Demon of Knowledge - Book 1 - Mystery Pryer

[sey]

Hi there folks.

First time posting on QQ so apologies if it's not that great. A friend recomended I try posting this here instead of FF, so consider this an experiement of sots.

For context, this is a Lord of Mysteries Fic with an SI OC. He'll mostly be doing his own thing, but will eventually meet up with the main cast eventually.

Fair warning, I'll be playing a little fast and loose with the lore for certain things, as there will be crossover elements, albeit integrated to fit the setting.

Constuctive criticism is appreciated. Please enjoy.

---

Chapter 1:Scarlet Moon.​

It was the pain he felt first.

It wasn't a dull, hollow ache or a sharp stab; it felt as though every single atom in his body had suddenly been set on fire and was screaming in unison. His nerves were a grid of white-hot agony, vibrating with an intensity that should have torn a scream from his throat—if he could have drawn the breath to make one.

Indeed,while he found himself acutely aware of every part of his body, paradoxically, he found those very extremities completely unresponsive, as if his muscles had been transmuted into lumps of pure lead, without affecting his ability to feel pain.

And beneath the pain, lurking on the edge of his consciousness, a strange sense of emptiness, as if something something had reached into his very soul and scooped out everything of substance, leaving him to bleed out on the ground like a discarded carton.

'What the fuck happened?'

Such were the first conscious thoughts of Seth Collins, aspiring novelist and full-time customer-service agent as he found himself lying face-down on the floor, unable to move or even blink, forcing him to gaze blankly at a ceiling he couldn't quite focus on.

His last memory, prior to blacking out, had been mundane enough. He'd been browsing occult literature references online whilst listening to a podcast, hoping to find something that might help inspire him to shatter the writer's block that had been holding him hostage for months now.

He was dimly aware of opening a new tab on his laptop, following some link that had caught his eye, only for his vision to abruptly white-out like some asshole hit him with a flash-bang, the world seeming to tilt sharply to the side before he found himself facedown on thefloor, unable to move.

'Shit...did I have a stroke?'

Unbidden, his mind drifted back to that one winter almost a decade prior, when he'd woken up to the sudden, terrifying reality of half his face refusing to respond to his commands courtesy of a, thankfully brief, bout of stress-induced Bell's Palsy.

He'd recalled the frustration he'd been forced to endure during the recovery period, how the Doctor assured him it was simply due to stress and that if he simply took the chance to improve his lifestyle, get more exercise, cutt out the snacks, all the usual shite, he wouldn't have to worry about a repeat occurrence.

And in all fairness, Seth had done his best to comply. No, honestly, he'd taken up swimming on weekends, tried to eat healthier and burnt out his stress via hobbies. But habit is hard to break and his lifestyle had always been mostly sedentary, spending both his work-hours and free-time behind a monitor, fueled by Energy drinks & spite.

'That thumping...is that my heart? Shit...it's so slow...'

Worse,as he lay there, a prisoner in his own flesh, unable to draw breath into his desperate, burning lungs, he dimly realised that the the dull echo in his ears was slowing down, each second between thumps draining more colour from his vision as he continued to gaze into the void.

And yet, as the agonizing seconds ticked by, until it almost seemed minutes would pass between beats, the panic didn't come. Instead, a wave of profound, surprising calm washed over him, almost as if he were watching the scene happen to someone else.

He was dying...and he was surprisingly okay with it.​

'So...this is how I die...face down on the floor after Forty Years with nothing to show for it...'

Alright, maybe 'okay' wasn't the right word, but it was almost comical how chill he was about all this. Then again, he'd never been the type to lose his shit over something that couldn't be changed. When most people lashed out, whined or tried to get their way by making a scene, he'd been the type to simply shrug, go back to what he was doing and try find a workaround.

Sadly, there wasn't a work-around for Death outside of fiction or divine intervention, and last he checked God stopped making House-calls sometime after the Romans nailed his golden boy to a cross, so what the hell would losing his shit even do in this situation?

Panicking would only burn through whatever precious, residual oxygen his brain had left. There was quite literally nothing Seth could do to change the outcome, so what was the point of wasting his final moments screaming into the void?

Nah, if it really was time for him to punch out then he wasn't going out like a bitch. If the reaper truly was coming for him, he'd probably shake the fucker''s hand because at this point anything would be better than feeling this agony for all eternity.

In truth, his only real concerns was how devastated his mother was going to be when she heard the news. As much as they drove each other up the wall, the woman had always had his best interests in mind and had been the driving force behind his lifestyle changes after the Palsy scare.

'Assuming I'm not bound for the hand-basket express, I'll put in a good word for you, Mum.' he vowed, smiling internally as he recalled all the times the woman had driven him absolutely mental 'Though full disclosure, if there's any truth to coming back around again, I'll be 100% coming back a wizard, so i will.'

