Chapter 1: The Claimant's Dawn
The first thing I remembered about dying was the cold.
Not the hospital bed. Not the cancer eating through my lungs. The cold came after—that moment between one heartbeat and nothing, when Oliver Smith stopped existing and someone else began.
I woke gasping in a body that wasn't mine.
That was three months ago. Three months of stumbling through a world I recognized from films and books. Three months of pretending I was someone called Aldric, a Dúnedain nobody with a dead father's sword and a claim to nobility worth less than the rust on its blade.
Three months of waiting for something to happen.
Today, something did.
The wind bit through my cloak as I climbed the broken watchtower. Dawn crept over the Weather Hills, painting the sky in shades of blood and gold. Below me, forty-six souls huddled around dying campfires, watching their young lord climb toward a ruin.
Forty-six refugees following a dead man wearing another man's skin.
I reached the top. Stones shifted beneath my boots, ancient mortar crumbling after centuries of neglect. Amon Hen-dîr—the Tower of the Watcher. Once a bastion of Arnor's might. Now a skeleton of what had been.
Halbarad the Elder waited at the base of the steps, his grey beard catching the first light. Seventy winters had bent his spine but not broken his faith. He believed in me. Believed I was exactly what I claimed to be.
That made one of us.
"You remember the words?" His voice carried up through the still morning air.
I nodded. He'd drilled them into me for weeks. The old claiming rite of Arnor's lords—words that had once made kings of men.
My hands trembled. Not from cold.
I stepped onto the highest remaining stones and faced the dawn. The sun crested the horizon, and I spoke.
"By right of blood and bone, I claim this place."
The words felt strange on my tongue. Too old. Too heavy.
"By right of those who came before, I claim dominion."
Something stirred in my chest. Pressure building behind my eyes.
"By right of those who follow, I claim—"
The world exploded.
Blue light flooded my vision. Not around me—inside me. Symbols I couldn't read cascaded through my mind like falling stars. A voice that wasn't a voice resonated through my skull.
[KINGDOM RESTORATION SYSTEM: ACTIVATED]
[BINDING TO HOST: ALDRIC OF THE DÚNEDAIN]
[TERRITORY CLAIMED: AMON HEN-DÎR]
[SYSTEM LEVEL: 1 (CLAIMANT)]
I staggered backward, barely catching myself on a broken pillar. The symbols continued streaming—numbers, categories, measurements of things I didn't understand.
[CORE STATISTICS INITIALIZING]
[SOVEREIGNTY: 8]
[DOMINION: 5]
[PROSPERITY: 12]
[MILITARY MIGHT: 5]
[INFLUENCE: 3]
[LEGACY: 2]
A game.
The thought crashed through my panic.
It's a game system. Like every isekai story ever written.
Oliver Smith had been a thirty-two-year-old accountant who spent too many hours on web novels and Korean manhwa. He knew exactly what this was.
A second chance. A system. A path forward.
The blue light faded. Morning returned—normal, cold, indifferent. I stood alone on the ruins, breathing hard, watching translucent panels only I could see.
The System, as I would learn to call it, was simple in concept. It measured everything—resources, loyalty, military strength, the legitimacy of my rule. It tracked progress like a civilization-building game, offered quests for experience, and promised to grow as my kingdom grew.
Simple. Terrifying. And the only advantage I had.
"Aldric?" Halbarad's voice, sharp with concern. "What happened? You swayed."
I forced my breathing steady. Walked down the steps on legs that wanted to buckle.
"I felt something," I said. Not quite a lie. "The old power. It's real."
Halbarad's eyes glistened. "I knew it. I knew the blood ran true."
That made his faith worse, somehow. Harder to carry.
[AMON HEN-DÎR — MID-MORNING]
I walked through our settlement with new eyes.
The System painted information over everything. Floating text appeared above resources—23 units of timber (poor quality), 8 units of iron ore, food supplies: 12 days. People bore small indicators too, though I was still learning to read them.
Forty-seven of us total. I counted as I walked.
Refugees from Bree who couldn't pay their debts. Outcasts from villages that didn't want them. A handful of Dúnedain with nowhere else to go. Three families with hollow-eyed children who stared at me with hope I hadn't earned.
