Death, Arthur Vance discovered, was not a door.
It was a fracture.
A violent tearing of certainty.
The last thing he remembered of Earth was the scream of metal. A cable snapping under strain. The impossible stillness between falling and impact — that suspended second when physics held its breath.
He had calculated tensile strength his entire life.
He had trusted numbers.
Numbers had betrayed him.
Darkness swallowed the sky.
And then—
Cold.
Not the sterile chill of a hospital corridor. Not winter against glass.
This cold had weight. It pressed against his ribs. Slid into his lungs. Coiled around his spine like damp iron.
Arthur tried to breathe and tasted canvas, mildew, and something faintly metallic.
Blood.
His eyes opened slowly.
The ceiling above him was stitched cloth, patched in places with different shades of gray. Rain tapped overhead — not gentle rainfall, but the persistent, exhausting kind that soaks through morale as easily as fabric.
"Young Master…"
The voice trembled.
Arthur turned his head.
An old man knelt beside the cot. His back was curved like a bow pulled too long under tension. Deep lines cut across his face, but it wasn't age that hollowed his cheeks — it was grief.
"You must wake," the man whispered. "If you leave us now… the Graymar line ends in the mud."
The name struck like a thrown stone.
Graymar.
Arthur's heart stumbled.
Memories surged.
Not imagined.
Not distant.
Lived.
A throne hall vast enough to echo pride. White marble floors veined in violet. Banners bearing the sigil of a silver phoenix crowned in flame.
The Valeska Empire.
The Emperor.
His father.
Arthur jerked upright.
Pain detonated inside his skull.
Two lifetimes collided.
Arthur Vance — civil engineer. Thirty-two. Specialist in structural reinforcement and disaster-resilient architecture.
Arthur Vance — Second Prince of Graymar. Mana-null. Disgrace of the court.
Exiled.
The memories locked together with brutal precision.
He remembered standing before the Sacred Flame at twelve years old.
He remembered the silence when it darkened.
Not extinguished.
Darkened.
Mana did not ignite within him.
It recoiled.
The High Archmage had whispered something that day — something no one else heard.
"A void."
Arthur swallowed hard.
The tent felt too small.
Outside, wind dragged across barren land with a low, mournful howl.
"Where are we?" he asked.
The old man blinked, startled.
"The Southern Wastelands, my lord," he said carefully. "You collapsed two nights past. Fever from the rain. We feared…"
He did not finish.
Arthur closed his eyes.
The Southern Wastelands.
The empire's scar.
Once a prosperous province. Now ash and ruin after the Mana Cataclysm decades prior. The official record called it an arcane accident.
Unofficially?
It was a failure buried under silence.
And this is where they sent me.
Not execution.
Not imprisonment.
Exile.
With sixty wounded veterans.
And twenty war orphans.
No mages.
No supply line.
No reinforcements.
Three weeks from winter.
Arthur inhaled slowly.
This was not incompetence.
This was removal.
A quiet solution to a dangerous anomaly.
Thunder rolled across the horizon.
He felt it then — faint but unmistakable.
A vibration beneath the earth.
Not sound.
Not exactly.
A hum.
It brushed against his thoughts like static.
And then—
A crystalline tone rang inside his skull.
Soft.
Precise.
Familiar.
Words formed in the air before him — translucent blue, impossibly sharp.
[Architectural Interface Engaged]
Arthur did not scream.
He stared.
His engineer's mind immediately assessed:
Projection? Hallucination? Neurological trauma?
The text shifted.
[Host Confirmed: Mana-Null Entity]
[Cognitive Profile: Structural Systems Specialist]
[Territory Classification: Level 0 — Unclaimed Ruin Zone]
[Environmental Threat: Category V Stormfront — 72 Hours]
The rain outside intensified.
The old man — Silas — gripped his sleeve.
"My lord? Your eyes…"
Arthur blinked.
The interface did not vanish.
He lowered his voice.
"How many provisions remain?"
Silas hesitated. "Three days. Perhaps four if we halve rations."
Three days.
Storm in seventy-two hours.
The numbers aligned too precisely.
Arthur swung his legs off the cot and stood. His knees wobbled, but his mind felt razor-clear.
"Gather them," he said.
Silas stared.
"The men. The children. Everyone."
Thunder cracked again.
Arthur stepped toward the tent opening and pushed aside the flap.
The Southern Wastelands greeted him.
Endless gray plains broken by skeletal trees. The river cut like a scar through blackened earth. In the distance, jagged ruins rose — remnants of something once grand.
The wind tasted metallic.
This land was not empty.
It was waiting.
Arthur felt it.
And somehow—
It felt him.
Behind his eyes, the blue text pulsed once.
[Primary Directive Available]
Arthur exhaled slowly.
He had died once trusting systems built by others.
This time—
He would build his own.
"Three days," he murmured to the storm.
"Let's see which of us is stronger."