Chapter 1 – Awakening in Twilight
The sky broke open in a bruised shade of amethyst, where clouds drifted like torn gauze across the last traces of night.
Arthur stirred.
For a long moment, he simply lay still on the stone beneath him, listening. The silence felt unnatural—no monitor beeping, no voice calling for a scalpel, no hiss of oxygen along sterile tiles. Only the wind.
When he finally opened his eyes, the world that met him was impossibly wide—rolling fields of grey grass beneath mountains capped with snow. The air tasted raw, older than any civilization he'd known.
His fingers brushed metal. Black armor encased him from shoulder to heel, smooth plates traced with silver filigree on the inner surface. Mithril runes, he would later learn. They pulsed faintly, responding to his touch.
Arthur sat up slowly. The movement was too easy. His body—slender but solid—flowed with quiet power, muscles obeying as if fatigue had been erased from anatomy. He breathed in and out, waiting for the ache to follow. None came.
For the first time since his own death, he felt nothing but stillness.
Memory arrived like a scalpel's gleam.
A hospital.
Hands trembling around clamps.
A wall clock past midnight.
Another surgery called just as one ended.
And then—
Someone shouting his name as his knees hit the floor.
A faint metallic taste.
Darkness.
He exhaled, shaking his head gently. "So that's how it ended," he murmured to no one. His voice sounded calm, almost detached, yet underneath it lingered the exhaustion of a man who had given everything to the world and found no rest in return.
A quiet snort broke his reverie.
A brown horse stood a short distance away, reins tangled in wild grass. Its eyes met his—deep, calm, intelligent. Arthur rose, black armor whispering against itself, and approached. The horse didn't step back.
"You're no ordinary stray," he said, placing a hand on its neck. The warmth of its hide felt grounding. "Let's call you George."
The name—oddly mundane—came with a familiarity he couldn't explain. The horse flicked its ears forward, accepting it without protest.
At his side lay a longsword, its metal pale as starlight. When he drew it, it hummed faintly, weight balanced to perfection. Mithril. Every motion felt instinctive, as if he had rehearsed them across lifetimes.
A glint along his gauntlet caught his eye—a small emblem pressed into the inner wrist:
Sequence 9: Warrior — Pathway of the Twilight Giant.
He frowned. "Warrior… Sequence 9?" The terms meant nothing yet echoed with purpose. Strength hummed within him, quiet and waiting.
He took one cautious swing, slicing through empty air. The wind followed like a wave, lifting dust and bending grass in a fifty‑pace arc. Power, immense and precise, responding to the faintest thought.
Arthur lowered the blade, expression unreadable. "This can't be right," he whispered. "No body should be able to move like this."
He rested a palm against his chest. The heartbeat beneath his hand was steady, slow, and unending. There was no fatigue, no throb of arteries straining for air. Only rhythm. Eternal.
He looked out at the mountains again. Somewhere in their shade, smoke curled upward—a distant settlement, maybe hope.
Arthur tightened George's reins. "Shelter first, then answers."
The horse exhaled softly, and together they stepped into the dawn.
For the first time in both his lives, Arthur didn't feel exhaustion at all. That realization frightened him more than death ever had.
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