Redhead Raven

Chapter 3 – The Temple of Iron

Bartholomew spent the next two days inventing reasons not to go to the gym.

It was too expensive. The timing was wrong. He didn’t know how people behaved there. He didn’t have the right clothes. And above all, he was almost certain he would look like a complete idiot. Every time he opened the websites of local fitness centres, he closed the window again after a few minutes. Yet every evening, when he opened the diary, the same sentence was still waiting for him at the end of the chapter.

*Find a gym.*

It wasn’t written in larger letters or highlighted. It didn’t feel urgent. Still, he had the sense that he couldn’t shake it off. In the end he chose a smaller fitness centre on the other side of the city. It wasn’t the most modern or the cheapest, but from the photos it looked ordinary. Exactly what he needed. Not a place full of influencers and cameras, but a space where no one would pay him any attention.

He scheduled the first visit for Wednesday morning. He assumed there would be the fewest people.

He was wrong.

When he opened the door, the familiar smell of iron, rubber flooring and disinfectant washed over him. Soft rock music played from the speakers and about fifteen people of various ages moved between the machines. Some were lifting weights, others ran on treadmills or talked at the reception. No one seemed to care about a newcomer.

Yet Bartholomew felt as if everyone was looking at him.

He walked uncertainly to the reception desk, paid for a single entry and took the locker key. The girl behind the counter smiled at him.

“First time?”

He nodded.

“Don’t worry. After ten minutes you’ll realise everyone is mainly dealing with themselves.”

He smiled back, even though he didn’t fully believe it.

In the changing room he sat on the bench for several minutes, pretending to adjust his shoelaces. In reality he was just gathering courage. Finally he took a deep breath, opened the diary to the page marked *First Day in the Temple of Iron* and read the short paragraph.

*Don’t look for the heaviest barbell. Don’t look for the strongest man. Look for the correct movement.*

It was surprisingly sensible advice.

When he stepped out among the machines he headed first for the treadmill and simply walked for a few minutes. His heart was pounding more from nervousness than from effort. Gradually he began to notice the people around him. No one was laughing at him. No one was watching him. A huge bearded guy was currently wrestling with a heavy deadlift, a petite girl was concentrating on her squats, and a pair of pensioners were debating football. The gym was far more ordinary than he had imagined.

“You’re new here, right?”

Bartholomew turned.

Beside him stood a man around forty, about a head shorter than him but noticeably broader. He had a greying full beard, a blue T-shirt with the gym’s logo and a towel draped over his shoulder.

“Yeah.”

“Show me what you can do?”

Bartholomew smiled nervously.

“There won’t be much.”

“That’s ideal.”

The man held out his hand.

“I’m Miro.”

“Bartholomew.”

Miro blinked for a moment.

“I’m not calling you that.”

Bartholomew laughed for the first time that morning.

“Most people don’t.”

“So… Barty?”

He hesitated for a second.

“That works.”

“Then come on, Barty.”

The name sounded completely natural. Without thought. As if it had always belonged there.

They spent the next hour on the basic exercises. Miro corrected every detail. How he held his back. Where his knees pointed. How he breathed. How many repetitions there should be. When Bartholomew reached for a heavier dumbbell, the trainer swapped it for a lighter one without a word.

“Strength will come. Technique has to come first.”

Exactly the same sentence was written in the diary.

Bartholomew only noticed it on the way home.

That evening he opened the relevant page and slowly read the individual paragraphs. Every exercise he had done with Miro was drawn almost identically. Even the number of sets matched.

He put it down to coincidence.

After all, every trainer taught the basic exercises in a similar way.

In the following weeks he started going to the gym three times a week. He kept the home workouts for the other days. His proofreading work didn’t suffer at all. On the contrary. During the day he worked with greater focus and in the evenings he fell asleep almost immediately.

Only one small thing occasionally struck him.

He recovered unexpectedly quickly.

After the first training session he had expected the muscle soreness everyone talked about. Instead, the next day he felt only a mild stiffness that disappeared by midday. After a week he began adding weight to the bars without major problems. Miro attributed it to good proportions and to the fact that Bartholomew had finally started using his body.

“You’ve got a damn good foundation,” he said once during a rest between sets. “Long arms, broad shoulders, narrow waist… If you’d started five years ago, you’d look completely different today.”

Bartholomew only shrugged.

It had never occurred to him to think about his body that way.

When he was changing in the locker room a few days later, he stopped in front of the mirror a little longer than usual. He wasn’t bigger. At least not noticeably. Yet he had the feeling that the T-shirt sat differently. His shoulders filled the fabric a little more and from the side he no longer looked so hunched.

He smiled.

It was a pleasant change.

That evening he opened the diary, recorded another completed training session and turned the page.

At the top stood a single short motto.

