A boy named Eren who live in Canada woke up one day, it was unusual today as if something has changed. He got up form the bed and rushed down there was no one in the house. He went outside, roads were empty.

He noticed something that it was not earth it was some other place similar to novel he read sometime ago "I think I am stuck here!" But the reason he stuck there was because the power of the city of silver is blocking his ability to return to reality.

The door to Eren's room swung open with a sigh of displaced air, spilling morning light across a landscape of discarded novels. The scent of old paper and fresh coffee from downstairs mingled with the faint, sharp tang of impending frost against the windowpane. Canada, in all its crisp, autumnal glory, lay outside, but Eren's world was shrinking with every word he read.

He was twenty-two, with the kind of restless energy that made quiet suburbia feel like a cage. His dark hair was a perpetual mess, and his glasses perpetually slid down his nose. Today, a heavy fantasy tome lay open on his chest, its gilt-edged pages catching the light. The real world could wait; this one had dragons.

As he shifted, the book slipped, falling open to a dog-eared page in the middle. A strange symbol, like a coiled serpent eating its own tail, was sketched in the margin of a previous note—something he didn't remember drawing. He'd seen it before, though. Flicking through other books, he found it again, a faint ghost in a philosophy text, a sharp impression in a sci-fi epic.

"What the hell?" he muttered, tracing the shape with his fingertip. It felt… warm. The warmth spread, a tingling sensation that crawled up his arm. The room around him began to thin at the edges, the familiar posters on his wall blurring into watercolours. The scent of coffee was replaced by something else—damp stone, coal smoke, and a faint, metallic tang of blood. The light from the window warped, twisting into a murky, greyish luminescence that seemed to press in on him.

His bedroom floor dissolved into wet, grimy cobblestones. The frame of his bed became the cold, unyielding iron of a streetlamp. Panic, cold and sharp, seized him. He tried to stand, to call out, but his body felt heavy, sluggish, pinned by an immense, unseen pressure.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped. He was standing, solidly, on a street that reeked of industry and despair. Fog coiled around the ankles of passers-by, their faces pale and etched with a weariness so profound it seemed to have settled into their very bones. They wore heavy wool coats and flat caps, the men with pipe-stems clenched in their teeth, the women with shawls pulled tight over their heads. The architecture was all ornate, soot-stained stone and wrought iron, leering gargoyles and high, narrow windows. Horse-drawn carriages clattered by, their wheels slick with something unpleasant in the street.

This wasn't a fantasy world. It was Victorian, grimy, and suffocatingly real. And it was terrifyingly familiar.

A newspaper, abandoned on a nearby crate, flapped in the breeze. The date stared up at him: September 15th, 1348. Not 2023. And the name of the city, printed in bold, black letters: Tainato.

"No," Eren whispered, the word stolen by the wind. "No, no, no." He knew this place. He'd read about it. The gas lamps, the fog, the creeping sense of dread, the secret societies battling in the shadows. He was in *Lord of the Mysteries*.

The realization was a physical blow. The initial wonder, the nerdy thrill of being inside his favorite story, was instantly suffocated by a wave of bone-deep fear. This wasn't a game. The damp chill wasn't a description; it was a cold that seeped into his marrow. The hunger on the faces of the crowd wasn't a literary device; it was the gnawing ache of an empty stomach.

He had to get back. He squeezed his eyes shut, picturing his room, the sunlight, the comforting mountain of books. He focused on that sensation, the strange tingle that had brought him here, trying to reverse it. He reached for the door, the handle of a book, anything that would lead him home.

There was nothing. Only a void where the connection should have been, a silent, unbreachable wall. It was like trying to grasp smoke. The power that had brought him here was gone, or perhaps it was still there, but something was interfering, jamming the signal.

A shudder ran through him, a primal dread that had nothing to do with the grimy city. He felt a pull, a distant, colossal call that seemed to echo from the very depths of the earth and the farthest reaches of the cosmos simultaneously. It was ancient, powerful, and utterly indifferent. It was the pull of the City of Silver, and it was vast, an anchor in the storm of realities, holding him fast.

He was trapped. Not by a lack of power, but by an excess of it. The unique nature of this world, its deep connection to something so profound and fundamental, was acting like a gravitational well for his ability, pulling it taut and snapping the thread that led back to Canada.

He was a novel traveler, and his first journey had become his last destination. His journey as a resident of this world had just begun. The realization settled in, not as a scream, but as a cold, hard stone in his gut. He looked at the fog-choked street, at the wary faces rushing past, and understood. The story wasn't just something to read anymore. It was the air he had to breathe.

He pulled his thin jacket tighter, a pathetic defense against the pervading chill. He was hungry, cold, and completely alone. First, he needed money.

Then, a place to stay. Then, answers. The street he was on, he remembered from the book, was in the East District, a place of cheap boarding houses and cheaper gin. He started walking, letting the current of shuffling pedestrians carry him deeper into the bowels of Tainato, a ghost with a beating heart in a world of ink and paper.

***

The smell of boiled cabbage and mildew was Eren's new alarm clock. It seeped through the floorboards of the third-floor boarding house room he'd managed to secure with a handful of coins from a busker's open case—desperation had made him a thief. The room was a closet, containing a narrow cot, a rickety washstand, and a single, grimy window overlooking a narrow alley. Mornings here didn't dawn; they congealed, the weak light doing little to burn through the perpetual haze of coal smoke.

Weeks had bled into a month. The initial, paralyzing shock had worn off, replaced by a grinding, gnawing survival instinct. The wonder of being in Tainato had curdled into the stark reality of its squalor.