And so he lay there, counting down the seconds between beats as the steady rhythm slowed, taking with it the pain as the numbness seeped in from his extremities, the silence a comforting blanket, waiting to tuck him into the void...until it was ruthlessly ripped away.

...A Cornea from a Nightmare Evil Eye...​

The words did not give him the common courtesy of passing through his ears. They were simply there, birthed directly inside the meat of his brain, burning like white-hot needles against his consciousness, his mind convulsing as a second verse clawed its way through his thoughts, dripping with a terrifying, ancient weight.

...Seventy Millilitres of Evil Eye Pus...​

It was a recipe, chanted by a voice that wasn't a voice, but rather a chorus of a thousand maddening whispers overlapping until they were indistinguishable, violently vomiting their cursed knowledge into his skull, expanding his mind until he felt his sanity begin to fray atthe edges.

'What the hell is going on-?!'

His panic was understandable, if somewhat comical given his earlier acceptance of his mortality. It certainly didn't help that the information brought with it the phantom smell of bitter herbs and the sickening, oily texture of something foul coating his tongue despite his mouth remaining dry and locked shut.

...A piece of a Cursed Crystal...

...Ten Grams of Cursed Crystal byproduct...​

And yet, despite the sheer absurdity of it all, despite the terror seeping through his soul by the whispers and the sheer revulsion of the flavour assaulting his taste-buds, Seth found an urge rising within him, an all-consuming thirst and desire to consume the accursed concoction.

...Thirteen drops of Rosemary Essential Oil...​

It would appear that the universe was refusing to accept his surrender on any terms but it's own, forcibly inscribing the formula for a dangerous rebirth directly onto the canvas of his dying mind, demanding that he listen, demanding that he remember and above all else demanding that he crawl back from the edge to brew it.

...A Page of Other People's Secrets...​

And all the while the whispers grew, clawing at the inside of his skull,refusing to let him drift into the dark, the maddening chant an agonizing hook dragging through his mind, violently hauling his consciousness back from the peaceful edge of the void.

To make them stop, he had to brew and consume the potion.

To Brew The Potion...He Had To LIVE.​

'...Fuck it, déanfaimid é-!'

If the universe wanted him to live, even if it was out of spite, then he was hardly going to refuse, especially if it meant he had to deal with this cacophony of shite in his brain for all eternity. And so, despite the silent darkness calling out to him like a lover's embrace, he turned his attention to his ruined, unresponsive vessel.

'Breathe!' he screamed inside his head, using the weight of the voices to visualise the thought surging down his spine, like an electric shock focussed on his chest, or at least, the area that felt like his chest, repeating it ad nauseum as he stubbornly tried to force the frozen muscles in his diaphragm to drop 'Breath you fat fuck!'

After what felt like an eternity, the chorus growing ever louder, his lips parted with a sickening wet rattle as his his lungs forcefully expanded, filling with air that tasted like dust, copper and bloody vomit.

It was the sweetest breath he had ever taken.

With that first, shuddering gasp he turned his attention to his heart, the once reliable engine laying cold and dormant like a stone in hischest. With a surge of will, he imagined a spectral hand reaching out to gently grasp it, squeezing the muscle through sheer, desperate intent once....twice...

...Tha-thump...​

A gasp escaped his lips as he felt his heart kickstart like he'd been kicked in the ribs by a mule, his back arching off the floor as a wave of pure agony flooded his senses, each renewed beat sending a sudden, violent rush of stagnant blood surging through his veins like liquid fire.

That sharp, white hot agony that had been blessedly on the verge of fading into the dark returned as the oxygen from that first, precious gasp of air was delivered straight to his dormant nerve endings via veigns that were being forced back open with every beat.

His eyes cracked open, his vision blurry and bloodshot, unable to make out anything in the dark save for his twitching fingers, the joints popping like dry twigs as they clawed desperately at the hardwood floor like skittering spiders.

To no-one's surprise, the eldritch choir from the darkness hadn't been silenced by his return to the world of the living, though thankfully for his sanity it had seemingly regressed to mere whispers at the base of his skull, lurking behind his eyes with the persistence of an eye-floater, but manageable, for now.

And so he lay there, face down on the floor, his cheek pressed against something that smelled of bloody bile and shame, simply focussing on the mundane task of breathing while the malfunctioning piston that was his heart continued to pump cold, stagnant blood through vessels that had already begun to settle.

By every law of medicine and nature he was a corpse. His skin was the gray of a winter dawn & his muscles locked in the early grip ofrigour mortis. But his mind, sparked by the maddening friction of the whispered recipe, refused to let the system shut down.

Hissing with exertion, he pushed past the pain of his failing nervous system to dig his bloody fingernails into the floorboards. His limbs didn't obey fluidly, moving in jarring, erratic twitches, like a puppet being yanked by coarse twine.

Planting one palm flat on the floor, he took a breath to brace himself before dragging his upper body forward, a hiss of agony escaping his teeth as his spine popped with the dry, terrifying sound of snapping kindling as he forced his left knee to bend and slide forward.

