The corridor was a dead end, narrow, smelling of mold and urine. I ran, stumbling over piles of junk, pressing my bloody palm to my torn ribs.
Behind me, I could hear Grot's shouts, curses, heavy footsteps. I need to hurry.
Shreds of someone else's memories surfaced like dark fog, showing the way. Legs, not mine and yet already mine, carried me forward on their own, toward dampness and darkness. Ahead was safety. Ahead was escape.
A shot rang out behind me - the dry, sharp crack of a crossbow string. The bolt whistled as it embedded itself in rotten wood a centimeter from my head, showering my hair with splinters. I lunged sideways, into the black opening of collapsed brickwork, and slid down a slippery stone chute. My back hit a turn, knocking all the air from my lungs, and I fell into icy, stinking water up to my waist.
The darkness was absolute. Only from above, through the breach, came the dim light of torches and distant shouts.
"Search! He's somewhere here!"
I froze, trying to breathe more quietly. The water chilled my wounds, bringing strange relief. In my left hand, I still clutched the Tearstone. Its azure glow had faded, leaving only a faint, barely noticeable luminescence, like the light of a trinket. But it was warm. It pulsed in time with the frantic pounding of my heart.
Carl Gadison died under the wheels of a car. Here, in this stench and darkness, Roel BlueStar was surviving. And he needed to think.
The main character. In the book, his name was Elias Dain. A young adventurer with a tragic past and crystal-clear morals. In three days, following the thread from Grot's murder, Elias would pick up the trail of "the rat Roel" In the original, he would find his corpse in a ditch. A nice but pointless episode to reveal the cruelty of the world.
I didn't have three days. I might not have even had three hours. Grot was alive. He would be thirsting for revenge. And when his men started combing the sewers, they would find me. I was too weak to get far.
The rules needed to change. Not run from the plot, but break it.
With difficulty, I hauled myself out of the icy water onto a narrow ledge of broken brick. With trembling hands, I began feeling myself over. I was wearing a rough leather jacket, soaked through and sticky with blood. In my pocket were a couple of copper coins, a crumpled scrap of paper, and... a piece of hardtack wrapped in a rag.
I unwrapped it and shoved it into my mouth. Tough, tasteless bread and salty lard. What Roel ate. It gave strength. As I chewed, I thought.
Appearance. White hair, blue eyes. In this world—a mark. A sign of either northern blood, or a curse, or... magical potential. Roel in the book didn't have it. He was a blank slate. But the stone had reacted to my rage. To Carl's rage, stuck in Roel's body.
I brought the warm stone to my face. In its dim glow, I saw a reflection in the dark water. A pale, pain-twisted face. A broken nose, bruises under the eyes. And that hair. White as snow, even in the filth. And the eyes. Blue, but now a foreign determination burned in their depths.
I was a walking anomaly. A character who had gained self-awareness. And I had the key in my hands.
The stone reacted to emotions. Strong, pure ones. Fear didn't stir it. But rage - yes. But what if I tried not to release it outward, but to focus it? Not a scorching fire, but... a tool, a map?
I closed my eyes, shutting out the stench and the cold. I gathered into a fist everything that was left of my feelings: the residual pain, the animal fear, the cold hatred for this world, for Grot, for my own weakness. But above all, the iron, unshakable will to live. The very one that had made me cling to the stars in the void.
I clenched the stone in my palm, imagining this will flowing through my fingers, soaking into the artifact's warm surface.
The stone trembled. Its glow intensified, shifting from dim to a steady, milky white, illuminating a small circle around me. And I felt it. Not with sight, but with something else. A thin, barely perceptible vibration in the tunnel wall. A vulnerability, a weak spot where the brickwork had almost collapsed.
The book said nothing about this. Roel's stone was just a secondary trinket, a shiny plot device. The main character had only used this stone a couple of times. But now it was showing me weakness. Showing me the way.
Clenching my teeth, I stood up. The pain in my ribs shot through me sharply, but now it was my pain. My fuel. I walked over to the spot the stone had indicated and put my shoulder to it. The stone in my fist burned brighter, as if cheering me on.
The bricks gave way with an ugly grating sound. Behind them was narrow blackness. An old, forgotten fissure leading off to the side. Not a passage, just a hole. It wasn't on the maps in Roel's head. It shouldn't have existed at all.
I sucked in my stomach and squeezed inside, scraping my skin on the sharp edges. The stone, clenched in my hand, was my only lamp. The tunnel led upward. It was tight, stuffy, but dry. I crawled, pushing with my knees and elbows, gasping for air in the dust. Behind me, the sounds of pursuit finally faded, replaced by a ringing in my ears and the thumping of my own heart.
I crawled until my muscles began to cramp. And finally, I saw light ahead. Not torchlight, but pale, diffuse. Moonlight.
I crawled out of the fissure beneath the ruins of some old foundation and collapsed onto the damp earth, greedily gulping the cold night air. The sky stretched above me, studded with stars. The very same ones I had seen in the void. But now beneath them was the roof of some shed, a fence, and the smell of smoke from chimneys.
I was on the surface. In the back alleys of the city, in a district Roel had always avoided. In a safe place. For now.
I lay on my back, staring at the stars. The stone in my hand finally went dark, becoming just a warm piece of mineral. But something new burned in my chest. Not rage. Not fear.
Anticipation. The thrill of the game.
I am Roel BlueStar. A minor villain who was supposed to die in the first chapter. I didn't know how or why I got here. But I knew the plot. I knew the future.
No one - not Grot, not the future "hero" Elias Dain, not even the author of this stupid book - expected me to make a move.
I slowly got up, leaning against the shaky wall of the shed. I needed to find shelter. Bandage my wounds. Come up with a plan.
It was time to write my own path.