Chapter 1: The beginning

"Somebody call an ambulance, hurry!"

"There's been a car crash!"

"Quick! Find the person inside!"

Aldric barely registered their voices. His vision blurred, his body numb. The cold pavement pressed against his cheek, and the metallic scent of blood filled his nostrils.

"I really shouldn't have drunk that much… Is this how my life ends?" he thought bitterly.

The world around him faded. The shouts, the sirens, the chaos—it all dissolved into an eerie silence.

"All my life, I struggled to be more than just another office worker, only to end up like this… I wish I could see my mother one last time."

Darkness swallowed him whole.

An eternity seemed to pass. Time itself felt meaningless. Then, slowly, light began to seep into the void.

Aldric gasped, his eyes snapping open. The scent of aged timber and parchment filled his lungs. A dim candle flickered in the corner of a wooden room, casting long, wavering shadows.

"Where… am I?" He sat up, his breath unsteady. His voice deeper, more refined sounded foreign to his own ears.

Suddenly, a sharp pain lanced through his skull. He groaned, gripping his temples as an onslaught of unfamiliar memories flooded his mind.

A door burst open. An elderly man hurried inside. "Young Lord, are you alright?"

Aldric blinked, still dazed. "Who… are you?"

The old man's face tightened with concern. "Young Lord, don't you recognize me? It's me, Gale your loyal servant."

More fragments of memory crashed into him.. Yet, they felt real more real than the life he had just left behind.

Aldric Windsor. The only son of Count Sebastian Windsor.

His family, one of the founding houses of the Arkania Kingdom, had long since fallen from grace, banished to the kingdom's northernmost borders, where bitter winds howled and the sea itself brought ruin.

His father's last campaign had been a disaster. The pirates that plagued their shore more than four thousand strong had ambushed them. Count Windsor was slain, along with nearly half their forces. Now, the county lay vulnerable, teetering on the brink of collapse.

Aldric exhaled, his fingers tightening into a fist.

"These memories… they belong to me."

He looked down at his hands calloused, yet unfamiliar. The face he wore, the voice he spoke with, the world around him this was his reality now.

That other life the flickering images of a distant world, the regrets of an unknown man felt like nothing more than a fading dream.

Whatever it was, it no longer mattered.

He was Aldric Windsor. And his true battle had only just begun.