The gravity of the room felt immense, a physical weight trying to press him back into the ground where a dead man belonged. His thighs trembled violently, the dead muscle fibres tearing under the sudden, unnatural strain as he heaved his torso upward, leaning his weight against what felt like a bed-frame.

For a long, agonizing moment, he just hung there, his lungs drawing in ragged, whistling breaths that served only to clear the dust from his throat. His vision washed out into fields of static, the world tilting violently as his oxygen starved brain was forced to fire up again.

'Stand up you bastard.' he commanded, a harsh rattle escaping his throat as he gripped the bed-frame for support, driving his heel into the floor and slowly inching himself off his knees until they locked into place with a sickening click, allowing him to stand unsupported.

And so he stood there, swaying like a newborn calf in a gale, his hands hanging limp at his sides, blue-tinged and trembling. He was a monument of pure defiance, a dead man standing on his own two feet, glaring through bloodshot eyes at his surroundings.

'...Where the actual fuck am I?'

His confusion was understandable, as the room he found himself in was not the small, comfortable bedroom he'd been sitting in what felt like mere moments prior. There was no sign of his laptop, his gaming setup, his closet full of comfortable clothes nor the custom mattress he'd obtained to deal with his aching back.

Instead, he found himself standing in a small, cramped, dust filled attic room, lit by the stray beams of crimson light filtering through the thin curtains over a cracked window. The bed-frame he'd been leaning against for leverage was a rusted relic with a miserable, tattered mattress that stank of sweat, piss and booze.

Between the bed and the only door was a cabinet and a small chest of drawers. To the side of the cabinet stood a dressing mirror with two cracks and a pipe extending up the wall, connected to a strange mechanical device with exposed gears and bearings in several places.

An old, cast-iron coal stove sat in the rightmost corner of the room near a desk covered with discarded papers and what looked to be an ancient monster of a typewriter, the kind that had keys you actually had to push if you wanted to type anything rather than the sleek, modern remakes you could buy off the internet.

In short, the only thing this hovel had in common with Seth's bedroom was the fact they both had hardwood floors, though his was in decidedly better condition, smooth and clean whereas the one he currently stood upon was old and coarse, littered with papers, glass bottles and a puddle of dried black vomit he'd been lying in.

"That can't be healthy..." he rasped in disgust, only to freeze, his claw-like hand snapping clumsily to his throat at the sound of a strangers voice emerging from his chapped lips, the motion causing him to temporarily lose his balance, stumbling towards what appeared to be a basin by the window.

"Fuck-!" he swore aloud, his uneven stride rattling the floorboards as he barely managed to grab the counter the basin rested on to keep from falling, leaning desperately against it until the wave of vertigo settled, his deadweight causing the water in the basin to ripple.

"Keep it together Seth..." he ground out in a stranger's voice, taking a few deep breaths to steady his nerves before bringing his gaze up tofinally look out the window, only to feel the pit drop out of his stomach and the breath catch in his throat at the sight of the massive crimson moon hanging high in the night sky.

"What the actual fuck..." he croaked, any concerns about his voice lost as he gazed out at the the unfamiliar surroundings where the Irish countryside should have been, the scarlet light of the moon washing over cobblestone streets and towering town-houses like something out of a Victorian period drama.

"Oh fuck me sideways..." he whispered, the hammering of his heart the only other sound in the room as he stared out the window "I'm not in Yharnam am I? Christ Almighty please tell me I'm not after being dropped into Yharnam."

The only response he received was a single bead of cold sweat dropping from his cheek to the basin below, the sound causing him to look down only to find himself locking gazes with the haunted, bloodshot eyes of the stranger reflected on the water's surface.

Now it should be noted Seth was never what you might call vain by any stretch of the imagination. If anything he'd long since embraced that between his weight, premature baldness and general lack of faith in humanity, he was about as unattractive as you could possibly get to pretty much anyone without highly specific tastes.

However, even he was forced to admit that, to the truly desperate and possibly blind members of the fairer sex, he probably would have been seen as an absolute catch compared to the man staring back at him from the murky water of the basin.

For starters, the poor bastard looked like he'd endured a prolonged, waking nightmare, his face impossibly gaunt, his skin a sallow, translucent parchment tightly stretched over a sharp, angular skull. Long, matted strands of dark, messy hair fell wildly around his face, sticking to the cold sweat on his forehead.

The eyes were the worst part however, bloodshot and sunken deep into their sockets, framed by heavy, purplish-black shadows that looked like permanent bruises. His cheeks were hollowed out, carving deep, dark valleys beneath his high cheekbones, making him look like someone who hadn't eaten a proper meal in weeks.

'Or perhaps,' a darker part of his mind whispered in a voice he barely recognised as his own, a chill settling in his bones that had nothing to do with the air of the room, 'someone who had been slowly starving to death in a dark room'.

