The bell above the door jingled, lazy and hollow. I looked up from the counter, mid-yawn, expecting another curious tourist or some old man with "a priceless heirloom from the Empire days." You know, the usual.
But today, it was different.
The man who walked in had this weird air about him—like he was there, but not fully there. Pale eyes, heavy coat even though it was warm outside. He didn't say much. Just walked up, placed something wrapped in an old velvet cloth on the counter, and said:
"Want to sell this."
I blinked. "What is it?"
He unwrapped it slowly, like unveiling a holy relic. Inside was... a pen.
Just a pen. Bronze casing, faded inscriptions, nib slightly bent. Looked old, sure. Maybe pre-modern era. But there was something about it.
The moment I touched it—just brushed my fingers against the cold metal—a shiver ran down my spine. Not fear. Not pain. Just... recognition. A strange familiarity, like I'd used it before. Or owned it in another life.
I looked up. "Where did you get this?"
The man smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.
"Family heirloom," he said.
Of course it was.
We haggled a bit. He asked for 10 paiks, which was ridiculous. The national currency—called Paiks, by the way—is broken into copper, silver, and gold denominations. This country, Arvenhaal, uses a system where 10 paiks is like asking for a gold coin. Roughly equivalent to thirty Earth dollars. For a pen? I scoffed.
We went back and forth until I got him down to 3 paiks. Still too much, but I wanted it. Badly.
The moment the deal was done, he left without another word. Didn't even take the receipt.
I stared at the pen for a long time after that. The brass shimmered faintly in the light. I could swear it pulsed for a moment—like it had breath.
This made it the third item in my… let's call it my Oddity Collection.
The first was a mirror that didn't reflect moonlight—only daylight. Creepy, right?
The second was a bell that made no sound, no matter how hard you rang it. The clapper moved, the vibrations were there, but silence clung to it like a curse.
And now, this pen.
None of these were cursed as far as I could tell. No nightmares. No mysterious bruises. But they did react to my soul state.
That was reason enough.
See, I've been trying to carve a path in this mundane world. Not a traditional one. Not like the cultivators in books who sit under waterfalls and talk to swords. No sects, no masters. Just me. Building something from scratch.
Each object I find—each item with some strange reaction to my soul—is a clue. A brick in the foundation of a road I don't even fully understand yet.
I even started keeping a diary. Theoretical notes on cultivation. Drawings. Observations on the void. Pages filled with theories like "Moonlight essence vs. ambient soul radiation." I'm not sure if any of it is right, but I keep writing.
And hiding it.
Every time someone comes over—friends, neighbors, even the mailman—I stash the notebooks. Deep under floorboards or behind hollowed-out walls. Paranoia? Maybe. But if I'm going to deal with ghosts, void-beasts, and who knows what else, I need to be prepared, right?
Sometimes I wonder why the heavens—or whatever twisted force governs this universe—threw me into this world. Of all things, why horror?
In my previous life, I couldn't even sit through a horror movie without covering my eyes. Now I'm dissecting soul-leech parasites and cataloging moonlight anomalies like some supernatural scientist.
It's absurd.
But strangely thrilling.
Aside from all that, life was... peaceful. My days followed a pattern. I worked. I studied. I experimented.
My grandfather had passed away a year ago, and before that, he'd been running both the antique store and a small grocery shop next door. I tried to manage both at first, but it was overwhelming. Between weird clients and my night-time soul expeditions, something had to give.
I thought about selling the grocery shop. Or maybe renting it out. I hadn't decided. For now, it just sat there—dusty and empty. Maybe someday I'd turn it into a workshop. Or something more useful.
Weeks passed like this.
Steady.
Simple.
Even good.
I even took some basic self-defense steps. Tried getting a few pistols, but that stuff's not easy here. Firearms are tightly regulated in Arvenhaal. After a lot of red tape and paperwork, I finally got approved to join a private shooting club. They let you train under supervision, learn the basics. I wasn't planning to become some gun-toting vigilante, but if the void ever sent something physical, I wanted options.
So yeah, I learned how to shoot. Small pistols mostly. Nothing fancy. Just enough to feel less helpless.
And then came the night I tried something... new.
I'd been hesitant to mess with the leech again. It stayed quiet in my soul, coiled like a sleeping serpent. But curiosity? It's a dangerous thing.
I sat in the basement, moonlight filtering through a small crack in the ceiling, and let my soul slip free. In that soul state, the world becomes... different. Not brighter. Not darker. Just... more real. Colors bleed. Time stretches. Sounds become echoes.
I call this perception soul sense. It lets me see things hidden beneath layers of reality.
This time, I sent the leech out. It slithered silently, stretching farther than ever before. A hundred meters, maybe more. I discovered I could even fragment it—split it into smaller leech-like bits that moved independently. Like scouts.
I hadn't expected that.
It wasn't intelligent—not yet—but it obeyed. It felt... loyal. Or at least bound to me.
That night, I also started testing something new: moonlight storage. I discovered I could absorb moonlight not just into my soul, but store it. A faint reservoir inside me. Small for now, but real.
This energy let me "ping" my surroundings. A kind of spiritual radar. And it's how I identified the oddity in the pen. It vibrated in response. Just like the mirror. Just like the bell.
It was subtle. But unmistakable.
Each item was a node in a map I hadn't yet drawn.
So my life moved on. Haggling with clients by day, cultivating in shadows by night. Still forging a path in this darkness. Still building toward something unseen.
But I know this much: I won't stay ordinary for long.