Damian needed to see it.
Needed proof this wasn't his brain's dying hallucination—one last desperate fantasy before the bullet finished its job and the lights went out for good.
He crossed to the window. Pulled the curtain aside.
Sunlight hit him like a slap.
He squinted, then looked down.
Oh.
Victorian streets stretched below him like someone had ripped out a history book page and made it walk. Cobblestones worn smooth by decades of boots and carriage wheels. Dark stone buildings with iron railings. Smoke rising from chimneys, mixing with fog that hadn't gotten the memo about morning being over.
People moved in steady streams. Long coats. Top hats. Women in fitted jackets with impossible amounts of buttons.
Everyone dressed like they'd raided the same period drama's costume department.
Except this wasn't a costume.
A horse-drawn carriage clattered past below. The driver tipped his hat to a woman. She nodded back without even blinking at the literal horse-drawn carriage because this was apparently just a normal Tuesday for her.
"Holy shit," Damian muttered. "I'm really not dreaming."
His knuckles went white on the windowsill.
The old woman hadn't been joking. Another world. Pull the trigger. Wake up somewhere else, someone else.
I died.
The thought should've terrified him. Maybe it did. Hard to tell when his brain had apparently decided to table the existential crisis until further notice.
He looked down at himself.
White shirt, rumpled and high-collared. Real cotton, the rough kind that felt nothing like the synthetic blend garbage from his world. Black cravat hanging loose around his neck like someone had tied it once and given up on life shortly after.
Grey waistcoat over the shirt. Two buttons fastened out of three because apparently standards were optional. Silver chain hanging from the pocket—pocket watch. He touched it without thinking. Warm metal. Real weight.
Dark trousers held up by suspenders. Wool. Thick.
Scuffed black boots.
He looked like a detective who'd passed out at his desk and couldn't be bothered to fix himself afterward.
Accurate, apparently.
Damian Void.
The name still felt wrong. Like wearing someone else's skin. Which—technically—he was.
Damian let the curtain drop.
The office went dark again. Quiet.
He crossed back to the desk and collapsed into the chair, letting out a breath that did absolutely nothing useful.
Okay. Think. What the hell am I supposed to do?
The old woman had shot him. Sent him here. But why? What was the point? Just... take over this guy's life? Play detective? Forget everything—his parents, the theater, the empty seats, the slow death he'd watched happen night after night?
Pretend none of it mattered?
It felt like standing in an intersection while trucks barreled through from every direction, no lights, no rules, just chaos and the certainty that standing still meant getting flattened.
"I don't know where to start," he muttered.
Everything had moved too fast. Gun. Darkness. Void. Myra. Slap. And now the weight of it all finally landed on him like a collapsed stage set.
His gaze drifted across the office. Cluttered desk. Cabinet full of books he'd never read but somehow recognized. And on the wall—
The board.
Covered in chalk. Notes. Diagrams. Patterns his brain tried to connect despite having zero context for any of it.
He stared.
Then his skull cracked open.
The memories hit like a hammer to the temple.
Not his memories. Someone else's life, force-fed into his brain without asking if he wanted it first.
Thanks for that.
Damian Void waking up in this body. Cases solved. People met. Coffee that tasted like burnt disappointment. A thousand mundane moments of a life he'd never lived.
Then Myra. Three days ago. Walking through that door with tears already forming, voice breaking on please find my brother.
The investigation.
Two days. That's all it took Damian Void to crack it.
Two days to find the truth.
Two more to lie about it.
Pain exploded through his head like someone was using his brain as an anvil.
"Argh—fuck—"
Damian grabbed his skull with both hands, as if that would somehow keep it from splitting in half. It didn't. The pain built and built, white-hot and relentless, tearing through every thought until there was nothing left except make it stop make it stop make it—
Then, slowly, it did.
The pain faded to a dull throb. Manageable. Barely.
Something warm dripped from his nose. He touched it. Blood on his fingers.
Great. Fantastic. Brain hemorrhage in a borrowed body in another world. What a way to start the day.
"Memories," he muttered, staring at the red on his hand.
Damian Void's memories. All of them. Dumped into his head like someone had just ctrl+v'd an entire life into the wrong document.
And now he knew.
Knew exactly what that coward had been doing while Myra cried herself to sleep every night.
The investigation had taken two days. Two. Damian Void had followed the leads, found the truth, figured out exactly where the kid was and who had him.
Then he'd sat on it.
Waiting. Planning to tell Myra tonight—on the night of the shipment—so she wouldn't do something stupid and heroic that would get her killed.
Because Myra's little brother—ten years old, missing four days—hadn't wandered off or run away.
He'd been kidnapped.
By the city's mafia.
Not "a" mafia. The mafia. The only one that mattered. The kind of organization that had so much money and muscle that even the city authorities looked the other way and pretended not to notice the obvious crime happening in broad daylight.
Cross them, disappear. Simple math.
Damian Void had called them "a fat pig with an even fatter owner."
Poetic. Also useless.
The plan had been to tell Myra everything tonight. Give her the truth when it was already too late to do anything about it. Let her grieve safely, knowing her brother was already gone and there was nothing—nothing—a lone detective or a desperate sister could do to change it.
Some fights, you lost before they even started.
Cold. Logical. Smart.
Coward.
"Damian Void," he said aloud, voice rough. "You absolute coward."
The anger surprised him. Wasn't his case. Wasn't his failure. Wasn't even his life.
But it felt like it was.
He wished he had a mirror. Wanted to see this face he was wearing. Wanted to know if he'd punch it on sight or just think about punching it really, really hard.
Depended on how handsome he turned out to be, honestly. Even righteous anger had standards.
"Shit." His fists clenched on the desk. "I'm a magician. Card tricks and smoke machines. What the hell am I supposed to do against a mafia?"
The answer came back immediately: Nothing.
The city wouldn't touch them. The authorities pretended they didn't exist. What could one detective do? Damian Void had been hired to investigate, not save anyone. He'd done his job. Found the truth.
That was supposed to be enough.
Except it wasn't.
A ten-year-old kid was getting shipped out tonight like cargo, and everyone was just going to let it happen because fighting back meant dying.
Damian stood up so fast the chair screeched.
"Fuck it."
He headed for the door.
What are you doing?
He didn't know this world. Didn't know how to fight organized crime. Didn't even know how to be a detective properly, let alone take down criminals that the entire city was too terrified to acknowledge.
All he had were card tricks and misdirection.
Not exactly a combat skill set.
But standing here? Doing nothing? Letting a kid disappear because it was the smart, safe, logical choice?
I'm not Damian Void.
That guy had given up. Accepted defeat before the fight even started.
And yeah, okay, Damian had done the exact same thing with the theater. Watched it die. Did nothing.
But this was different.
Had to be different.
His hand closed around the door handle.
First: Find Myra. Tell her everything. The kidnapping, the mafia, the shipment happening tonight.
Second: Figure out how to stop it.
Third: Probably die trying.
Again.