The camp sprawled across the ruins—tents and lean-tos clustered against crumbling walls. Cookfires sent thin smoke into the grey sky. A woman mended clothing while her husband sharpened a rusted axe. Two boys argued over the last heel of bread.
This was my kingdom.
My stomach tightened.
The northern wall caught my attention. Or rather, the absence of it. Fifty meters of gap where stone had tumbled into rubble centuries ago. Any threat from the east could pour through without slowing.
First priority.
I gathered my people in the broken courtyard near noon. They clustered around me—dirty faces, patched clothes, weapons that were barely more than farm tools. Halbarad stood at my right shoulder. A few others I'd started to recognize positioned themselves nearby.
I did not give a speech.
"We have twelve days of food," I said. "Maybe fifteen if we stretch it. The northern wall is gone. Half our shelters won't survive a hard rain."
Murmuring. Shifting feet. Someone's child began to cry.
"I'm not going to promise you a kingdom. I'm not going to promise glory or riches or an easy path." I met their eyes, one by one. "I'm going to promise work. Hard work. Every day. And if we survive the first month, we might survive the first year."
Silence.
I pointed to a massive man near the back—Grimbeorn, the half-Beorning who'd wandered in two weeks ago. "You. Can you assess the old forge? Tell me what's salvageable?"
Grimbeorn straightened. "Aye. I can do that."
I pointed to a lean, quiet figure at the edge of the crowd. "Maeglin. You've scouted before. I need you to walk our perimeter. Three miles out. Map anything useful—water, timber, threats. Report back by nightfall."
A sharp nod. Maeglin slipped away like a shadow.
"Thorwen." The healer looked up, dark circles under her eyes. "Inventory every medical supply we have. Every bandage. Every herb. I need to know exactly what we're working with."
"It won't take long," she said flatly. "We have almost nothing."
"Then we'll know what nothing looks like. The rest of you—eat, rest, prepare for work. We start on the wall at dawn."
They dispersed. Slowly at first, then with purpose. Not hope—not yet—but something close. Direction. Someone telling them what to do.
Fake it until you make it.
My father's words. Oliver's father. Strange how the memory felt both close and impossibly distant.
I ate breakfast apart from the others.
Dried meat that tasted like leather. Bread so hard I had to crack it against a stone. My portion was smaller than most—I'd made certain of that. Halbarad noticed. His eyes lingered on my plate, then on me, but he said nothing.
Good.
A lord who eats while his people starve is no lord at all. I remembered reading that somewhere. Or maybe I'd just learned it the hard way in another life, watching executives feast while my department got layoffs.
The sun crossed its peak. I spent the afternoon walking the perimeter myself, memorizing terrain, calculating distances, trying to translate what I saw into the System's cold numbers.
[QUEST AVAILABLE: ESTABLISH BASIC DEFENSES]
[OBJECTIVE: REPAIR NORTHERN WALL (50 METERS)]
[REWARD: +5 DOMINION, +3 SOVEREIGNTY]
I accepted.
By evening, Maeglin returned with his report. Timber was available—two miles east, through exposed terrain. A stream ran half a mile north, fresh and clean. No immediate threats spotted, but he'd found tracks.
"What kind of tracks?"
His face stayed neutral. "Old. Orc. Maybe a week past. Scouts, not a warband. They headed east."
My hands wanted to shake. I didn't let them.
"Show me tomorrow. I want to see the ground myself."
Maeglin inclined his head and vanished into the gathering dusk.
I stood alone on the broken watchtower as night fell. Stars emerged—the same stars I'd seen in films, now blazing overhead with impossible clarity. The Seven Stars of the House of Elendil. The constellation the Dúnedain called the Sickle.
Middle-earth.
I was standing in Middle-earth, ruling a ruin with forty-six followers and a game system only I could see.
The War of the Ring was coming. Decades away, but coming. Sauron's shadow was growing in the east. Saruman was already turning, even if no one knew it yet. The hobbits hadn't even been born.
And here I stood—one man with borrowed blood and a desperate plan.
The northern gap in the wall gaped like a wound. Fifty meters of vulnerability. Orcs could pour through it. Wolves. Bandits. Anything.
I fixed the image in my mind. First priority.
Tomorrow, the work began.