The apartment felt too big.
Jack sat by the window, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. Outside, the neighborhood was settling into the evening. It was a mundane sight—Mrs. Gable shouting at her cat, the distant clatter of a merchant's cart, the smell of woodsmoke. Usually, it was white noise. Tonight, it felt like a masterpiece he was seeing for the last time.
Tavros had left an hour ago, looking like he was walking to his own show to go see his parents be proud at him. Kenlil, meanwhile, had spent twenty minutes fixing his hair in the mirror before heading off to face the family that had shunned him. The elf had been homeless for a year because he couldn't find a wife by twenty-five—a tradition Jack found hilarious, mostly because Kenlil had the romantic charm of a wet rock.
"One last look," Jack whispered, toast to the horizon.
Before he could succumb to the gloom, he decided he couldn't leave the place a mess. He spent the next hour doing the most pointless "last chores" imaginable. He scrubbed a stubborn grease stain off the stove, folded his three pairs of clean socks with military precision, and even watered the half-dead cactus on the sill.
"There," he muttered, wiping his brow. "If I die in a trench, at least the landlord won't have anything to complain about."
He sat back down and reached for his drink, his eyes falling on the ring. It was a heavy thing, bearing the unit patch of his father's old division: a horned demon biting a combat knife. John Sterling had been a man of steel and secrets. He never talked about Jack's mother, and he certainly never talked about the war.
As Jack slid the ring onto his finger, he couldn't help but smirk. He remembered the time he, Kenlil, and Tavros were ten years old. They had decided to "liberate" some of John's high-grade tobacco. John had caught them behind the woodshed. Instead of a typical beating, he had made them eat a spoonful of dried leaves each. Jack remembered Kenlil turning a shade of green that matched the forest, while Tavros had sneezed so hard he'd knocked himself over.
"If you're going to be thieves," John had roared, hiding a grin, "at least have the taste to steal the whiskey instead!"
His father was always locking his bedroom door, spending hours in there with that old wooden chest. Jack had once bored a hole in the wall with a hand-drill just to see what was so interesting. He'd seen his father weeping over the chest once, and another time, laughing like a madman.
"Let's see what the old man was hiding," Jack said, his curiosity finally outweighing his grief.
He walked into the bedroom. The chest sat in the corner, looking unassuming and dusty. It had no keyhole, just that strange circular indentation. He wiped the lid, expecting gold or maybe a map to some hidden family fortune.
"Maybe I'm secretly a prince," Jack mused. "An anti-climactic way to find out right before I get shot at, but I'll take it."
He tried the coins first. He spent twenty minutes raiding every jar and pocket in the room. He tried copper bits, silver crowns, even a flattened button.
"Maybe it's a 'purity' lock," he said, pressing his forehead against the lid. "Open for the son of John Sterling!"
Nothing.
"Right. Magic word didn't work. Time for the traditional method."
He returned from the kitchen armed with a heavy-duty mallet and a rusted crowbar. He spat on his hands and gripped the mallet. "I'm doing this for your own good, chest. You need to breathe."
He swung. CLANG.
A shockwave of blue light erupted from the wood. Jack didn't just fall; he flew. He soared over the bed and smashed into his father's dresser. Clothes, socks, and a very surprised ceramic vase rained down on him.
"Ow," Jack groaned, picking a splinter out of his palm. "Okay. One-zero for the furniture."
He got up, his pride wounded more than his back. He tried to sneak up on it this time, holding the mallet low. He gave it a quick, tentative tap. BOOM. This time the chest sent him sliding across the floor like a puck on ice, ending with his head wedged under the bedframe.
"What kind of... demonic carpentry is this?" He wiped a smudge of blood from his nose, his temper finally red-lining.
He grabbed the crowbar. He didn't swing this time. He jammed the end into the lid's seam. He planted his feet on the floor, braced his shoulder against the wall, and pulled.
"Open... you... overgrown... jewelry box!"
The wood turned cold—dead cold. Frost began to creep up the crowbar. Jack's hands were stinging, his muscles screaming, but he refused to let go. He was practically horizontal, pulling with every ounce of strength he possessed. With a sudden CRACK, the crowbar snapped in half.
Jack tumbled backward, doing a clumsy somersault into the closet.
He sat there among the mothballs, panting, staring at the circular slot. He looked at the ring on his finger. The demon biting the knife. The circular base of the ring.
"No way," he whispered. "It's that simple?"
He approached the chest cautiously, as if it might bite his hand off. He hovered the ring over the slot. The moment it got close, a magnetic force yanked his hand down. CLICK.
The ring sat perfectly in the indentation. Jack felt like a complete moron. All that property damage, the broken crowbar, the bruised ribs—all because he wanted to be a blacksmith instead of a son.
"I'm an idiot," he muttered. He turned his hand.
The lid didn't just open; it hissed. A tiny puff of pressurized air escaped.
Inside, there was no gold. No swords. Just a flat, black, rectangular slate. It looked like glass, but it felt like metal. He picked it up. It was surprisingly heavy. He saw a tiny slit along the side and pried it open.
The "book" unfolded. The top half was a dark mirror. The bottom half was covered in dozens of small, square buttons, each marked with a strange, white symbol. Some were letters he recognized, but others were gibberish.
"Is this a weapon?" He poked one of the squares. It clicked softly. "Maybe it's a bomb. A really, really flat bomb."
He touched a button with a symbol that looked like a circle with a line through it.
The dark glass suddenly glowed. A brilliant light-blue light flooded the room, making Jack yelp and dive for cover behind the bed. He stayed there for five seconds, heart hammering, waiting for the explosion.
Instead, he heard a sound. A low, digital hum, followed by a series of soft chimes.
He slowly peeked over the mattress. The screen was no longer blue. It was showing a picture. A video.
A man appeared on the glass. He was sitting in a chair, wearing a strange, green fabric vest. He looked tired, his beard shot through with grey, but his eyes were unmistakable.
"You just can't keep your hands off something that's not yours, can you, Jackie?"
Jack's knees gave out. He slid to the floor, the whiskey and the adrenaline vanishing, replaced by a cold, trembling shock. The voice was perfect. The way he said "Jackie" with that slight rasp from years of smoking.
"John?" Jack whispered, a single tear carving a path through the dust on his cheek.
The man on the screen laughed—a sound Jack hadn't heard in two years. "If you're seeing this, it means you've finally grown up enough to wear the ring, or you're desperate enough to break into my room. Knowing you, it's probably both. Sit down, son. We need to talk about where I really came from."