The "adventure" was a constant battle against hunger and cold. He'd learned the hard way that a modern sensibility was a liability. He'd nearly been pickpocketed three times, stared down by constables for looking too long at shop displays, and nearly fainted from a combination of malnutrition and the sheer physical effort of walking everywhere.

He was changing. The softness of his modern life was being scraped away, layer by layer, revealing something harder, more wary beneath. He kept his head down, his hands in his pockets, and learned to navigate the city's undercurrents with the quiet desperation of a stray dog. The characters from the book were no longer names on a page. They were flesh and blood, potential threats, or perhaps, the only lifeline he had.

That's why he was here, in a pub called The Rusty Compass, nursing a lukewarm ale he couldn't really afford. The place was a symphony of creaking wood, sawdust, and the low murmur of a dozen conversations. He'd chosen a shadowed corner, trying to make himself small. He was waiting. Waiting for a man named Dunn Smith.

In the book, Dunn was a kind, stable figure, the captain of the Nighthawks in Tulas. But Eren wasn't in Tulas. He was in Tainato, a city that, according to the lore, had its own branch of the secretive organization. Finding them was the only logical step. They dealt with the strange, the supernatural—the very fabric of this world that held him captive. If anyone had answers, it would be them. If anyone could understand what he was, it was them.

The pub door creaked open, letting in a gust of damp air and a man who stood out from the dockworkers and clerks. He was tall, with a serious, clean-shaven face, dark hair, and eyes that held a weary but alert intelligence. He wore a plain, dark grey overcoat, immaculate despite the grime of the city, and a black top hat. He scanned the room, his gaze pausing for a fraction of a second on Eren's corner before moving on.

Dunn Smith. Or at least, a man who fit the description perfectly.

Eren's heart hammered against his ribs.

Eren's heart hammered against his ribs. This was it. He had rehearsed a dozen speeches, each more insane than the last. "Hello, I'm a man from another world who got stuck in your novel." He'd be locked in an asylum. He needed something else. Something plausible.

He pushed back his chair, the scrape of wood loud in the relative quiet. He walked over to the bar, standing a few feet from the man.

"Excuse me," Eren said, his voice hoarser than he intended. "You look like you're with the city police." It was a terrible gambit, a shot in the dark.

The man turned, his expression unreadable. "And why would you think that?"

"Just a sense," Eren said, forcing himself to meet the man's gaze. "You have the look of a man who's looking for something. Or someone. And I have… a problem. A strange one."

Dunn's eyes narrowed slightly. He gestured with a gloved hand toward a more private booth. "Tell me."

Eren sat, his hands clasped on the sticky table. "My name is Eren. I woke up here about a month ago. I don't know how. My memories before that are… fractured. A blur. Just flashes of another place, another life. I can't explain it." The lie felt clumsy on his tongue, but it was the best he could do. A man with amnesia was a tragedy; a man from another reality was a lunatic.

Dunn listened without interruption, his face a mask of polite interest. When Eren finished, there was a long silence. The pub's noises seemed to fade into the background.

"These 'flashes'," Dunn said finally, his voice low and even. "Do they involve… things that defy logic? Impossible colours, whispers without sources, a sense of vast, uncaring space?"

The question hit Eren like a physical jolt. He had felt it. That pull from the City of Silver, the sheer alien nature of this world's metaphysics. He had dismissed it as part of the transfer, but Dunn described it with unnerving accuracy. He nodded, unable to speak.

Dunn's expression didn't change, but a new tension entered his shoulders. He reached into his inner coat pocket and pulled out a small, silver pocket watch. He didn't check the time. Instead, he held it on the table, its polished surface reflecting the dim gaslight. "Look at your reflection, Mr. Eren. Tell me what you see."

Eren leaned forward. He saw himself: pale, gaunt, with the fear of the past month etched around his eyes. But there was something else. A faint, almost imperceptible shimmer around the outline of his head, like heat haze rising from summer asphalt. It was there for a second, then gone.

"As I suspected," Dunn murmured, snapping the watch shut. The metallic click was final. "You've been… contaminated. Touched by something from beyond the fog. What you're experiencing isn't amnesia. It's the aftershock of a reality you weren't meant to survive. The police aren't equipped to handle your kind of problem, Mr. Eren. But I might know someone who is."

He slid a plain, white card across the table. On it, embossed in black ink, was a single image: a coiled serpent eating its own tail. The same symbol from the margins of Eren's books.

"I am an appraiser of antiques and a mediator for those with… unique afflictions," Dunn said, standing up. "Come to this address tomorrow after dusk. Come alone. And do not, under any circumstances, speak of our meeting to anyone. Your memories are not fractured. They are a liability. Until we can determine their nature, it's best you pretend you don't have them at all."

He placed a few coins on the table to cover Eren's ale, tipped his hat, and walked out of the pub, leaving Eren alone with the card, the cold dregs of his beer, and a terror that was slowly, terrifyingly, being replaced by a sliver of hope.

***

The address on the card led Eren to a quiet, respectable street in the city's Core District. The buildings here were made of cleaner stone, the gas lamps brighter, the air less thick with the stench of the docks. It was a world away from the squalor of the East District, but the fog was still a constant, a shroud that muted all sound and colour.

The house was a three-story terraced residence, indistinguishable from its neighbours except for a small, polished brass plaque beside the door. It bore the same ouroboros symbol. Eren's knock was answered not by Dunn, but by a young woman with sharp, intelligent eyes and hair tied back in a severe bun. She wore a simple but well-made grey dress.

"Eren?" she asked, her tone business-like. He nodded. "I'm Frye. Dunn is waiting for you. Follow me."

The inside of the house was a revelation. It wasn't opulent, but it was meticulously clean and organized. The air smelled of old paper, beeswax, and a faint, antiseptic herbal scent. There were no personal touches, no family photographs, no clutter.