I’ve been underutilizing my teleportation magic.
Not in how often I use it, since I’ve been jumping all over the place, but in how I frame it. The wish aspect.
My very first wish, back on Earth, was vague... So vague, it should’ve tossed me into deep space, a mana storm, or a mansion full of cannibals. I had no coordinates, no magical knowledge, not even a real destination in mind. I just whispered into the stars, “I want a world with more magic.”
And yet… here I am, safe and breathing, in Hano of all places.
Not just some magic-infused version of Earth. Not even a random spot in one of the Seven Realms. I didn’t land in a sealed ruin or at the bottom of an ocean. I appeared near Hano: a stable city, teeming with life and magic, with a translation Soulbook waiting for me within a few blocks.
That can’t be a coincidence.
So I pulled out my notebook and started mapping the logic.
Hano is the single most populous city across all the realms. Not the most powerful, not the most ancient, but the most diverse. According to my readings, people from every realm pass through here. Some settle. Some trade. If you wanted a sampling of all seven magical systems, including whispers of the ancient telepaths and sealed-realm residue, this is the place.
Which means my vague wish, a world with more magic, wasn’t interpreted randomly. Magic found the closest thing to an answer and dropped me in the best approximation.
That’s the key.
The words I used mattered.
So I had a hypothesis: if the magic that powers my teleportation responds to the formulation of a wish, then I might be able to shape it more cleverly. Not just jump to known locations or next to people, but request outcomes I couldn’t possibly predefine. To use vagueness as a tool, not a liability.
That meant it was time for a test.
I needed a goal that didn’t involve life-or-death stakes. Something with a level of certainty in the outcome despite uncertainty in the location.
I needed a shovel.
Shovels are underrated. Truly. They’re the backbone of civilization. Good for peace and war. They can build and destroy fortifications. They can even be used to educate numbskulls. Sadly, mine wouldn’t be used for blunt philosophical violence today, just honest digging.
I bought a good, sturdy shovel from a vendor in the market district, lightweight oak handle, a reinforced edge, and decent weight, and cradled it like an old friend.
Then I teleported back to the Reach.
The sunless sky greeted me with its familiar blue-black haze, and I landed near the dome at my camp. Breaking away from the noise of the city to the silence of the mountain.
Until I could find a better way to charge Star-mana or upgrade my spear to hold more than one jump, this would remain my teleportation launch point. It’s the only place where I can see shooting stars regularly.
I sat down on a flat rock, opened my notebook, and clicked my pen, one of my few Earth pens. I really need to find a way to recharge them because I am not going to write with a quill feather. Maybe Nada could help; she is an ink mage, after all.
For now, it was time to test whether a wish, crafted with just the right amount of curiosity, could lead me somewhere new. The best I could come up with was:
“I wish to be standing safely on top of the nearest buried treasure something untouched for at least a hundred years, in an isolated place where I won’t disturb anyone’s livelihood.”
Long, yes. But those were necessary fail-safes.
I didn’t want to rob anyone. I didn’t want to end up in the middle of some rich merchant’s basement vault. Or take a poor farmer’s life savings. The wish had to specify safety, remoteness, and time.
Because here’s the thing: my magic doesn’t work without a degree of conviction. Not just intention, but belief. Certainty. If I didn’t think the wish was plausible, the magic wouldn’t hold.
Luckily, I’ve watched enough true crime and war documentaries to know how often people hide things and never return: money, weapons, or jewelry buried in forests, under floorboards, lost to time: sometimes they die, sometimes they forget, or the landmarks shift.
And this world? The city of Hano has existed for over two thousand years. That’s millennia of empire-building, civil wars, collapsing cults, overreaching barons, failed rebellions, pirate loot, fleeing nobles, and desperate mages. Surely someone, many someones, have hidden valuables they never came back for.
I stood, gripping my spear in one hand, shovel in the other.
I recharged Star-mana inside the spear and angled my eyes toward the sky, waiting for the telltale streak of a falling star.
When it came, I whispered:
“I wish to be standing safely on top of the nearest buried treasure something untouched for at least a hundred years, in an isolated place where I won’t disturb anyone’s livelihood.”
The Sunless Reach vanished in a blink.
The light shifted from Night to day. I stumbled slightly, knees adjusting to softer ground.
I was in a forest clearing, birdsong chirping in the distance. A small breeze rustled leaves. The sun filtered through a canopy of maple trees. Right beside me stood a single oak, tall and twisted, its bark gnarled like ancient hands.
I smiled.
A lone oak in a sea of maples? That’s a good landmark to hide a stash.
I marked the spot, pulled out my shovel, and got to work.
