. Taron trailed a half-step behind, sharp as a drawn blade, a commander in his own right yet moving like Kieran’s shadow.

Those eyes found Nathan. Locked. A death glare, cold and merciless. Yet beneath the blade’s edge there was something steadier—certainty, control—the kind of gravity that made the rest of the hall bend without a word. Dangerous, yes. But some part of him, traitorous and tired of flailing, almost envied it.

Nathan’s chest went tight, but he forced himself to stand straighter, chin high, Mason’s mask stapled across his face. If he flinched, he was finished.

Taron’s glare followed, a quieter, crueler dagger slipped beneath the ribs.

The Guildmaster’s voice cut across the tension: “Commanders. We’re convened.”

Kieran turned without a word, Taron pacing after him. The heavy door shut behind them, muffling the last fragments of talk—“…one month, no delays…”

Ronan returned a moment later, papers sealed in red. He spared Nathan only the smallest glance, as if to confirm he was still upright.

“Registration’s done,” he said.

“Great,” Nathan muttered. His palms were slick. One month. That’s their problem. His throat tightened as the thought slid in anyway, bitter and impossible to shake: Surely there has to be a way to get home. Back to Seoul. Before those beasts ever see me.

Ronan assembled the crew himself—eight men, handpicked, hard-eyed, and silent as they filed out to the courtyard. Armor creaked, boots hit the boards of the waiting wagon with the weight of people long accustomed to marching into danger. No chatter, no boasts. Just the kind of quiet that made Nathan’s stomach turn.

This is it. A dungeon raid.

He hung back a moment longer than he should have, watching each mercenary climb aboard like it was the most natural thing in the world. Then Ronan’s glance caught him—flat, expectant—and Nathan forced his legs forward.

The wagon loomed, rough wood and iron bands, nothing like the polished carriage Mason kept at the manor. Why a wagon? Did Mason actually ride like this with the rest of them?

His question answered itself as he watched Ronan swing easily into the saddle of a waiting horse, reins settling in his hands like they belonged there.

For a second their eyes met—Ronan’s, flat and unreadable, Nathan’s caught between question and apology. No words passed, but the truth was clear. Mason would have ridden. Ronan knew he wouldn’t.

The boards groaned under his weight as he hauled himself up last.

Eight pairs of eyes flicked toward him, quick and measuring, before sliding away again. They weren’t judging him—not really. They were nervous the boss had joined them.

Nathan gripped the bench, heart thudding, dread curling tighter with every breath.

He kept his face a mask, Mason’s mask stretched thin, but the thought slipped in anyway, bitter and private:

Off to another dungeon.

Mason — Seoul

A week was enough to learn a city’s pulse.

Seoul throbbed in cycles—morning trains, lunch rush, neon bloom, the slow blue drift of the last buses. Mason mapped it with a predator’s patience, moving when crowds would swallow him and halting where the noise thinned to a private thrum. In the alleys behind convenience stores, beneath river bridges that stank of rust, in the concrete ribs of underpasses that funneled heat like lungs—there, the book warmed.

The first night he’d laughed at the seatbelt snapping across his chest, at doors that obeyed motion and talismans made of glass and code. Now he didn’t laugh. He learned. He listened. He fed.

At Nathan’s family home, he had expected suspicion—some flicker of instinct that would betray an imposter. Instead, he found distance masquerading as love. No mention of parents. The silence was its own obituary, grief dulled to memory.

Wealth glittered in their rings and watches. Voices polished by boardrooms and country clubs. A brother with the cadence of an executive, a wife with children circling like obedient stars. Grandparents with soft hands, soft questions—about Los Angeles, about acting, about a life they barely approved of.

They cared, yes. But care without knowing. No map of his mannerisms. No compass to the man beneath the smile.

Mason had smirked, sharp and satisfied. Better than I could have planned.
An orphan could slip into an orphan’s skin.

His own guardians had been fists, hunger, stone floors gone icy at night. Each cruelty tempered him, hammered him until he shed softness and rose steel-clad. Where others broke, Mason learned. Where others wept, he endured. Until he was discipline. Until he was will. Until he was power.

Nathan had grown in warmth yet remained a stranger to his own blood. Mason had grown in violence and made himself unforgettable.

One erased by indifference. The other forged by fire.

So Mason would wear him like a mask.
And no one would notice the difference.

The grimoire never left his side. Its leather had dried tight after the alley rain, scars in its spine pulling smooth as though the book itself healed. He had pried it from cold, dead hands—earned it in blood and ruin—and it whispered to him still. When he opened it, the glyphs swam like schools of fish—alive, restless, eager to please. It purred against his palms when he held it near power—subway hum, a bank of air conditioners rattling on a rooftop, the buzzing throat of a neon sign.

It liked the city’s current. It liked the density.

So he fed it—with this world’s toys. Power banks bought with cash. Copper wire spooled into crude sigils. A carpenter’s pencil worn to a nub with carved symbols. Nathan’s cracked phone bent into a lens, an altar, a tether.

A tourist map inked with hidden marks: underpass, culvert, service tunnel, stairwell landing between the 2 and 3 line where the tile sweated and no one ever looked up.

Each circle, each tunnel, each sweating stairwell became a verse in his private litany. A hymn only he could sing. Sometimes he filmed them, too—miracles trapped in glass. Absurd, indulgent—yet perfectly cataloged.

At night he tested.

