I woke up certain it was a Tuesday. A specific kind of mean-spirited morning where your lungs taste of radiator dust and the world hasn't quite decided if it's real. On the plus side, I was warm. I had sheets tucked up under my chin, and I could hear the sound, somewhere, of someone breathing. I reckoned that was probably me.

Weirdly, though, other than that, it was pretty quiet for a Camden morning. I couldn't hear any sirens or mopeds, and no one outside my flat appeared to be arguing about crypto.

Which surely meant either I'd died in my sleep, or I was doing my best Cillian Murphy impression and had slept through the apocalypse.

I cautiously opened one eye. The ceiling above me was a whole lot of faded Artex, rippling and undulating, with a spider crack yawning across the top right corner. The plaster had that peculiar yellow tint it gets from too many winters of damp and bad tea.

This was not my flat.

My flat had epic water stains and a ceiling so low it had started developing intimacy issues. The one currently above me stretched high enough to host thoughts. And the light spilling in through the curtains wasn't orange from the streetlamps or green from the off-licence sign.

It was, God help me, natural.

I tried to sit up. My body fervently disagreed with this intention, and my muscles shifted and pulled in unpleasant ways. I was suddenly gifted a 4k flashback as to what I had been doing just before turning in last night… and if you've ever surreptitiously dug a shallow grave for the body of the woman who'd recently assassinated you, then you'll know how very visual that sort of memory was.

Hmm. Things were starting to click a bit more into place.

There was no traffic. No radiator clanking. And no passive-aggressive fox screams. Instead, my body was experiencing the scratch of old linen, there was a brass lamp over there sitting on a battered desk, and I was being overwhelmed by the smell of cedar and mothballs. Physics books lined the far wall with yellowed spines and titles that hadn't been fashionable since Britain had colonies.

I was in Aunt M's cottage, wasn't I?

I didn't try to move again as the weight of quite a lot of recent information settled down upon me. I let my eyes trace the shapes of furniture I hadn't seen in the light since I was a teenager and had been grounded for rearranging a spice rack by pH level.

An ache bloomed behind my eyes.

She was dead.

And I'd been murdered.

And then… not.

The System took its usual liberty, right on cue:

[Welcome Back, Elijah Meddings.]

[Status: Ironclad Warden]

[Local Anchor Detected: Halfway Hold.]

[Realm Link currently stable.]

My insides did a slow barrel roll as I finally sprang up. The room stayed where it was, smug about it.

Right. Halfway Hold. Aunt M's cottage. The one with the gramophone. The one with the link to a whole different realm.

I'd been shot. Twice.

Through the chest, if I recalled correctly. There'd been blood, collapsing lungs, and the very specific sensation of dying next to a box of Christmas decorations.

Then a fall. And then Bayteran. Wolves, trolls, gods, war crimes. Morningstars. Anchorfall. Steam cannons. Dema flipping off a god.

And then the heaviest of my most recent memories arrived via me looking at a burner phone that wasn't mine on the bedside table. "Is it done? Is he dead?"

"Yeah," I'd said. "She's not answering. Probably because I caved her skull in. And broke her spine. And… actually, she's pretty much as dead as anyone person can be. I hope you have her friends and family details handy."

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Silence. Then: "Eli?"

"You were expecting someone else?"

"What the hell have you done, lad?"

I locked down a whole load of spiralling emotions to keep my voice level. "What you trained me to do. Someone tried to kill me, and I took care of business. Although, to be strictly accurate, she did succeed in shooting me twice in the chest. So, you should probably throw in the second half of her fee in the comp package for her nearest and dearest, too."

There was a pause, and then a long exhale came down the line. I imagined him putting his feet up on his desk and fishing in his pocket for a cigarette. "You never could just make things easy, could you?"

"Well, you know how it is. I always did have a thing against being summarily murdered. Just so I can say I asked the question, do I get to know why you arranged a hit on me?"

"You were slipping."

"I dropped a few balls. I'm not sure it was quite 'salt the earth' territory."

"It was more than a few balls, lad. Even ignoring the big screw ups off the last few months, you've been getting reckless for a while. You went off-script in Nice. Then there was that thing with the hacker in Croydon—"

"She was twelve, and the brief said non-lethal."

"And you put two of ours in the hospital because you didn't like the way they handled her."

"Two of yours, you mean."

"Don't start."

I lowered myself onto a chair. My pulse still hadn't settled, and my knees were feeling a touch wobbly. "Don't start, Griff! I kind of think we're beyond the 'don't start' stage. You've just had me shot! I trusted you."

"Lad, if you're bleating to me of all people about 'trust', then I left it too long to have taken out. It was literally lesson number. Trust no one. Least of all me. You became sloppy, and I made the calculation that things would be better with you in the ground than walking the pavement. You must have known this was coming."

"She flirted with me on a train," I said. "Before shooting me. That from you?"

"Maybe. You always were a sucker for a pretty face."

"She smiled when she did it. Double tab. Did you know her?"

"I did not. She was just a name in my phone, whom I'd heard did a pretty clean job. Actually, if it makes you feel any better about the whole thing, she was very expensive. More expensive than you, actually."

"Not necessarily seeing the silver lining there, mate."

There was a pause, as if Griff had covered the phone to give out a stream of directions. When his voice returned, it was calmer and more business-like. "I gave you the respect of a clean exit. I told her to make it quick. You'd always said you wanted that."

"You sent to kill me in my dead aunt's attic. That's not clean, Griff. That's personal."

"You were unravelling. You were starting to think more than the work needed. You were screwing the pattern."

That stopped me. Just for a second. "You taught me to read the pattern."

"And you stopped. You started thinking you were the pattern. You think too much of yourself, Eli."

I looked down at the phone. Katya's blood smeared across the cracked screen. "I used to imagine what you'd say if I ever screwed up this badly," I said. "But I never thought it'd be this cliched. You could've just let me go."

"I did. I let you go the moment I authorised the job. And, just while we're tacking lumps out of each other, can I just flag that – as far as tradecraft goes – running home to your family's cottage isn't exactly vanishing into the ether."

"Good point, well made. In my defence, I wasn't expecting you to be the one organising the hit."

"I'm like the Spanish Inquisition that way. Well, as we're talking, and the hitter is dead, you obviously survived. Somehow."

"I did. And, while we're being all chummy, I should let you know, I'm different now."

"Different how?"

I smiled. "You'll find out. I think you might've made a truly horrible mistake."

"Don't be so dramatic, lad. No harm, no foul. You're obviously not so far gone that you couldn't take care of yourself. I can still work with that. Why don't you bring yourself in, and we can have a chat?"

"Oh, I'm definitely coming in, Griff. But it's not for a chat. You've got no idea what I've become," I said. "But you'll see. Soon."

The call disconnected. Not ended. Not hung up. Just… disconnected.

The buzzing under my skin was still there. Low, like electricity in the walls. I'd grown used to it in Bayteran—the hum of stats and status, of buffs running in the background like dodgy apps. I flexed my fingers. They were thicker. Same with my arms. My chest. I looked like someone had modded me halfway into a strongman competition and then given up when it got boring.

Not a dream, then. Not a coma fantasy stitched together by dying neurons. I really had tanked a dungeon, insulted a god, and got saddled with a job description that boiled down to 'exist loudly and get hit.'

I stood, slow and creaky. The floorboard by the window still groaned under my heel. My breath left a faint smear on the glass. Beyond it, the garden was a wet tangle. No snipers. No men in suits.

Which, considering Griff, was either a good sign or a very, very bad one.

I'd trusted him. Trained with him. Bleed-with-him, bury-the-body sort of loyalty.

And then he'd had me shot in an attic, presumably while thinking Very Serious Thoughts about national security. Or asset disposal.

There was a taste in my mouth—like pennies and burnt toast. Betrayal, maybe. Or just cottage plumbing.

The next notification blinked into view, helpfully chipper:

[You Have Returned to Earth.] [Quest Thread Active: "The Man Behind the Hit."] [New Objective: Find Griff.]

Yeah. No kidding.

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