Therewas a profound, haunted emptiness in that reflection, a visage scarred not by violence, but by a deep, systematic erosion of life. And yet, as he stared into those unfamiliar, deadened eyes, a spark of recognition seemed to ignite within them.

"That's...me...?"

No, that wasn't right. He was Seth Collins, 40-years old, born in Magherafelt, County Tyrone...and yet, as he continued to gaze into those broken, haunted eyes, he found himself 'remembering' a different life altogether, one that belonged to him...or rather, to 27-Year-old Hervé Keats.

...A Cornea from a Nightmare Evil Eye...​

"FUCK!" Seth roared, gripping his head as the occult whispers, which had been present but blessedly silent until now, suddenly ramped up their intensity, cutting off the deluge of Keats' memories by forcing the recipe back to the forefront of his mind "Ah, fuck this altogether!"

Apparently the universe didn't much care for his little walk down memory lane, which was actually perfect as he'd been so drawn in by Hervé's memories he'd almost forgotten who he was supposed to be, or who he used to be as it were.

The room spun in a greasy, sickening wheel of yellow candlelight and coalsmoke as he gripped the edge of the washbasin for dear life with his free hand, his knuckles turning a stark, waxen white and his throat burning with the phantom taste of iron and vomit.

"Hervé Keats is dead..." he declared, as if by saying it aloud he could ground himself against the tidal wave of foreign memories that had roared into his consciousness, nearly tearing his sense of self to ribbons, the moment he'd locked gazes with the dead man's reflection "He died and I moved in."

Yet despite his attempts at affirming his identity, Seth simply couldn't bring himself to separate his forty-years of life from Hervé's twenty-seven, the names and faces of people he had never met, places he had never seen, blurring together with the familiar memories of home.

'I need to get my thoughts in order.' he realised, forcing himself to tear his eyes away from Hervé's haunting, sorrowful gaze in the basin, turning his attention to the desk in the corner, the floorboards groaning as he forced his right foot forward on legs that felt like wet clay.

About two-thirds of the way there his knees buckled, forcing him to stumble and slam his shoulder into the peeling wallpaper to keep himself from pitching forward. A sharp lance of physical pain shot through his arm, though it only served to further ground him in the present.

"Move."he hissed, glaring at the Typewriter as he staggered forward, leaning against the wall as support, Hervé's shaky legs finally giving out as Seth lurched across the few remaining steps to the desk, collapsing heavily into a creaking wooden chair with an impact that rattled his teeth.

The desk before him was littered with the frantic detritus of a desperate man, the dark grain of the wood mottled with ink stains and haphazardly scattered papers covered in a looping hand he dimly 'recognised' as Hervé's, bearing words that took him a second to translate as Loen Script, the national language of the Loen Kingdom.

Ignoring the mechanical beast that was Hervé's type-writer, he instead reached out with a trembling hand for a pair of cheap spectacles, pulling them on and sighing in relief as his vision, which had been blurry as all hell this entire time, cleared somewhat, though it did little for his headache.

Now able to see clearer, he turned his attention to the rest of the desk, one hand snagging a relatively clean sheet of rough parchment, while the other located a tarnished fountain pen and inkwell, the kind that had fallen out of use save for try-hard hobbyists once the ball point pen was invented.

"Beggars can't be choosers." he reasoned, placing the gathered items before him, only to grimace as the moment he made to put pen to paper, his mind seemed to roil, causing his grip on the instrument to falter, the nib scratching a sharp, jagged line across the paper before hecould even ink it.

"Calm the fuck down." he hissed, closing his eyes & gripping his wrist to block out the vertigo. He needed to anchor his thoughts. He needed to separate himself from the ghost of Hervé Keats, to try and figure out precisely what fresh hell he'd woken up to...and how, if possible, he was to get home.

And so, after taking one last breath to steady his nerves, Seth Collins opened Hervé Keats' eyes, dipped the dead-man's pen into the ink well and forced their uncooperative fingers to write by the scarlet liightof an alien moon.

My name is Seth Collins...​

---

First chapter and Seth is already thrown into the deep end. Let's see how well he does.

Irish Translation - déanfaimid é: Let's do it!
(He's basically saying 'Fuck it, we ball!')

 

[dazzle_dork]

to the truly desperate and possibly blind members of the fairer sex, he probably would have been seen as an absolute catch compared to the man staring back at him from the murky water of the basin

Click to shrink...

Not becoming more attractive after rebirth? You just commited cardinal sin my man. ROB police is coming for you.

Definitely more interested, there hasn't been a good lotm fanfic for so long, I will say since COI release. Watched!

 

[sey]

Not becoming more attractive after rebirth? You just commited cardinal sin my man. ROB police is coming for you.

Definitely more interested, there hasn't been a good lotm fanfic for so long, I will say since COI release. Watched!

Click to shrink...