Three minutes in, my shovel clinked against something hard. I knelt and brushed away the soil with gloved fingers, revealing a shredded leather pouch.
Inside were five gold coins and a dozen silver, their surfaces dulled with age but unmistakably of the same mint as the current coins. Still in use in Hano today.
I stared at them, stunned.
This wasn’t just a lucky fluke. The magic worked.
I stood, drew a deep breath, and touched my spear again. A pulse of Star-mana, a single silent wish, and I was back in the Reach.
And then I did it again.
Four more times, with the exact same wish. Resting for an hour of stargazing each time to top off my mana reserves and recharge my spear.
Each time, the magic dropped me in a different location. Once on a mountainside thick with fir trees. Once in a quiet, mist-covered glade. Once in rocky terrain that looked like the border of a desert. And once in a hill range covered in wild grass and birdsong.
Always remote, always peaceful, and always untouched.
Each time I carefully dug, I found small caches, crates, or sacks with coins and occasionally a gemstone or two. The currency was always the same: a stamped flame on the silver coins, and the Rift Gate on the gold. That meant Hano’s economy hadn’t changed much in at least a few hundred years. A fascinating detail I filed away for later study.
The last teleport, however, took me somewhere different.
Instead of a forest or mountain, I found myself standing in the middle of a ruined village.
The stone structures had once been elegant, with arched colonnades, crumbling pillars, and wide steps. But now everything was sun-bleached and broken. A low wind pushed through the cracks, stirring dust and the sharp scent of dry grass.
It reminded me of Roman ruins back on Earth, except older and less preserved. More like the abandoned ruins in rural North Africa than the touristy ones in Europe.
I wanted to explore, but decided I shouldn’t. My wish guaranteed safety here and now, not deeper in the ruins. Instead, I dug right beneath my feet, near the base of a half-toppled statue.
It took longer. The dirt was denser, and roots had invaded the space.
Then I heard a clang.
A rusted-through and half-rotted iron chest emerged from the soil. It looked more like a sliding box than a treasure chest.
I pried it open carefully, pushing the crumbling metal lid away without breaking it. Inside was gold, thicker coins with irregular ridges. The coins bore a stamp of a man surrounded by flames on one side, and a nude woman in water on the other, at least, that was my best interpretation.
Along with the coins were small, clouded gemstones. And at the bottom, three glowing stones: deep orange cores, pulsing faintly with heat.
Fire monster cores.
And not the low-tier kind either, these were dense and massive. The kind you’d expect from a beast the size of a house.
I stared down at the haul, heart thudding.
“Okay,” I said aloud. “That’s enough treasure hunting for today.”
Back at the Reach, I laid everything out on a mossy stone, sorting coins and cores like a kid counting Halloween candy.
Final tally:
- 26 gold coins (modern)
- 93 silver coins (modern)
- 19 ancient gold coins
- 44 ancient silver coins
- A handful of gemstones
- 3 large fire monster cores, each practically humming with energy
It was a lot of gold. If Je’e’s golden belts business was doing well, I could probably sell her the ancient coins for a markup. I had literally doubled my wealth in just one morning.
I tucked the valuables into my pack, checked that my spear was charged with Star-mana, and whispered on the next shooting star:
“I want to return to my room at the Freelancer Guild, safely.”
The moment I got back to my dorm room at the guild, I locked the door, lowered the blinds, and pulled out my pack.
I took my time hiding the treasure: modern coins in a ceramic vase under half-dead flowers, ancient coins wrapped in fabric and tucked under the bed, and monster cores in a locked metal box inside my footlocker.
A bit paranoid? Maybe. But paranoia is what keeps people alive in fantasy worlds.
That done, I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at a single, glittering gold coin in my palm. Smooth. Heavy. Perfectly minted.
Time to celebrate.
When I first got my 100-gold windfall from selling Earth jewelry, I’d received the title of San and a generous stipend of 2.5 gold coins a year through the bank from interest. At the time, it had felt like an absurd amount of wealth, but it bled fast with guild dues, gear, training, food, temple donations, Soulbooks, and regular books. I already spent more than half in just a month, and I was already starting to cut corners to avoid dipping below the required threshold.
But now?
Now I had extra.
So I tucked a few gold coins into my purse and made a beeline for the one place I’d been dreaming about since my first week in Hano: The Soul Emporium Trade House.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
The shop sat across from a plaza in the nobles’ district, looming over a Soulforge and an enchantment specialist. Its front was clean and understated with smooth slate walls, but the glass door gave it an air of modernism absent from other establishments. A symbol of a red fruit with a green snake biting it was painted over polished wood above the entry.
