Chapter 25
What he needed was something solid. Something familiar.
Back home, they’d had duty logs. Every shift, every patrol, someone wrote down what happened — who came, who went, what changed. Not because it mattered now, but because someday someone might need to know. It was structure. It was order.
He focused on the memory of it: the olive-drab cover, the smell of oil and paper, the weight of responsibility behind every entry. He thought of it hard enough that the air shimmered — and there it was.
A small, green-bound logbook sat on his knee. Clean. Perfect. Unissued.
He smiled faintly. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Two pens followed — one black, one red — clattering softly onto the blanket. The System’s shimmer faded, leaving only the faint smell of ink.
To whomever finds this journal or myself in the future— Know that a man may lie to himself, but ink always remains. I find myself far from home, on an earth that is not mine. Surrounded by women—beautiful, strange, and armed to the teeth.
I woke in a place they call Aelthar’s Maw—some kind of dungeon, if you believe the word. Crawling with creatures straight out of a fever dream: kobolds, goblins, something worse that I don’t have a name for. I was half-dead, bound in chains that felt alive, and a group of women—soldiers, nobles, I still can’t tell which—fought their way through to find me.
They call themselves Ladies Arwen, Pryce, and Vaughn—each from houses that sound more like empires than families. I think they hate each other more than they hate monsters. Two guards came with them, veterans by the look, steady hands. Without them, I’d be bones in that cave.
The “System” they speak of—their kind of magic—doesn’t seem to know what to make of me. I can summon things I know from home, but I don’t understand how. A pistol, MRE's and even a damn grenade… they appear when I think of them, like the world itself is filling in the blanks. It’s eating through my energy—mana, they call it—but I’m learning. Slowly.
The locals don’t seem to have men around, not like back home. The ratio they mentioned—one man to fifteen, maybe twenty women. You can feel it in how they look at me. Some curious, some cautious. A few like they’re studying a weapon that might go off in their hands.
We made it out of the Maw alive and reached a fortress—a place called Vale’s Keep, named after the woman who commands it. She’s as sharp as any officer I’ve met and about as easy to impress as a Gunnery Sergeant on inspection day. She asked if I was “whole.” I understood later that she meant if I could still make children. That’s the kind of world this is.
I ate dinner with her, her husband, and her sister-wives. That is to say the women married to the man were all her sisters and his wives. Kind people, mostly. Educated. They talk about magic the way we talk about engines or ammo counts—something that keeps civilization running but no one really understands. When I told them about my world, about machines and science, they looked at me like I’d said I could make the sun stand still. Maybe I could, given time.
The System says I’ve killed enough monsters to earn experience, but I’m still a long way from my first “level.” Whatever that means. I keep wondering what it’ll say when I do. Whether it’ll call me soldier or something else.
For now, I’m alive. I’ve got food, a roof, and a pen that still writes in English, at least I think it does. That’s enough. Tomorrow we’ll see what the Triumvirate—their ruling council—wants to do with me. If they’re anything like command back home, it’ll involve paperwork, suspicion, and a whole lot of bullshit.
Still… I can’t shake the feeling that I didn’t end up here by accident. Someone—or something—dragged me across worlds for a reason.
End of Entry One.
Sunlight pushed its way through the shutter slats, painting lines across the foot of the cot. Al blinked awake to the faint hum in his head — the one he’d learned meant the System had something to say.
“Guess I don’t get coffee before bad news here either,” he muttered.
The words floated in front of his eyes in clean, white lettering that pulsed softly:
[System Notification]Bound Artifact Registered.Item: Personal Journal (U.S. Origin)Status: Linked to User – Aleric TanimNote: Only the registered user may alter or add entries.Warning: External communication unavailable while artifact is beyond the user’s dimensional boundary.
He rubbed at his eyes, still half-asleep. “So, it’s mine. Great. And if it ends up back on Earth… nobody can write me back.”
The screen blinked once in acknowledgment — then vanished.
“Figures,” he said to no one in particular. “Even in another universe, the Corps finds a way to keep me writing reports nobody’ll ever read.”
He sat up, swinging his legs off the cot. The air was cooler than last night; the stone walls held the chill. For a long moment he just stared at the faint shimmer where the journal should be, then reached for it.
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It appeared in his hands like it had been waiting for him all along. He opened it — the pages clean and crisp, the ink from last night unmoved. No new marks. No sign anyone had touched it.
Entry Two:System tagged the logbook as “bound.” Means no one else can write in it. No edits, no messages. Just me. So if this thing ever finds its way home… nobody’s sending word back.I don’t know if that’s comforting or depressing. Maybe both.
It’s proof I still exist, at least. The System thinks I’m worth cataloguing. Hell, that’s something.
He shut the book and leaned back, rubbing a hand over his face. Outside, he could hear the sound of boots on stone — morning drills, shouted cadence, the thud of practice blades. All female voices. Always female voices.
A knock came at the door. Evan’s voice filtered through. “Marine? Commandant Vale requests your presence in the training yard. She says it’s time you learned how we fight.”
Al sighed, slipping the journal into the air where it vanished again with a soft hum. “Yeah,” he said, standing. “Guess it’s time they learned how I fight too.”