He only looks like that because of circumstances prior to the transmigration. He's actually pretty good looking, just not 'bishounen' levels.

 

[sey]

Chapter 2: Transmigrator.​

For the next several hours, the scratch of the steel nib against parchment was the only anchor holding Seth Collins to sanity, the crimson rays of the Red Moon bleeding through the grimy window pane casting an eerie, blood-like hue over his trembling hands.

By the time his grip finally steadied, the inkwell had run low and the oppressive scarlet light had faded, replaced instead by the pale, watery gold of the morning sun as it peaked over the jagged, soot-stained rooftops like it was almost hesitant to show its face.

'Given what Hervé knew about this place, I wouldn't be surprised'. Seth mused as he finally, blessedly, finished writing out his thoughts and set the pen aside. His right hand was completely numb, his fingers stained a deep charcoal black.

Before him lay three sheets of coarse parchment, filled with a chaotic mix of English, elegant Intis cursive and blocky Loenese script, a result of the moments his focus had waned due to exhaustion, all written in a neat, frantic cursive he begrudgingly attributed to Hervé, as his own handwriting was hardly worth noting.

To anyone else, it would've looked like the ravings of a madman, but to Seth it was a lifeline he'd used to try and separate his thoughts, to try and retain a grasp on his identity without being overwhelmed by the memories of a dead man.

He was Seth Collins, forty years old, born and raised in Ireland and damn proud of it. He'd held many a job he hated and far too few he cared for, though none had brought him as much joy and grief as his writing career, something he'd always aspired to from the moment he first picked up The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Ironically enough, his writing style had lent itself more towards the occult side of fiction, drawing from local Irish folk-tales and legends to try and bring attention to his homeland's rich culture, a niche in a trade that was dominated by Arthurian fables and renditions of Greek or Norse Mythology.

While he'd had some modest success, enough to live comfortably though not extravagantly, he'd never really broken into the big leagues. Still,whenever he wasn't swamped with work or during that tumultuous period between jobs, he would inevitably put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard rather, and hash out something new.

Indeed, his last memories of Earth had been spent doing research for his most recent novel, browsing obscure occult literature and folklore on his laptop, surrounded by the scent of old paper and the sound of some history podcast on his headphones.

His immediate memories after that were of the void, that cold, chilling silence that threatened to drag him into oblivion, before the eldritch choir, which even now continued to whisper in his brain, forced him to haul his soul back from the brink and into the body of 27-year-old Hervé Keats.

At some point during his writing, he'd noted how this all seemed not unlike those 'Isekai' Novels where the Protagonist found themselves transmigrated into a new body at the moment of death, though whether that death involved the Protagonist or the original owner of their new meat-suit depended on the writer.

Given the situation he found himself in, it was likely his death and Hervé 's had simply coincided at the same time and barring a Freaky Friday situation, the younger man had seemingly lacked the mental fortitude to haul his soul back from the brink like Seth had.

'That,or whatever the hell shoved me into this body didn't offer him thesame olive branch' Seth reasoned grimly, staring briefly down at Hervé's thin, sallow wrists through the dead-man's spectacles before turning his attention back to his notes.

Hervé Keats, twenty-seven years old, born in Trier, the capital of the Intis Republic on the Northern Continent to Renaldo, a progressive novelist whose forward-thinking writings often challenged traditional social boundaries and Regine, a staunchly devout adherent of theChurch of the Eternal Blazing Sun.

With a background like that, it should come as no surprise that Hervé's childhood had been a minefield of striking intellectual and spiritual contrasts, his upbringing shaped by the unique intersection of his father's radical literary idealism and his mother's unwavering spiritual devotion.

Indeed, the only thing the Keats could apparently truly agree on was their unconditional love for their only son, though sadly Hervé's relationship with Régine was somewhat strained due to her strict theological upbringing clashing with the boy's innocent idolisation of Renaldo for the stories he crafted.

Sadly,as was often the case with 'progressive' minds, not everyone shared Hervé's appreciation for Renaldo's genius. Indeed, were pride not a sin Régine would almost certainly have felt intense satisfaction at the number of times Renaldo's writings were either banned or consigned to bonfires.

However, as one might expect from a man who could tolerate living under thesame roof as Régine, Renaldo was a stubborn cunt who refused to be silenced or censored, continuing to publish treatise filled with not-so-subtle critiques on the corruption in the aristocratic legal system and overreaching influence of the Church.

Needless to say, given the dogmatic overzealousness of the organisations in question, this obvious provocation eventually rustled the jimmies of the wrong people, a Notary of the Inquisition formally designating Renaldo's latest serial, a thinly veiled critique of the Orthodox Hierarchy, as'Heretical Corruption'.

To make matters worse, intentional or not, Renaldo's writings had inadvertently exposed a corruption scandal tying local church tithes to military contracts. This made him a liability in the eyes of the Intis Republic's Bureau 8, and unlike the church, the secret servicedidn't just stop at burning books; they eliminated liabilities.