*The body remembers every honest movement.*

Beneath it the next training plan began.

Chapter 2 – The First Step

Bartholomew woke up at half past six in the morning, which was strange in itself. His alarm was set for eight, and even stranger was the fact that he felt no desire to burrow back under the covers. His eyes opened almost at once and for several seconds he simply lay on his back. The flat was quiet, the city outside the window was only just beginning to stir, and the first rays of sunlight painted irregular stripes of light across the ceiling. Next to the bed lay the dark-green diary. Exactly where he had left it the night before.

He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether he should make coffee first, but curiosity won out. He opened the first chapter, marked with the simple heading *Getting Started*. It contained no motivational speeches or grand declarations about changing one’s life. Instead there was a short list of exercises, a simple warm-up, and a note that proper posture was more important than the number of repetitions. The author emphasised several times that the goal was not to exhaust the body, but to teach it how to move correctly.

Bartholomew unrolled the mat in the living room — a promotional gift he had once received — and began exactly according to the instructions. A few squats, push-ups with hands on the table, stretches for the shoulders and spine, slow breathing. The whole thing really did not take even fifteen minutes. When he finished he was neither out of breath nor exhausted. He felt more as if he had given himself a thorough stretch after a long time. He ticked off the completed day in the small table at the end of the chapter and went to prepare breakfast.

The following days unfolded in much the same way. Training became part of his morning routine as naturally as brushing his teeth or turning on the laptop. What surprised him was that he looked forward to it. Not because he particularly enjoyed the exercises themselves, but because each time he finished with a pleasant feeling of lightness. After a few days he realised his neck had stopped aching. His shoulders were no longer constantly pulled forward, and while working at the computer he caught himself sitting more upright than before.

His proofreading work continued without change. During the day he corrected texts; in the evenings he read or walked through the city. Only occasionally did he notice that on the way home he was walking a little more briskly than before. Previously he would have chosen the shortest route; now, without much thought, he took an extra loop around the entire park. He attached no importance to it. The diary, after all, recommended daily walking as the most underrated form of movement.

At the end of the second week he stopped in front of the bathroom mirror a few seconds longer than usual. No dramatic transformation had taken place, yet he had the sense that he was standing a little differently. His head was no longer thrust so far forward, his shoulders appeared broader, and under the thin T-shirt lines were beginning to show that he had never noticed before. Perhaps they had been there the whole time. Perhaps he had only changed his posture. He smiled at his own vanity and closed the bathroom door.

Meanwhile the diary was proving to be a surprisingly sensible companion. It forbade no foods, forced him neither to eat absurd portions nor to buy expensive supplements. It recommended regularity, enough sleep, ordinary home-cooked meals and patience. Bartholomew had an increasingly strong feeling that the author must have been not only an experienced athlete, but also someone who understood human psychology rather well.

The third week slipped by faster than he expected. Several clients sent him new commissions, so he spent long hours at the computer. Yet in the evenings he still had enough energy for a short walk, and in the mornings he once again completed his quarter-hour programme. The scales showed almost two kilograms more. He attributed it to better food and regular movement. Nothing else even occurred to him.

When, after a month, he opened the last page of the first part of the diary, he expected further home exercises. Instead he found only a short paragraph written in the same careful hand as everything else.

*Good. Your body has woken up. It has learned to stand, to breathe and to carry its own weight. From here it will not progress on its own. The time has come to enter the place where iron becomes the teacher.*

Beneath the text was a single line.

*Find a gym.*

Bartholomew closed the diary and leaned back in his chair. This was the first instruction he did not like. He had grown to enjoy the home workouts, but the idea of standing among experienced bodybuilders without knowing how to hold a barbell properly felt distinctly unpleasant.

Nevertheless, that evening he opened the city map and typed a single word into the search bar.

Chapter 1 – The Diary

Bartholomew Novak never wanted to be special. In fact, he was perfectly content when people forgot he existed.

He stood one hundred and eighty-seven centimetres tall, yet almost no one would have guessed his height correctly. He walked with a permanent stoop, head slightly forward, shoulders rolled inward, as if his body had spent a lifetime trying to take up as little space as possible. He wasn’t weak. Under the loose clothes lay a lean, sinewy frame with long arms, strong wrists and surprisingly broad shoulders. He just never carried enough muscle for anyone to notice.

His world looked nothing like the world of most people his age. In the morning he made coffee, opened his laptop and spent hours correcting other people’s texts. Typos, bad punctuation, clumsy word choices — he spotted them almost by instinct. After finishing his bachelor’s degree in Czech language teaching he realised he preferred the quiet work of a proofreader far more than standing in front of a classroom. A computer, an internet connection and a handful of satisfied clients were enough. He earned a modest living and could devote the rest of his time to books.