Inside, magic hung in the air like incense. Every item exuded an aura of its own, as if it were a living creature. I started to read items displayed: bracelets made of feathers with slowfall charms, vials of bottled flame, water condensation stones, voice orbs with a single bard song recording, enchanted whetstones, and, what I came here for, bags of holding.
I drifted past the showcases until a cheerful voice interrupted me.
“Looking for space or style?” a woman asked.
I turned and saw her: short, energetic, cyan-haired, wearing a gold-trimmed vest. Her eyes sparkled the same hue as her hair. Even her fingernails were painted to match.
“Space,” I said. “A lot of it.”
“You’re in luck. Shipment from the Soul Realm came in last week. Three generations of gluttony frog souls were stitched together to form a single pouch, one of the best quality bags we’ve ever gotten. Do you have any sizes in mind?”
“I don’t know the standard, but… I want something big enough to carry my whole life with me.”
She laughed. “We have a six-by-six-by-six-meter cube with a stable enchantment soul. That’s about the size of two studio apartments stacked on top of each other. The frog leather is reinforced with kindred Rock-moth silk for extra durability.”
“Yes, please.”
She gave a low whistle. Then blinked. “Aren’t you even going to ask for the price?”
“Money isn’t a problem as long as you don’t try to overcharge me.”
“All the prices are written on the display. Let me show you.”
She pulled a cube-shaped leather satchel off the wall display. It was faint blue with charcoal-gray stitching, the size of a Rubik’s cube. When she opened it, the mouth stretched wider than my forearm, the inside shimmering like the surface of a still lake.
“Two and a half gold coins,” she said, “and it comes with a base ward so no one else can open it. But that means it has to be soulbound to you with our Soul Dealer.”
“Absolutely. I want the full binding.”
“Of course.” She lowered her voice slightly. “The Soul Dealer is upstairs. He works out of the owner’s office. He’s… intense. But you’ll be safe. Go through that door, third floor, red curtain.”
The office was dim and overly warm, with velvet walls and the faint feeling of charged air. I stepped inside, clutching my new bag like a sacred artifact.
He was already seated on a comfortable chair, hunched over a work table stacked with wooden jars filled with glowing ember liquid. He wore a long black coat and rings on every finger. His head was bald, tattooed with flickering runes that blinked and faded in slow pulses. From his cyan eyebrows, I could tell he was a Soulit. But the most glaring thing was his aura. It was impossible to ignore; it was dense and always active.
It reminded me of when Garo trained me, except Garo suppressed his presence unless he wanted to intimidate someone. This man didn’t suppress anything. His very existence pressed against mine like I was a candle in a hurricane.
He didn’t look up when he spoke.
“You want this soulbound.”
“Yes,” I said, trying not to stammer.
“Name?” he asked.
“Alice.”
He stepped closer. His presence wrapped around me, not aggressive, but deliberate. Studying.
“You have a weird resonance,” he said. “Can you teleport?”
“Y… yes, sir.” I hesitated.
“Are you General Kiddu’s illegitimate child? No, you’re too old for that.”
“I’m from the Mythic Realm,” I lied, hoping he couldn’t detect it.
He held out a gloved hand. “Hair.”
I plucked a strand from my head and gave it to him. He twirled it between his fingers, and then I felt it.
He activated his will.
The air thickened. My skin prickled. The aura around him flared in a controlled surge, and the strand of hair melted into golden liquid. He coaxed it like honey, twisted it into a tiny spiral, and very gently let it drop into the bag.
The leather rippled, the space inside shimmered, and the binding was sealed.
“Done,” he said.
I exhaled, realizing I’d been holding my breath.
He turned back to his work without another word.
I didn’t stop to gawk. I clutched the bag to my chest and fled… politely.
Once I was back in my room, I locked the door again, dropped the bag on the bed, and tested it.
It opened to a shimmering void. I couldn’t really see inside.
I started small, with a book I’d already read. I placed it inside, and it vanished. I put my hand in, concentrated on the book, and it was in my grasp.
Next, I placed my phone inside carefully, then waited a few minutes to see if the bag affected it in any way. The phone worked normally; even the clock advanced like usual, meaning the space inside wasn’t in stasis. Then I added my laptop, my wrapped coin pouches, my journals, and my mini book collection.
I grinned like an idiot.
“Best. Purchase. Ever.”
By the time I finished organizing, my room looked pretty much like it had been before I ever touched it. I briefly considered shoving the bed into the bag, too, but that felt like a step too far... plus, it wasn’t mine to begin with. I tucked my newly bound bag of holding into my belt and headed out to the guild hall to check the bulletin board for anything interesting. However, my thoughts kept drifting back to the ruins of the tower, to the constellation carvings and the flowing script curling beneath each star.
