April 24, 2019, four in the morning. One hour after the premiere of Avengers: Endgame.
Haldryn sat at his desk wearing headphones, staring blankly at the screen and clicking the mouse from time to time.
On the monitor was Stormwind City, the human capital of World of Warcraft: the Auction House, the Gilded Rose Inn, the fountain in the Trade District. A random corpse lay on the cobblestones as usual. Overhead, a flock of blue dragons wheeled through the sky—someone was clearly farming for staff materials.
What had frozen him in place were the level-120 players swarming the streets, especially one wealthy show-off riding a majestic caravan thunder lizard.
After a long moment Haldryn let out a sigh. The game had changed so much.
He had once been a hardcore WoW player, but work had pulled him away years ago. Memories had a way of resonating. After watching Endgame and replaying eleven years of Marvel films in his head, a sudden whim had sent him back to the epic that had also accompanied him for so long.
Yet after years away, he barely recognized Azeroth. His level-85 human paladin wandered the streets of Stormwind like a country bumpkin, gawking at the max-level characters everywhere.
Varian Wrynn was dead. Tirion Fordring was dead…
Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff were dead too.
After a while he yawned. Might as well queue for a dungeon and sleep. Tomorrow I still have spoilers to dig into… He joined the queue.
…
He dreamed he was chasing a golden light, pure and bright as the sun, the kind that pulls every living thing toward it.
There was no logic in the dream. He simply ran after the streaking radiance, never knowing how long or how far. No matter how hard he chased, the distance neither closed nor widened.
Suddenly the ground vanished beneath his feet and he plunged into an endless abyss.
Terror seized him. He thrashed helplessly in a darkness without up or down, left or right.
Yet while he struggled, the golden light somehow drew nearer until it was almost within reach.
He saw it clearly: a book, gleaming as though forged from pure gold. It was the size of an ordinary volume, though a little thicker, its cover etched with ancient, mysterious runes and a small golden ring at each end of the spine.
He reached out and seized it.
Golden light erupted like a storm and swallowed everything.
…
"Ah!"
Haldryn cried out and jerked upright like a fish suddenly returned to life in a boiling pan.
Thud.
He face-planted onto the floor, pain flaring through his nose.
Rubbing it, he looked around. Vision and thought slowly cleared, but bewilderment flooded his face.
"Where… is this?"
The room was a solid stone-and-brick chamber with a strong classical air—plain, yet rich in detail, like a high-budget European period set.
He glanced down. His clothes matched the setting: a grayish-white linen tunic, brown trousers, and boots.
Soft, lazy light spilled through the window; it felt like early afternoon.
I was queuing for a dungeon…
Was this a dream?
It didn't feel like one. There was none of that murky half-awareness, and he still remembered the golden book with perfect clarity. A dream within a dream? Unlikely.
The book—
He turned his head. A thick golden volume lay quietly on the floor, identical to the one in the dream, only without the blazing glow.
His eyes widened. Something extraordinary had happened.
Hesitating only a moment, he picked it up.
A strange sense of connection stirred, as if the book were bound to him by blood.
He ran his fingers over the spine and cover. The texture was ordinary, almost rough—just a book.
He opened the cover.
Golden light shimmered on the first page, and two lines of text slowly appeared:
[Tome of the Kings]
[Bearer: Haldryn]
Tome of the Kings?
He stared dumbfounded.
Before he could turn the page, footsteps approached outside.
A young woman with long brown hair hurried in, dressed in the same classical style. She was pretty, with a light dusting of freckles across her cheeks.
"Haldryn!" She said with relief and surprise in her voice.
"Uh… %#@￥" He tried to speak, but only garbled nonsense came out, as if his mouth had cramped.
A fierce headache struck. Every time he opened his mouth, two languages warred in his mind, stealing his ability to form words.
One was the language of modern Earth. The other was… Asgardian. Runes?
Asgard.
The golden realm of Asgard.
Fragments of memory surged like a flood. Haldryn froze, eyes vacant for a long time.
"Haldryn, what's wrong? Haldryn!" The brown-haired woman called anxiously.