People often assumed he wore glasses for reading. In reality they were completely ordinary, with no prescription. He had tried them on in a shop once and discovered he felt more confident behind them. He never wondered why. They simply became part of his face, just like the short brown hair with a copper undertone or the almost invisible stubble that never managed to turn into a real beard no matter how many days he left it.

His uncle teased him about it from time to time.

“In our family we’re hairy as bears. You must have left yours somewhere along the way.”

Bartholomew always just laughed. The truth was that his genetics were peculiar. His father had worn a full beard since the age of twenty-five, his grandfather had arms as hairy as an old lumberjack’s, and one of his uncles suffered from a rare form of hypertrichosis that covered almost his entire body in dense hair. Only Bartholomew seemed to be still waiting for his turn.

One June afternoon he was returning a few books to the university library. He didn’t really need to go there any more. His studies were successfully behind him, the diploma hung at home in a folder, and the library had stopped being his second home. Still, he returned from time to time. He liked the smell of old paper, the silence between the shelves and the feeling that hundreds of human lives rested around him, sealed between the covers of books.

While placing the last volume back in its proper spot, he noticed a narrow notebook tucked between two scholarly works on Czech humanism. It didn’t look like part of the library collection. There was no label, no call number, no protective cover. It was bound in dark-green cloth and the corners were worn, as if someone had carried it in a backpack for years.

Bartholomew looked around.

No one.

He remembered how many times he himself had found foreign notebooks or forgotten journals among the books. Usually he took them to the information desk. This time something made him open the covers first.

On the first page, in neat handwriting, stood a single dedication:

If you opened this diary only because you were looking for a shortcut, close it again.

A short space followed.

But if you truly want to find out what the human body is capable of, keep reading.

Bartholomew smiled.

“A bit theatrical.”

He turned the page.

On the title leaf, written in elegant script, was:

From Complete Nerd to the Stage

A complete plan for the first competition.

There was no author’s name and no date of publication beneath the title. Only a carefully drawn silhouette of a posing bodybuilder.

“Well… unexpected.”

He had never lifted weights. He knew about as much about bodybuilding as the average person — that protein powders existed, that there were competitions, and that some people spent half their lives in the gym. Yet the way the diary was written caught his attention. It didn’t feel like a motivational book or an advertisement. It read more like the personal notes of someone who had carefully recorded everything that worked over the years.

The following pages contained hand-drawn exercise diagrams, meal-plan tables, notes on sleep, recovery, posture and breathing. Instead of grand promises there were simple sentences.

First learn to stand.

Then learn to walk.

Only then learn to lift iron.

Bartholomew nodded in surprise more than once. Most of the advice made sense. It wasn’t exaggerated, it didn’t sound fanatical, and in places it reminded him more of a physiotherapy manual than a bodybuilding handbook.

He sat down at a table between the shelves and began to read more deeply. Time ceased to exist. Page followed page, each one as carefully written as the last. Sometimes he smiled at the author’s dry humour; other times he nodded in genuine respect at a logical explanation of some exercise. He was surprised by how much attention the writer paid to proper posture, mobility and even ordinary walking.

Only when the librarian began turning off the lights between the shelves did he realise he had been sitting in the same place for almost two hours.

He closed the diary and stared at it in silence for a moment.

He should take it to Lost and Found.

That was the right thing to do.

But the other half of his brain immediately objected that if someone had truly forgotten it there, they would almost certainly come back for it tomorrow. And until that happened…

…he could read a few more pages at home.

He slipped the notebook into his backpack with a completely clear conscience.

That evening, sitting in his flat with a mug of tea, he opened the diary again exactly where he had left off.

At the end of the first chapter stood a single paragraph.

You don’t need equipment. You don’t need experience. You don’t need talent. You only need fifteen minutes a day and the willingness to take the first step.

Beneath it was one final sentence.

PROJECT ATLAS

Project ATLAS (Adaptive Therapeutic Living Architecture System) was established as an experimental biomedical research program focused on developing a viral transcriptor capable of temporarily rewriting gene expression without altering the underlying DNA. Its primary objective was to unlock the body's natural regenerative potential—accelerating tissue repair, restoring damaged organs, increasing resistance to disease, and offering new treatment possibilities for severe injuries and genetic disorders.

The first fully functional prototype was calibrated exclusively for laboratory rats, where it produced extraordinary regenerative and adaptive responses. Before human clinical trials could begin, however, a laboratory accident exposed one of the project's own researchers to the active transcriptor.

The following pages document the personal record of that unintended experiment.

Subject: Radek Novák Status: Missing Project: ATLAS

A short comic starring me as the main character.

500 followers!? I honestly never thought I'd reach this milestone. Thank you to everyone who has followed my stories and artwork, whether you've been commenting regularly or just quietly enjoying them from the sidelines. As a little thank-you, I'd like to share something a bit more personal about myself.