Within forty-eight hours, Renaldo's entire literary circle vanished and all copies of his writings, even those that had nothing to do with theincident, were swiftly consigned to the bonfires by white-robedPurifiers, while in the background someone orchestrated a web offalse treason charges to entrap the novelist.

Hervé had only been a child back then, so his memories of their escape from Triers were a frantic blur of shattered illusions and hysterical tears as they fled into the night like vagrants with agents of both the church and state on their heels.

Fortunately, one of Renaldo's few remaining allies had managed to smuggle the Keats down the Srenzo River to the Port City of Tilisi, where they managed to pawn enough of their meagre belongings to buy passage on a vessel bound for the heavily contested waters of Midseashire.

The voyage across the turbulent waters was a gruelling test of endurance, filled with the constant terror that an Intis ironclad would intercept them. But weeks later, the ship finally dropped anchor at the damp, salt-crusted dock of Doolin Village, a fishing village on the isle of Lemrick in waters controlled by the Loen Kingdom.

And this was where the first of many red flags had sprung up for Seth, as thefirst time he'd tried to delve into Hervé's memories of Doolin, the mental backlash left him slumped over the desk in a cold sweat, waiting for the head-splitting migraine to recede into a dull, throbbing ache.

He could remember Hervé's childhood memories in Triers with no issue, every tall-tale Renaldo ever told his son and every theological lecture Regine tried to shove down his throat. And he could remember the man's later years as a student in Backlund University and his gradual decline to an alcoholic mess.

But the moment his thoughts drifted to the mist-shrouded coast of the Isle of Lemrick, his brain hit a concrete roadblock, a deliberate, conscious act by the late Hervé Keats in response to an event so traumatic he'd erected a wall within his own mind to keep from reliving it.

Whatever said event was, Seth honestly couldn't say, the memories a chaotic blur of sounds, fog and the scent of blood. The only thing he knew with absolute certainty was that Renaldo had lost his life to something that defied the laws of nature and witnessing it had instilled a life-long phobia of the supernatural in Hervé .

Which transitioned quite nicely into the second red flag Seth had stumbledacross in this mess. Specifically, the fact that not only was the supernatural real in this world, it was prevalent enough there was even a specific term for people, and things other than people, who dealt with it on a daily basis: Beyonders.

A catch-all term for any sentient being that wielded mystical abilities tied to one of the Twenty-Two Pathways defined by the local Tarot, acquired either through the consumption of carefully brewed potions or by being bestowed a Boon from a more powerful entity.

Needless to say, given the sheer threat they posed to the status quo, as even low-level Beyonders possessed enhanced durability and constitution compared to ordinary citizens, the authorities of all four Kingdomstook great pains to regulate their existence and the means ofacquiring said powers from the general public.

However, since even the most unhinged zealot understood the best way to confirm the existence of a secret was to deny it, the Orthodox Churches typically permitted the casual dissemination of information pertaining to arts they deemed 'safe', such as Divination or smaller Rituals tied to their respective Deities.

Of course, if someone just so happened to stumble across a Beyonder incident, whether it be as a hapless witness or because their curiosity bordered on feline, then depending on who caught them they could expect to be quietly relocated, drafted into service as anofficial Beyonder, or simply made to disappear.

---

'I really was fucking Isekai'd.' Seth scoffed, shaking his head inexasperation at the confirmation, only to immediately scowl at once again referring to Hervé's body as his own, something that was growing increasingly more concerning as time went on 'And it looks like whoever's behind it gave me a 'cheat'.'

He was, of course, referring to the recipe that was even now repeating on loop within the deepest recesses of his mind, the back of his (HERVÉ'S!) throat burning with a phantom desire to consume the infernal brew despite having never even laid eyes on it.

His first thought was that perchance Hervé had memorised the formula sometime prior to his premature death, but even setting aside the mental blue-screen of the 'Doolin Incident', it was clear Hervé had wanted nothing to do with the supernatural.

Indeed, one need only look at the man's past cases, both during his brief stint as a Barrister and his more recent endeavours as a Private Investigator to see a worrying series of events where Hervé would refuse to take on any lucrative cases if there was even a chance it involved the occult.

The man had spent most of his adult life running away from the dark, so there was no way in hell he'd have memorised a Beyonder potion before his death, which meant the only logical explanation Seth was currently craving what sounded like Satan's own smoothie was that whatever asshole entity shoved him into Hervé's corpse had uploaded the recipe into his brain and set it on loop.

It certainly didn't help that the moment Seth lost focus, the moment he let his mind wander for even a second, the damned whispers would rise up from the back of his skull, bringing with them that burning thirst that he somehow instinctively knew would not be quenched by any mortal drink.

This presented a problem, because Seth was not particularly inclined to follow the orders of some faceless entity that didn't even have the common courtesy to ask if he wanted to be Isekai'd in the first place, the answer of which would've been a resounding 'fuck off.'

