Chapter 1: Bullet in the snow
The end was near.
Close enough for the servants to start circulating gossip regarding the dying heir. Close enough for the healers to stop visiting. Even the patrolling knights of the keep had muted their voices and avoided the east wing third-floor chamber where the duke’s heir had been lying still and pale for three days straight.
After what felt like an eternity lying in bed waiting for death to come, Lucen finally woke up and sat down, feeling as if he had just breached the water, breathless.
The cold air hit his lungs like knives. His skin was clammy, his breath shallow, but his mind burned with sudden, terrifying clarity. The stone ceiling above him was unfamiliar. The sheets, the wooden bedframe, the thick mountain silence. Memories of an old life came flooding in.
’What the hell...?’
A flood of memories surged, of another life, another world. They were his, but at the same time weren’t, yet they settled into his mind with terrifying clarity.
The memories didn’t belong to the boy he was now. They belonged to a completely different life. In those memories, this world was nothing but a game, a world he’d played but never imagined he would actually live in. The pieces of his former existence had overwhelmed his current self.
Aerok.
The name echoed through his skull like a war drum.
’I’m in Aerok, the RPG I used to play.’
He breathed in and out, trying to calm himself down.