Aiden's hands wouldn't stop trembling. Each breath he took was too shallow, his heart pounding in his chest.
He stared at the floating holographic window—at the pulsing emerald [Accept Y/N] prompt—and his brain kept trying to claw its way out of the moment. This had to be some kind of breakdown, too little sleep. Too much caffeine. Or probably the many years he spent failing quietly until his mind finally snapped and started generating hallucinations out of mercy.
But the hologram stayed floating. It was solid and real, hovering like it belonged in his cramped flat.
And the voice that was ancient, smug and far too amused kept talking.
"I've been watching you, kid," Nabu said, the hologram brightening in front of Aiden. "Nine books. Nine complete flops. Their sales numbers so low, they'd depress a cemetery. And yet—" the god paused, "—you kept writing. That's…rare. Mortals usually crumble after the second rejection. The stubborn ones make it to three. But you? You just kept going. Passion, madness, masochism? Whatever you call it, I find it interesting."
Aiden's throat locked. "You've been… watching me?"
"Not like that," Nabu said quickly. "Your browser history is your problem, not mine. I'm talking about your work. Your stories, the little universes you keep building like you're trying to outrun the real one. So here's my proposal; I want you to be my contractor."
Aiden's stomach dropped immediately he heard the god's offer. Contractor? Hunters used that word, not people like him. Never him.
Hunters made pacts with gods or demons for power. They cleared S-rank dungeons, they were rich. Famous. Untouchable.
But every single one of them had mana.
"I'm not a hunter," Aiden's voice was small, strands of his messy, dark-brown hair falling into his eyes. "I failed my awakening. I don't have mana or a core. Or anything you could want."
"You have exactly what I want," Nabu chimed. "Imagination, Creativity. The ability to sculpt worlds out of letters. So here's the deal. I give you a skill. You write successful books. I gain more believers."
Aiden's mind scrambled, as he waited for the god to propose some sort of bait or something, because there had to be one.
"What's the catch?"
"Catch?" The god echoed, pretending to think. "Hmm, nothing dramatic. You'll just have to actually use the skill I give you. Unless you prefer stocking shelves at Tesco, I heard the're hiring."
Aiden's eyes drifted to the rejection email glowing on his laptop. Then to the rent notice screaming its deadline in bright red, and then, to the sales numbers of forty-seven copies total across nine books.
He looked back at the pulsing prompt and his breath wobbled, "I'm in."
The hologram in front of him snapped bright green, text flooding the air.
[CONTRACT ESTABLISHED]
[HOST: Aiden Jus]
[PATRON DEITY: Nabu, God of Literacy, Wisdom, and Scribes]
[STATUS: Active]
A new text appeared.
[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: NARRATIVE EMBODIMENT]
Aiden leaned forward to tap on it, unfurling a description.
[Rank: Divine]
[Type: Story Immersion]
[Description: Enter your own written story and embody the protagonist until completion. Experience every scene firsthand. Choices, consequences, pain, victories. Upon completion, a fully written manuscript appears on your laptop.]
[Warning: Death in the story = death in reality.]
Aiden's gaze swept over the hologram, as he tried to process what he was reading. He reread it three times, and then snapped.
"What kind of—what kind of bullshit power is this?" he shouted at the window, gripping the root of his hair. "How is this supposed to help me sell anything? I don't need to jump into a story, I need something that makes me successful! This is useless!"
Then, there was silence; only his ragged breathing filling the air.
When Nabu finally spoke, his tone had lost all its swagger and sacarsm.
"Useless?" he repeated quietly. "Kid, this is all I can give you."
Aiden's eyebrows drew together, and he froze.
"Do you know what novels mean in a world dominated by hunters?" Nabu continued, and now there was a bitterness bleeding into every word. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. People want gate clearance strategies and dungeon guides, not fantasy epics. They want training manuals and skill optimization forums. They want practical information that keeps them alive in rifts, not stories about made-up worlds."
Aiden stood there, silent, as the god he'd just contracted with laid bare a truth he'd never considered. A flicker of something old and exhausted echoed through the hologram.
"I used to be a prime god," Nabu whispered. "Scriptoriums, temples, thousands of pages dedicated to me. Scholars prayed for inspiration. Kings asked me to bless treaties. I mattered."
The hologram dimmed slightly again, as the god spoke.
"Now?" Nabu laughed, but it was a broken sound. "There are lesser gods of 'lucky looting' who get more worship than I do. The god of perfect dungeon timing is more relevant than the god of writing. Imagine that."
Aiden felt something twist inside him. He felt something painfully familiar to what the god was talking bitterly about.
"I can only give you powers tied to stories," Nabu said. "Words. Narratives. That's all that remains of me. So yes, Narrative Embodiment is all I have left to offer."
The anger in Aiden melted, leaving something rawer behind. Two failures making a deal because the world had rejected them both. It felt like the universe had finally given him a companion.
He took a deep breath in and asked quietly, "How does it work?"