I needed to know what it said.
So I started asking around.
Most people in the guild shrugged. A few adventurers mistook it for one of the Kindred's old tongues. One freelancer tried to scam me by making up a fake translation, but he couldn’t even distinguish between words; he kept giving the same text a different meaning each time I showed it to him.
Eventually, I made my way up to the admin wing and knocked on Nada’s office door.
“Come in!” she called.
The difference from the last time I saw her was immediate. Her hair was tidy in braids rather than turned into squid tentacles, a sign she hadn’t been overusing her powers. Her robe sleeves weren’t rolled up in frustration, and the mountain of papers on her desk had shrunk to a manageable hill.
She looked up from a neat stack of premade forms and smiled. “Alice. You caught me during a rare moment of peace. Are you going to flip my world upside down?”
“Nope, not this time,” I said with a grin. “You look functional today.”
“I know, right?” she laughed. “These standardized request forms are a miracle. Less handwriting, fewer bribes, and I only have to yell at idiots once a day now. Maybe twice.”
“Progress,” I nodded, stepping inside. “I have a quick question: have you heard of anyone who can read the ancient script?”
Her brow furrowed. “The one with the looping strokes?”
I perked up. “Exactly that.”
“Well, there’s a bounty,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “The Outspring family posted it a few years back. Big money if anyone can crack it. Even small hints are worth coins. I think the bounty’s tied to one of their research heads… Ko’i Outspring, I believe. You’d probably have better luck asking Sara at the Soulbook shop. She works directly under him.”
“Sara? Calr’s sister Sara?”
“Yep. Sharp girl with blood-red hair.”
That was all the push I needed.
The Soulbook shop looked the same as always: folded vellum and paper scrolls filling the backroom cabinets. Sara was behind the counter, looking at weird parchments with random shapes.
I stepped in. She looked up and raised an eyebrow. “Alice. Back already? Don’t tell me you’re switching Soulbook. Was lightning too mana-intensive for you?”
“No, I’m fine in that regard,” I said, walking over. “I have a question about languages.”
She set the stylus down. “Oh, really, are you finally ready to buy a language skill book that directly teaches you the language without burdening your soul?”
I blinked. “Oh, I completely forgot about those. Maybe later. What I came here for is this.”
I pulled a sketch from my journal, the curling ribbon of characters I’d copied from the tower wall. “Have you ever seen this before?”
Sara leaned forward. Her expression shifted from playful to focused.
“I have, actually. That’s the ancient telepaths’ tongue; the Language of the Land. You see it on ruins, old constructs, and the odd relic that predates Hano.”
“So… can anyone read it?”
She snorted. “I wish. No, there isn’t. Not yet, anyway.”
“That’s the problem,” she added. “You see, for a Soulscribe to modify a soul, they have to understand both the soul and the language of its origin. That’s why most Soulbooks use monsters from the Bloodline Realm or the Kindred. Even the oldest dialects are still preserved in those realms.”
“But not with local beasts?” I asked, thinking of the moon hare.
“Useless,” she said, frustration creeping into her tone. “There’s no teleportation, Soulbooks, no telepathy, and no long-distance portals because those creatures evolved here, in the Contested Realm, and their language is lost. We can’t use what we can’t parse.”
“That seems… inconvenient.”
“Tell me about it. A teleportation Soulbook would revolutionize logistics, war, rescue, and travel. Everything.”
“So I heard your boss Ko’i Outspring is working on it?”
“Yeah. He’s trying to fix that,” Sara said, crossing her arms. “He’s one of the few researchers crazy enough to still pursue it. I’ve been helping him out for extra cash. Pattern recognition mostly. I’m decent at spotting repetitions. We’ve isolated a few symbols that look like modifiers, maybe prepositions or verbs, but nothing conclusive yet.”
“Do you think you can parse it in due time?”
“Sadly, I doubt it. Not without a serious, groundbreaking discovery.”
I thanked her, left the shop, and walked slowly back through the cobbled street, notebook in hand, ideas bubbling in my head.
Then maybe, just maybe, I could put my finger on the scales.
Back at my camp in the Reach, I sat cross-legged with my notebook in my lap and my spear across my knees. My last experiment had brought wealth, but this time I wasn’t chasing coins.
I wanted knowledge.
Real, world-shaping knowledge.
I tapped my pen against the page and whispered aloud the words I wrote, after fully charging my spear with Star-mana:
“I wish to be standing near a Rosetta Stone-type document,
That combines the ancient language and a language still spoken today.