Under the span of a bridge, he chalked a circle into stained concrete, hand steady despite the skittering of rats. The book warmed where it touched the line, eager as a lover.

He pricked his finger. The book drank so greedily he nearly laughed—an intimate sound he kept caged behind his teeth.

“Greedy thing,” he murmured in flawless Korean, the words rolling off his tongue like an endearment. The book purred back, uncanny—and the wrongness delighted him.

The first binding brought nothing. This world slept to mana and sang electricity. So he adapted. Chalk lines scored the floor, old ritual geometry. But where another mage would scatter salt, Mason had laid copper wire, coiled tight as veins. Wire and chalk fused into a circuit, a power bank clipped to a ridiculous coil, and still the book hummed.

A smell like summer rain rose from the page. The hair on his arms lifted. The chalk line brightened, pulsed—once—soft as a heartbeat.
Hello, he thought, and leaned in.

The air dented inward, shallow as a thumb pressed to a drum. The concrete’s reflection wavered as if it were water filmed in oil. Not a tear. A bruise in reality. He could almost taste the other side—iron and ash, the distant thunder of things with teeth.

The bruise smoothed. The light went out.

Mason exhaled, slow. Close. Closer than last night. He walked the river until the book settled.

On the fourth night, he took it underground.

The service corridor behind a subway vending alcove was the kind of place people pretended didn’t exist. Pipes, mildew, the thick-breathed heat of old machinery. He slipped past a “staff only” door when a porter left it propped and moved in the greenish light until the city overhead became a pressure, not a sound. The book shivered against his palm as if eager.

“Easy,” he whispered, and chalked his circle on the concrete floor where a leak had dried in mineral fans. Angles stripped to their bones. No flourish, no waste. This world liked economy. He fed it just enough copper to make the lines conduct, clipped just enough current to make the book hum like a thing alive.

The air below his ribs felt tight, anticipatory. He would not call names here, not open wide. Just a flicker. Just proof that the road existed—that his hand still fit its handle.

He pricked his finger. The book drank. He did not look away.
Open.

The chalk went black. The wire pulsed. He smelled rain again, sharp as knives.

The floor dented.
Then it split.

Not wide—barely an inch. Just enough for the first crack to peel the concrete’s reflection and show him a sliver of elsewhere: void like soot; a tiny curl of ash; a chill so clean it stung his teeth. The book arched in his hands, luminous along its spine, the glyphs running like quicksilver to form a single sigil he’d never seen move that way before.

“Well.” His smile edged sharp. Hello, door.

Something pressed back. A pressure. Curious. Hungry. He almost laughed.

Then it came—a tug, faint but sharp, plucking at the thread under his ribs. He stilled. Not Seoul. Not this world. The pull gnawed deeper, foreign yet familiar.

Understanding unfurled, slow and delicious. Ah. The bond between body and soul. Of course—the soul still knew its house.

His lips curved. Which meant the boy in his body had felt it, too. A spark, a tease. Not enough to arm him—never enough for that.

Mason’s smile edged toward cruel delight.
Did you feel that, little actor?

The seam snapped shut with a sound like a fingernail breaking. Stillness pooled. The book dimmed, heavy with want.

Fuel. He’d given it current and copper and blood sweet as candy. It had wanted more. He could taste the equation of it on his tongue: this world’s power would coax the bruise; life would pry the seam. How much life? A rat? A dog? A man? The thought burned hot along his nerves and settled in his pocket like a coin.

On the walk back he let the city wash around him. Conversations slid off his shoulders. A woman laughed into her phone; a delivery rider cursed at a cab; a teenager cried quietly under a stairwell where no one would see. The book pressed warm to his ribs, sated for the night but awake.

He stopped at a late-night café. Coffee steamed between his hands, bitter and rich. Nathan’s cracked phone glowed on the table, a small altar humming beneath his touch. He had made it fetch, obey—better than most men. With a swipe it bloomed maps; with a tap it carried voices through the air. Already he had bent it to his will, this world’s toys quicker to yield than half its people.

The glass door swung, caught light, reflected him back: smooth skin, easy eyes, a stranger’s beauty. But behind it, in his own gaze, a faint flicker—blue threading his irises, luminous, alive. Power leaking through from the book he had just fed. Mana made visible. Dominance that carried the truth of it—he was the only human on this earth who held it. The most powerful man alive.

A man bumped his shoulder on the way out, beginning to mumble an apology—then froze. The flicker caught him, too. His words died. He left without another sound.

Mason smirked into the glass. The kind of quiet that cut. Delicious.

He took the cup with him when he left, heat seeping through cardboard into his palm. A petty anchor, bitter and human, carried like a trophy as he stepped back into the wet streets.

Small cracks for now. Wider ones later. Always on my terms.

He sipped as he went, the city gleaming wet around him, lamps humming like veins. In a deserted stretch he slowed, tipped the last mouthful past his teeth, and let the empty cup drop into a gutter. Mundane ritual discarded, he opened the book and let the glyphs tilt their faces up to the light.

He would build first. Money. Influence. Authority. Seoul bent easily to those who seized them, more pliant than Eryndral’s courts had ever been. And Mason had always known how to bend a world—one smile, one blade, one lie at a time.

Neon bled into the wet pavement as he rose, the book purring against his ribs.

“Tomorrow—more current. More pressure. And maybe, just maybe… blood.”

He slipped into the city’s glow, already plotting which corners of himself to spend next.

When the first portal opened for real, Seoul would tremble. And the boy wearing his face would, too.