The first thing he felt was cold.
Not the abstract cold of memory or imagination, but the sharp, biting kind that seeped through bone and settled behind the eyes. It carried the faint scent of iron and incense, old stone and burning oil. His chest rose and fell with unfamiliar effort, each breath slower, heavier than it should have been.
I'm alive.
That realization came before panic, before confusion. It was the reflex of a man who had studied death for most of his adult life—not as a physician, but as a historian. Wars, revolutions, purges. He had spent decades reading about how people died. He recognized the miracle of not doing so.
He opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him was high, arched, and decorated with faded gold leaf and Orthodox iconography. Saints stared down at him with solemn, judging eyes. Chandeliers hung motionless, their crystals catching weak winter light filtering through tall, narrow windows.
This was not a hospital.
This was not his apartment.
This was not the twenty-first century.
He sat up too quickly and paid for it immediately. A wave of dizziness rolled through him, accompanied by a sudden, crushing pressure behind his temples. He clenched his teeth and waited it out, fingers digging into the thick woolen blanket covering him.
The blanket was expensive. Heavy. Hand-stitched.
That's not good.
Slowly, deliberately, he looked down at his hands.
They were younger. Leaner. Unmarked by the faint scars he remembered—no callus from years of controller use, no burn mark from a careless cooking accident in graduate school. The skin was pale, almost aristocratically so, the nails clean and trimmed.
He swallowed.
"Okay," he muttered, his voice coming out lower than expected, accented in a way that made his stomach tighten. "Okay. Don't panic."
Russian.
Not fluent, but native enough that the word felt correct in his mouth.
Memories began to surface—not his own, not entirely. They came in fragments: etiquette lessons, rigid tutors, endless corridors filled with whispers that stopped when he entered the room. A man with a beard and tired eyes who never smiled at him. A woman who looked through him as if he were a stain on the wallpaper.
And a title.
Grand Duke.
The weight of it settled on him like a physical thing.
He was not just in the past.
He was in Imperial Russia.
He pushed himself out of bed and stood, legs trembling slightly as they adjusted to a body that was younger, stronger, and unused to the sedentary life of archives and screens. A tall mirror stood against the far wall. He crossed the room and stared at his reflection.
The man who stared back was twenty, perhaps a little older-looking due to stress. Dark hair, neatly kept. Sharp cheekbones. Gray eyes that held none of the softness expected of youth. He wore a white sleeping shirt, fine linen, embroidered at the collar.
A Romanov face—undeniably so—but one that would never sit comfortably on a coin.
He laughed once, quietly.
"Of course," he said. "Late imperial period. Why not."
In his previous life, history had been his profession and his escape. He had specialized in nineteenth-century Europe, with a particular focus on collapsing empires and the institutional failures that preceded them. Russia had been unavoidable. The inefficiency, the corruption, the paranoia. The way the state devoured itself long before its enemies ever could.
He knew what was coming.
The Russo-Japanese War.
1905.
Revolution.
1917.
Execution in a basement.
His reflection did not look like a man destined to survive any of that.
A knock came at the door—sharp, precise, controlled.
"Your Imperial Highness," a male voice called from the other side. Polite. Cold. "You are awake."
Not a question.
He straightened instinctively, posture snapping into place as borrowed memories filled the gaps his mind still struggled to bridge. He recognized the voice. A court official. Not a servant. Someone assigned to watch him as much as attend to him.
"Yes," he answered. "Enter."
The door opened, and a man in a dark uniform stepped inside. Middle-aged. Immaculate. His eyes flicked over the room, taking in every detail, before settling on him with thinly veiled disapproval.
"The Empress has requested that you attend luncheon," the man said. "You are to be present. You are not to speak unless addressed."
There it was.
The hatred, wrapped in etiquette.
He nodded once. "Of course."
The official hesitated, as if expecting resistance, then inclined his head and turned to leave.
As the door closed, the historian—now a prince—let out a slow breath.
Twenty years old, he thought. In the body. Thirty-five in the head.
A dangerous age.
He knew too much. About this family. About this empire. About how badly things would end if nothing changed.
He also knew one other thing, deep in his bones, with a certainty that had not come from memory or study.
Something had brought him here.
And whatever it was, it had not done so for him to die quietly in the shadow of a throne.
The cold in the room seemed to deepen, and for just a moment, he felt the faintest sensation—like a pressure behind reality itself, waiting.
Watching.