Make no mistake, he'd probably have jumped on the Isekai bandwagon backwhen he was young, stupid and his only responsibilities were to finish his homework and keep his grades up. But as a tax-paying adult his priorities had shifted considerably, as had his views on being sent to a new world to start over from zero.

People often tended to forget that Transmigrators often started off with nothing. Sure, plenty of them lucked out and wound up in the bodies of nobles or at least possessed a cheat skill or knowledge that would allow them to rapidly climb the social ladder.

Seth Collins was an introverted novelist specialising in occult literature and Hervé Keats a disgraced, alcoholic former barrister who had been forced to become a private investigator just to afford the cheap spirits he used to drown out the ones that followed him from Doolin.

Truly a match made in heaven, the only thing the two remotely had in common were their date of birth, October 31st​, which was an oddity in and of itself simply by virtue of the fact the Loen Kingdom, and indeed all the Kingdoms on the Northern Continent, used the same Georgian calendar even if it went by a different name.

'Focus'.Seth grunted, squashing down the whispers once again as he turned hisattention to the bottom of the parchment, where several lines hadbeen dedicated to the accursed recipe that was even now dancingbehind his eyeballs like the world's most persistent eye-floater.

Sequence9 – Mystery Pryer

A Cornea and 70ml of Pus from a Nightmare Evil Eye.
A piece of Cursed Crystal and 10g of byproducts.
A sheet of paper containing other people's secrets.
13 drops of Rosemary Essential oil.​

'Sounds delicious.' Seth scoffed, his stomach roiling at the idea ofconsuming such a thing even as the back of his throat burned in anticipation like a man who'd stumbled across an oasis in the desert. Or an alcoholic on the verge of the shakes in Hervé'scase.

He sat there in silence, staring down at the words on the parchmentwhich seemed to shift and flow between English, Loen and Intis script, as well as a few other languages, like Seth's own native Irish, before his very eyes.

Hervé Keats had spent his entire adult life running from the supernatural, but that didn't mean he was ignorant of it, and in the smog-choked, Victorian sprawl of Backlund, choosing to become a Beyonder was a terrifyingly double-edged sword that should never be taken lightly.

On the one hand, Backlund was a meat grinder for the poor and destitute.The air alone, thick with yellow industrial smog and coal dust, was a slow death sentence and that wasn't even factoring in the serial killers, hidden cults, and cruel workhouses owned by callous nobles.

By becoming a Beyonder, Seth would not only obtain the raw power, enhanced senses and mystical might to not only survive those foggy streets and claw his way out of the gutter, but with enough luck he might even find a means of returning home.

On the other hand, the cons weighed like a lead coffin. The moment he consumed that potion, he would step onto a path of creeping madness. He would have to constantly battle the threat of losing control and mutating into a rampaging monster out of Lovecraft's worst nightmares.

Worse, Backlund was the heart of the Loen Kingdom, fiercely policed by the Nighthawks of the Church of the Evernight Goddess and the Mandated Punishers of the Church of the Lord of Storms. As an unaffiliated 'Wild Beyonder', catching their eye could see him shackled to their whims, locked in a subterranean cell or executed on the spot.

It certainly didn't help that the Mystery Pryer pathway was heavily associated with the Moses Ascetic Order, a once respectable organisation that had fallen to corruption following the supposed manifestation of their 'God', the Hidden Sage, the supposed embodiment of knowledge itself.

Not that any of that would matter if Seth couldn't get his hands on the ingredients necessary to brew his potion, and it was here that Hervé's fractured memories once again brought with them a cold dose of reality, as setting aside the mundane items like the rosemary oil, Beyonder ingredients did not come cheap.

And if the state of Hervé's dismal, dimly-lit room wasn't enough of an indication, the man had been completely destitute, what little money he earned between his cases and his part time writing for a local tabloid had either gone to his rent, of which he was two weeks behind, his family back in Doolin or down his throat.

As things stood, the landlord, a boorish man by the name of Briggs, was already threatening to have Hervé hauled off to the debtor's prison if he didn't see coin by the end of the week, so Seth really didn'thave the luxury of splurging on reagents.

With a sigh, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the scarred wood of the desk in order to take a silent, grim inventory of Herve's meagre worldly possessions laid out before him, starting with the monstrous, Underwood-style typewriter.

It was a sturdy, mechanical beast of iron and keys, but it was heavily used. The 'E' key stuck and the ribbon was frayed to a thread. If he dragged it down to the pawnshop on the corner of the wharf, the greasy broker would offer him a pittance, not even enough to buy the rosemary oil, let alone the main ingredients.

It naturally went without saying that Herve's scattered writings weren't worth much either. For all his aspirations and admiration of Renaldo, the man had lacked his father's literary talent. At the very best they could serve as kindling for the stove or emergency toilet paper if push came to shove.

