Suddenly, the room smelled of coal smoke and unwashed wool. Marek’s modern desk chair felt like a hard wooden stool. He looked down at his hands; they were stained with ink and grease. The cursor on the screen moved on its own, clicking "Confirm" on a Law called Life Debt .

The blue light of the monitor grew blinding, pulling him forward. The last thing Marek heard before the world dissolved into the hiss of 1836 was the sound of a mechanical coin counter and a whisper from the speakers:

He tried to Alt-F4, but the keys felt cold—literally freezing to the touch. On the screen, a map of the world began to render, but the borders were wrong. There was no Great Britain, no Prussia. Just one massive, black void labeled "The Debt."

A text box popped up in the center of the screen, styled in the game's elegant UI: