Chapter 1: The Pig-Shit Dawn

Elias Kane died greasy and pissed off, hands clamped around a wrench, the garage a mess of oil stink and Metallica blasting through a speaker with a blown cone. It was a Tuesday—gray, damp, the kind of day that made you want to kick something just to feel awake. He'd been under a Chevy, wrestling a rusted engine block some jackass had let rot in a barn too long. The shop kid—Jimmy, all pimples and no brains—hadn't checked the chain welds like Elias told him a dozen times, and when the hoist slipped, it was quick. One second he was swearing at Jimmy's dumb ass, the next the block slammed down, crushing his chest into the concrete with a wet crunch. Blood bubbled up, sharp and coppery in his mouth, and his last thought was half-formed—*Should've grabbed that beer from the fridge.* Then nothing. Black swallowed him whole, no fade, no warning, just a hard snap to gone.

He didn't expect to wake up. Sure as hell didn't expect to wake up screaming, soaked and shivering, in a body that felt like it'd been stuffed into a too-small box. His eyes were glued shut with gunk, stinging when he tried to crack them open, and his arms flailed—weak, floppy things that wouldn't do what he wanted. A smell hit him like a punch: sour milk, damp straw, and a thick, earthy reek of pig shit that coated his throat. Voices rumbled overhead, low and rough, words he couldn't make out through the fog clogging his head. Hands scooped him up—big, rough, warm but trembling—and a woman's voice broke through, cracked like old leather but steady enough to cut the haze. "Hush now, hush, you're here," she said, soft and worn, like she was talking herself calm as much as him. Elias wanted to yell—*Where am I? What's this crap?*—but all he got out was a thin, reedy wail. He wasn't running the show. He was tiny, helpless, a goddamn *baby*.

Panic flared up, hot and jagged. He thrashed—or tried to—his limbs flapping like wet rags, head lolling on a neck too soft to hold it. The woman pulled him closer, pressing him against her chest, her heartbeat thumping fast through a thin, damp shift. She smelled of sweat and something sharp—lye soap, maybe, gone stale—and her breath hitched as she started humming, a tune that stumbled over itself like she'd forgotten half the notes. Another voice coughed from the shadows, a wet, rattling hack that sounded like it'd been festering too long. "Alive, is he?" it rasped, rough as gravel scraped raw. "More'n we can say for the last one."

"Thom, don't," the woman snapped, her voice slicing through sharper now. "He's here. That's what counts."

A third voice piped up, closer, small but sour. "Looks like a drowned rat. All red and squishy." Something poked his side—a stick, jabbing through the blanket—and Elias squirmed, fury boiling in a brain too small to let it out.

"Brenna, leave off," the woman said, tugging him away from the prod. "He's your brother now. Be kind."

Brother. The word sank in, heavy as a brick. Elias forced his eyes open—blurry, watering, like looking through a smudged windshield—and caught shapes in the dim. A low ceiling of warped beams loomed overhead, black with soot. A firepit glowed in the center, spitting sparks onto a dirt floor packed hard and strewn with straw. The girl—Brenna, he figured—was crouched nearby, skinny as a broomstick, her hair a dark tangle framing hollow cheeks. She was maybe ten, eyes pinched and dark, stick still in her hand like she wasn't done poking yet. Beyond her, a man limped into the light—Thom—broad but stooped, one leg dragging like it'd quit on him years ago. His face was a mess of creases, eyes sunk under a brow like chipped flint, a scowl carved deep. The woman holding him—Lysa—kept rocking, her grip tight, like she thought he'd slip away if she eased up.

His gut twisted, and not just from the hunger gnawing at it—sharp, nagging, a new kind of ache he wasn't used to. This was all wrong. He'd been thirty-two, a grease-stained loner with a shitty apartment and a knack for fixing engines—cars, trucks, whatever rolled into the shop. Now he was this—a squalling infant in a shack that stank of pigs and misery, surrounded by strangers who didn't know he was a stranger too. He stopped crying, throat raw, chest heaving like he'd been running in this tiny, frail body. Air came in gulps, tasting of smoke and damp, and he swallowed it down, willing his head to clear. He had to think. Had to figure this out.

The hovel came into focus as his eyes adjusted, slow and grudging. It was one room, a cramped smear of mud walls patched with straw where the weather had clawed holes. The firepit sat squat in the middle, smoke curling up to a hole in the roof that let in more draft than light. A rickety loom hunched in the corner, threads dangling like broken strings, and a pallet of straw and rags slumped against the wall—where they slept, he guessed, all piled together like strays huddling for warmth. Outside, pigs grunted and splashed in mud, their noise leaking through gaps where the wind whined too, a low moan that grated on his nerves. Thom coughed again, doubling over until he spat something dark into the fire, the sizzle sharp in the quiet. Lysa's humming faltered, her fingers tightening on Elias like she could feel the weight of it all pressing in.

He listened, piecing it together like a busted engine he had to crack open with no manual. Thom's voice was a growl, bitter and frayed. "Pigs ate the last sow's litter. Barley's half-rotted already. And now this." He waved a hand at Elias, not looking at him, like he was a bill they couldn't scrape together the coin for.

"We'll manage," Lysa said, but it sounded thin, like a line she'd said too many times. "I'll weave extra. Market's next week—Old Meg'll take the cloth."

"Market won't fix the tithe," Thom shot back, limping to a stool that creaked under his weight. He yanked a knife from his belt—dull, nicked, more rust than blade—and started carving at a lump of wood, shavings curling into the straw like he was peeling away something he couldn't name. "Gavern'll come sniffing soon enough, wanting more'n we've got."

Lysa didn't answer, just rocked Elias harder, her humming starting up again—off-key, desperate, like she thought it'd drown out Thom's griping. Brenna tossed her stick into the fire, sparks snapping, and slumped by the wall, staring out a crack where dawn bled gray and weak into the room. Elias tracked it all, his mind racing even as his body sagged, too small to keep up. This wasn't a hospital, wasn't some crib with clean sheets and a humming monitor. This was a hole—a dump older than anything he knew, with no hum of electricity, no flush of a toilet, nothing but dirt and desperation holding it together. He'd landed somewhere raw, and these people—Thom, Lysa, Brenna—were his lifeline, whether he liked it or not.

He hated it. Hated the stink—pig shit and smoke and unwashed skin—hated the way his arms wouldn't bend when he tried to push off Lysa's grip, hated that he couldn't talk, couldn't demand answers, couldn't even sit up without flopping over. His chest burned with it, a fury he couldn't let loose, stuck in a throat too scraped to scream anymore. But Elias Kane wasn't built to give up. He'd clawed through a dead-end life once—busted knuckles in a freezing garage, late nights under flickering lights, a shop that barely paid the bills—and he'd claw through this too. His eyes darted, cataloging: the firepit's glow flickering on the walls, the loom's wobbly frame, Thom's knife scraping wood with a steady scrape. His ears strained—pigs snuffling, wind moaning, a faint clink in the distance, maybe a hammer on metal from somewhere far off. He didn't know what this place was, not yet—just that it was old, rough, a world where a snapped chain meant more than a tow truck.

Lysa shifted him, laying him on the pallet, her hands lingering like she was scared he'd vanish. "Sleep, little one," she whispered, brushing his damp hair back with fingers cracked and red from work. Thom snorted from the stool, carving deeper, the knife's scrape louder now, like he was digging into something hard. Brenna kicked at the straw, muttering about rats or cold or both, her voice a low burr under the fire's crackle. Outside, a rooster crowed, sharp and angry, cutting through the dawn's murk like it was pissed at the world. Elias stared at the ceiling, beams swimming in his blurry vision, and clenched his fists—tiny, weak, but as tight as he could make them. He wasn't sleeping—not really. His mind churned, gears grinding even if his body couldn't budge. He'd died once, fast and messy, under a heap of steel. He wasn't planning on doing it again—not here, not in this pig-shit dawn. He'd figure it out, one step at a time.

The fire popped, Thom coughed—a wet, hacking sound that echoed—and Elias lay there, a stranger in a baby's skin, chewing on the mess he'd landed in.