At last he moved again, though his gaze remained clouded. He studied her for a while before saying carefully, "Elle?"
"Thank the gods, you're all right." Elle exhaled, then scolded, "Don't you ever do anything that stupid again, understand? That bet was—"
He didn't hear the rest. His brow furrowed as shock and tangled thoughts crashed together.
He understood the essentials: he had crossed over—from twenty-first-century Earth into the home of Thor, one of the Nine Realms, the golden city of Asgard.
The timing was early. Thor hadn't even been born yet.
He was still called Haldryn—Haldryn Garrison. The names only sounded alike; the written forms were different.
Coincidence… or fate.
In his old life, reading isekai stories, he had always thought such convenient name overlaps meant the author was simply lazy. Now he wondered if it might be some rule of transmigration itself.
The original owner of this body was gone. Fortunately, scattered memories remained. After absorbing them, the mythical world no longer felt completely alien.
"Hey, you little brat finally awake?" A grumbling voice preceded a middle-aged man with a thickening waist and a half-bald head. He carried a bottle of mead. "Since you're up, quit lying around. You've done zero work these past few days!"
"Father, he only just woke," Elle protested.
"Just woke? He looks healthier than I do!"
The half-bald man was Peter, Haldryn's uncle. His parents had died young, so he lived with his uncle's family. Peter was never particularly kind, but Elle treated him like a true younger brother and looked after him with genuine care.
Haldryn's body was slight—the smallest among his peers—yet restless. Even at twenty-four he still loved climbing walls and trees. For an Asgardian, twenty-four was still youth; adulthood came around thirty.
Asgardians lived roughly five thousand years on average. Though their lifespans were vast, they grew at a pace not far from many other intelligent races. After thirty came nearly four millennia of vigorous prime, during which their power fully manifested.
Few beings in the cosmos dared challenge a full-grown Asgardian. In that sense, they truly were gods.
Days earlier, Haldryn—the best climber in Lifia Town—had finally fallen from a tree and lain unconscious until today, when a different soul awoke in his body.
"The frost giants are restless again. A hundred healing stones, and make them quick!" Peter dropped the order and left with his mead.
The family lived in Lifia Town at the foot of Lifia Mountain. "Town" was generous; it was more of a village. Asgard itself was not large.
Lifia Mountain was rich in herbs, and the royal herb gardens of Asgard lay upon its slopes. Peter ran an herbalist's shop here. Healing stones were one of their most important products—essential battlefield supplies.
"Haldryn, how do you feel?" Elle asked.
His head was still spinning. "I'm fine… I just need a moment."
Elle started to say more, then noticed the golden tome on his lap. She picked it up. "What's this?"
"This—" He tensed instinctively.
She flipped a couple of pages and handed it back. "New journal? Fancy design."
Haldryn blinked.
When she opened it he had clearly seen text and images, yet her expression and tone suggested blank pages.
Could only he see the writing?
A short while later Elle told him to rest properly and left.
Haldryn quickly shut the door and opened the Tome of the Kings again.
The first page still showed the same two lines, but now he realized the characters were neither Earth's modern script nor Asgardian runes—or rather, they were both and neither. The symbols were hazy, ethereal, strange… yet he understood them effortlessly, as if the language had been made for him alone.
At the top of the second page: Sacred Codex.
It displayed a skill tree. The names and icons were ones he knew by heart—the spells of a World of Warcraft paladin: Judgment, Sword of Justice, Divine Protection, Hammer of Justice, Divine Shield… All grayed out, marked [Unavailable].
Was this thing connected to WoW? Paladins carried librams, after all.
The third page was the Appraisal Codex—a simple circular diagram, nothing more.
The fourth: Piety Shop.
"Piety" puzzled him, but "shop" was clear, and the layout looked exactly like a game store interface—specifically, World of Warcraft's.
Two items were listed, each with a number that had to be a price.
One was a golden question mark: [Gift of Fate – 0.99].
The other a golden shield: [Guardian's Gift – 0.00].
In the corner: [Piety: 0.00].
Piety… currency? That cheeky?
Haldryn frowned, hesitated, then lightly touched the free [Guardian's Gift] with a fingertip.
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