Someplace near enough within my mana capacity.”
That last part was important: I didn’t want to burn myself out again like I had with the chicken teleport. Still, the moment I released the wish, I felt the Star-mana yank me somewhere new.
When the light faded, my breath caught in my throat.
I was indoors. The air was still, slightly stale, and smelled faintly of peaches and ink.
The room looked like a private study, or maybe a professor’s office: wood-paneled walls, two bookcases packed with leather-bound volumes, a sturdy desk stacked neatly with scrolls and writing implements. An unlit oil lantern sat on the table, but the room glowed softly as if bathed in daylight.
The strange part?
There were no windows.
And no actual light sources.
Yet everything gleamed.
I reached out and touched the desk, heart pounding.
It was Real.
A glance at the pages strewn across the surface almost made my stomach twist with disappointment. The script wasn’t Common. But to my relief, it was familiar: Holy script, the language of the Temple. I’d seen enough of it to recognize the brushwork, though I couldn’t read more than a few words.
Still… Holy script was used today. Which meant…
I turned in a slow circle, scanning for more. There had to be more.
That’s when the ground shook.
It wasn’t violent, just a deep tremor that almost made me lose my footing. The weird thing was that the books and sheets of parchment around me didn’t even shift. Not at all.
I froze, hand tightening around my spear.
Two minutes passed. Then another tremor, just as deep. A steady rhythm, repeating every couple of minutes.
I frowned.
Earthquakes don’t come on a schedule.
And yet the room didn’t seem affected. Nothing, other than me, reacted. It was as if the building wasn’t part of the same world as the shaking.
I stepped cautiously toward the only visible doorway. The golden light pouring through it was brighter and more concentrated. I crept through the frame and into the adjoining room.
A bedroom.
The glow came from the figure lying in the bed.
A woman, perhaps in her forties, lay beneath soft sheets, hands folded neatly over her chest. Her hair was a vibrant Irish red, loosely curled and unbound, and she wore a plain white shift. She looked peaceful, serene, and perfectly still. As if she’d just fallen asleep mid-prayer.
Only… she wasn’t breathing.
And her body shimmered with the unmistakable glow of a healing miracle.
I stared, stunned. I’d seen that light before; first in the Temple, when Lady Sana cleansed a room on my first day here, and later when Vena ascended to Cleric. But this was stronger. Purer. A full-body, passive miracle. It clung to her like a shield.
She was dead. But her aura was still active.
Preserving everything around her.
Another tremor rolled through the floor, but nothing in the room stirred. Even the curtains didn’t rustle. Her hair didn’t move.
I backed away slowly…
Wait. Curtains? That meant a window.
I turned to a small glass window near the corner. Curiosity tugged at me. I crossed the room and lifted the heavy velvet curtain.
Then I saw it.
Out beyond the building rose a single leg.
A massive edifice the size of the Empire State Building. Each toe is the length of a city block. Skin like weathered stone and crystalline rock, moving in slow, implacable steps.
And it wasn’t just one leg. The second was hidden behind the first, slowly lowering with a deep impact: the tremors.
The rest of its body towered so high I could barely see its torso from the window. The world beyond was flattened to rubble. This thing wasn’t even attacking.
It was just walking.
And the world was crushed underfoot like brittle chestnut shells.
Only this building remained.
Because of her.
Because of her lingering miracle.
I stepped away from the window, heart hammering. My instincts screamed to teleport out now, to run as far as I could. But the magic had brought me here for a reason.
I returned to the study and finally looked at the desk properly.
There it was.
An open book.
Two facing pages. One side is written in minimalistic Holy script. The other side, the ancient curling glyphs I’d seen in the ruins, carved into star maps and tower walls.
Line for line. Phrase by phrase.
This was it.
My Rosetta.
A bridge between the old and the now.
“Bingo,” I whispered, trying not to cry from relief.
I reached toward the page and traced a single character with my fingertip, watching the lines form a familiar Holy word I recognized.
Holy of holies: a title bestowed upon only six people in recorded history. Or was it a gained Class? The natural evolution from Paladin… maybe both. I wasn’t sure.
I looked once more toward the glowing room behind me. Toward the woman. Toward the impossible giant outside. And I hesitated.
This wasn’t something I could hand over lightly.
The Soul Scribes would salivate over this. Sara’s boss would pay me a fortune. I could probably earn a lifetime stipend, or a noble title, or research privileges in at least three realms.
But…
No.
This belonged with the Faith. With the Temple. With people who carried this woman’s legacy.
I closed the book gently and held it close.
My wish had worked a little too well.
Now I had a choice to make.