That left only one other thing of value, Seth's hand moving slowly, almost hesitantly, to the vest pocket of Keat's threadbare coat, his fingers closing almost reverently around cold, engraved metal, the delicate chain clinking softly in the quiet room as he drew it into the light.

It was his father's…no, Renaldo Keats' silver pocket watch. A beautiful piece of Intis craftsmanship, the casing etched with a fading motif of a wild hound running through briars. The glass was scratched, but the internal ticking was steady, a rhythmic tick that felt like the only stable heartbeat in the room.

If he sold this, he might, just might, secure the funds to buy the Beyonder ingredients from a shadowy apothecary in the undergroundmarket, but the moment the thought solidified in Seth's mind, a violent, visceral wave of revulsion crashed through his chest.

Seth had never met Renaldo, he'd never sat on the man's knee andvmarvelled at the lump of silver that would one day be his. But thevresidual memories and emotional imprints of Hervé Keats flared up with the heat of a furnace the moment Seth dared to even think of selling his father's watch.

To Hervé, this watch was the final anchor to a time before the visions, before the spirits and before the bottle. As pathetic and desperate as he had become in life, the man would have gladly marched down to a back-alley surgeon and bartered both of his kidneys on a blood-stained table before he ever let a pawnbroker lay a finger on that silver casing.

'No.' Seth vowed, his brows furrowing, knuckles whitening as he gripped the watch tightly against his chest, as if daring the world to try and pry it from his cold dead fingers 'Not the watch. Never the watch. I'd sooner starve in the fog-!'

He caught himself, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead as thesheer absurdity of his thoughts registered. What truly alarmed him, however, was how natural that thought felt to him. He wasn't just observing Hervé's stubbornness; he was actively feeling it.

'Stubborn bastard.' He scoffed with a hint of pride that for the life of himhe couldn't explain, as it appeared the nature of the transmigration ran deeper than he thought if a dead man's ghost was able to voice in on his financial ethics with such passion.

With a sigh, Seth leant back in his chair, his eyes glancing back down at the formula on the parchment, the ever-shifting words a siren song backed by the infernal whispers in his mind.

He was a broke, detoxing alcoholic with a mind full of forbidden mysticism and a body that felt like a hollowed-out husk. Theonly way to move forward was to consume a potion he couldn't affordthe cheapest ingredient for. Hell, he lacked the proper vessel to even brew the damn thing in the first place.

The watch was off the table and the typewriter wouldn't cover a fraction of the cost. Atthis point, if he couldn't buy the ingredients with coin, he would have to find another currency, and as luck would have it, as a Private Investigator, Herve Keats happened to specialise in aspecific, profoundly volatile brand of currency valued by back-alley con-men and haughty High Lords alike: Information.

To be more precise, Blackmail, Seth allowing a slow, calculating smile to trace his chapped lips as he turned his attention to the final item resting on the desk, a little black notebook, heavily annotated but filled to the brim with results of several years of the dead man's meticulous findings.

Herve may have been terrified of the supernatural, but he was brilliant at observing the mundane, depraved sins of Backlund's high society, both during his time as a Barrister and his more recent stint as an Investigator, and he had detailed all of them in notebooks like this one.

As he leant back in his chair, allowing the dead man's memories towash over him like a dark, muddy river, Seth was able to pick out afew of the juicier highlights without having to so much as touch the cover of the tome and couldn't help but scoff at the predictability of it all.

A minor Member of Parliament funnelling contracts to a shell company in his lover'sname, a Baron's son that visited certain opium dens in the Wharf District. In Backlund, a single well-placed letter to any of these figures could yield dozens, if not hundreds, of gold pounds.

It was the perfect solution to his financial ruin. With that kind ofcapital, he wouldn't just be able to pay off his debts, he could comfortably afford to buy out an underground apothecary's entirestock of Beyonder ingredients and still have cash to spare to quietly disappear to escape the consequences.

Yet, as a transmigrator who understood the lethal undercurrents of this world, Seth's smile quickly faded into a grim grimace. Blackmail in Backlund was a high-stakes gamble with a razor-thin margin for error. If he targeted the wrong person or miscalculated his approach, he wouldn't get a purse of gold, he would get a slit throat.

Worse, if he happened to target a Beyonder, or someone who happened to be secretly involved with the city's hidden cults, shaking them down fo rmoney could land him in the crosshairs of a high-sequence monster.

Seth opened his eyes and stared at the typewriter, fingers twitching against his thighs. He needed to be surgical about this. He needed topick a target wealthy enough to pay immediately, cowardly enough to avoid the police, and entirely disconnected from the Beyonder world.

And as it just so happened, he didn't need to look far to find one, as Herve had already done all the legwork before Seth had ever come into his life.

---

Chapter 2, and some of you may have already noticed a crossover element I used for world-building purposes.

Let me know if you spotted it in a reply!