Nabu's voice perked up slightly, regaining a shadow of its earlier enthusiasm. "You live out your story first. The skill lets you physically enter a narrative world and embody the protagonist. You experience everything they do, feel what they feel, make their choices, live their consequences and fight their battles. When you complete the story and return to reality, the manuscript is automatically written on your laptop, fully formatted and ready to publish. Everything done."
That… actually sounded incredible.
"Okay, but…but how do I start?" Aiden's head tilted at the hologram in front of him.
Before he could ask more, the contract window dissolved and was replaced by something that looked straight out of an RPG menu:
GENRE UNLOCK SHOP
AVAILABLE FUNDS: £1,350.47
And beneath it, Aiden saw his own books.
[1. Return of the Heavenly Sword God]
Cultivation/Murim
£1,300.00
Difficulty ★★★☆☆
Unpublished
[2. A Fractured Reality]
Supernatural Thriller
£10,000.00
Difficulty ★★★★☆
Unpublished
[3. The Lazy Son of Duke Gilmore]
High Fantasy
£70,000.00
Difficulty ★★★★★
Unpublished
Aiden stared at the screen in complete disbelief. "Wait. Why are there prices? Why do I have to pay money to unlock my own stories?"
"Did you think this was charity?" Nabu's voice was back to its businesslike tone. "Gods don't hand out freebies, kid. You want access to the skill, you pay to unlock the genre. That's how it works. Every genre you enter requires an investment. Consider it buying the key that opens the door to that world."
"But I wrote these stories!" Aiden protested. "They're mine! Why do I have to pay to enter something I created?"
"Because the skill has to anchor to something real," Nabu explained. "Money. Currency. Value. It's how the divine contract stabilizes the connection between reality and narrative. Without the payment, the worlds would collapse, or worse—you'd get stuck inside them forever. And trust me, you don't want that."
Aiden stared at the numbers again and gulped. He barely had thirteen hundred pounds total. His rent alone was thirteen hundred. If he bought the first option, he'd have fifty pounds left to survive on.
His right fingers hovered over the cheapest story—his cultivation novel.
"This is insane," he breathed. "What if this isn't real? What if I empty my account and nothing happens? I'll get evicted and eventually start living on the street."
His voice cracked. And then, he laughed, but it was a hollow sound. "Maybe all my nine failures finally broke me. I've finally lost my godsdamn mind."
His gaze swept around the flat he lived in.
The dripping ceiling. The mold creeping up the walls. The unread books stacked like tombstones. The rejection email still open.
What was he even protecting?
His fifty-pound safety net?
The chance to fail again?
Another decade of disappointment?
He'd been dying slowly for years. Maybe this was his only real shot. What was one more gamble anyway?
'Thirteen years,' he thought. 'Thirteen years of hoping something would change on its own.'
"Fuck it," he whispered, his hand trembling as he reached out to press the button for Return of the Heavenly Sword God.
The system chimed, a clear crystalline sound that seemed to resonate in his bones.
[PURCHASE CONFIRMED]
[GENRE UNLOCKED: CULTIVATION/MURIM]
[FUNDS DEDUCTED: £1,300.00]
[NEW BALANCE: £50.47]
[INITIATING NARRATIVE EMBODIMENT…]
Strands of his hair tossed back his face the moment the money left his account. Suddenly, there was darkness. And a sensation of falling through space, his stomach lurching as reality dissolved around him. His arms extended, trying to reach out to something in the darkness as he fell through the empty dark vacuum.
He tried to scream but it seemed like it was stuck in his throat, choking him. The darkness was endless, it felt like he was being pulled apart, and put back together at the same time.
Then, suddenly, a sensation returned.
He gasped—air rushing into lungs that felt new and wrong, like they'd never taken a breath before. His heart pounded in his chest with a rhythm that wasn't quite his own and his eyes flew open.
He was on a bed. A massive bed made of silk sheets that had golden dragons embroidered across them and a carved canopy with jade characters he didn't recognize. The air smelled like incense and pine instead of the usual mold that filled his flat.
His eyes looked around still quite confused as to where he was before they drifted down, and he nearly flew out of the bed.
His hands weren't his. They were smaller, lighter. Elegant and not the callused, Ink-stained hands he knew.
"What the hell?" His voice cracked, but his voice. It didn't sound like him. It wasn't his. "Nabu? Nabu!"
He scrambled upright, panic ripping through him as he yelled and demanded for the god to show himself.
"What did you do to me?!"
But he got no reply besides the wind chimes and birds he'd never heard in his life.
His eyes darted around the room, at the silk robes draped over a chair, the sword mounted on the wall, the scrolls stacked neatly on a desk.
And then realization struck him. "Cultivation world," he whispered, horror washing over him.
His cultivation world.
'Oh no,' Aiden thought, his entire new body trembling. 'This is real. I'm inside the story. I'm not in my body. Who's body is this? Who did I become?'
His heart slammed violently against his chest. And then, somewhere in the distance, he heard footsteps approaching his door.Aiden's hands wouldn't stop trembling. Each breath he took was too shallow, his heart pounding in his chest.