The silence was the first thing that felt wrong.
Sato Kenji was used to the hum of the city, the distant roar of Tokyo's traffic, and the rhythmic clicking of his keyboard. Death, however, was supposed to be a different kind of quiet. When the truck had slammed into his sedan, the world had exploded into a cacophony of shrieking metal and shattering glass. His last thought had been of his thesis, a 500-page labor of love that was currently being soaked in his own blood.
But as his consciousness flickered back to life, there was no screeching metal.
Instead, there was the rhythmic, wet slap of waves against a jagged shore. Sato tried to move his hand, but his fingers felt as though they were encased in concrete. A heavy, dull ache throbbed behind his eyes, and every breath he drew felt like he was inhaling damp wool.
I should be dead, he thought, his engineering mind struggling to find a logical explanation for the sensation of cold sand beneath his fingernails. The kinetic energy of that impact... the structural integrity of the car... there is zero probability of survival.
He forced his eyes open.
The sight that greeted him sent a jolt of pure adrenaline through his sluggish heart. Above him, the sky was not the hazy blue of Earth. It was a swirling, oppressive canopy of slate-gray mist that seemed to pulse with a life of its own. It hung so low that it felt like the heavens were trying to crush the world beneath them.
"Your Highness! He lives! The Broken Prince still breathes!"
The voice was like a landslide of gravel. Sato turned his head, his neck popping with the effort. A man stood over him, silhouetted against the gray sky. He was massive, his chest the size of a beer keg, clad in battered plate armor that had seen better decades. His face was a map of scars, dominated by a thick, salt-and-pepper beard.
Where am I? Sato wondered, his mind spinning. Who is 'Your Highness'?
A sudden, violent surge of images flooded his brain. It wasn't a gentle memory; it was a sensory assault. He saw a cold, white marble palace. He felt the sting of a wooden practice sword hitting his ribs. He heard a cold, aristocratic voice, his father, the Emperor, calling him a "stain on the Valerian bloodline."
The realization hit him like a second car crash. He wasn't Sato Kenji anymore. He was Alaric von Valerius, the fourth prince of a superpower called the Valerian Hegemony. He was a man born without the ability to process mana in a world where magic was everything.
Sato, now Alaric, looked at his hands. They were thinner, paler, but the callouses of a student were gone, replaced by the soft skin of a royal who had spent his life being ignored.
"General... Kaelen?" Alaric rasped.
The name came to him instinctively, pulled from the depths of his new identity.
The massive man didn't offer a hand to help him up. He simply stood there, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes cold and filled with a weary disdain.
"Don't expect me to weep with joy, Prince," Kaelen growled, his voice devoid of the loyalty one would expect from a royal guard. "We are on the Ouroboros Archipelago. The Dead Zone. If you had died in your sleep, it would have been a mercy. Now, I have to find a way to keep you alive in a place where even the Goddess has turned her back."
Alaric pushed himself up, his muscles screaming. He looked around the beach and felt a wave of genuine horror. This wasn't a tropical paradise. The sand was a dark, volcanic gray. The rocks were jagged and black, looking like the teeth of some ancient, fossilized beast. Scattered across the shore were hundreds of people in tattered gray rags, convicts, the "Dregs" of the empire, dumped here alongside him to rot.
The sun was invisible behind the mist, but the ambient heat was rising. It was a muggy, stagnant heat that would lead to rapid dehydration.
"We can't stay on the open sand," Alaric said, his voice gaining a sudden, sharp clarity. "The thermal radiation from the sand will cook us by noon, and the mist is trapping the humidity. We need shade and a windbreak. General, tell the men to move toward those cliffs! Now!"
Kaelen blinked, his eyes narrowing. The Alaric he knew was a whimpering boy who would have spent this time crying for his mother. This Alaric spoke with the tone of a foreman on a high-stakes construction site.
"I don't take orders from you because of your rank, boy," Kaelen said, leaning down until his scarred face was inches from Alaric's. "I am here because of the vow I made to your mother before she succumbed to the wasting sickness. I promised her I would see you breathe on this island, even if I have to carry your useless carcass myself. But don't mistake my promise for loyalty to you. To me, you are just a debt I intend to pay."
Alaric didn't flinch. The engineer in him was already calculating. He didn't need Kaelen's love; he needed his muscle.
"Fine," Alaric replied, his eyes scanning the terrain. "Pay your debt by moving these people to the shade of that western overhang. If we stay here, we'll be too weak to find water by sundown!"
As Kaelen began to bark orders at the stunned convicts, a sudden, crystalline sound echoed inside Alaric's skull. It wasn't a voice, but a vibration that felt like the ringing of a tuning fork.
[Mental Interface Initialized.]
[Library of Modernity: Status — LOCKED.]
Alaric froze. Behind his eyelids, he saw a vast, infinite hall of bookshelves stretching into a dark void. But as he tried to "reach" for a book on steam engines or metallurgy, a shimmering, translucent barrier blocked his path.
[Notice: The Library of Modernity is a repository of civilization. Knowledge is earned, not given.]
[Mission Unlocked: "The First Foundation."]
[Objective: Establish a secure camp and find a sustainable source of shade for the 500 exiles.]
[Reward: Unlock — 'Volume 1: Primitive Survival & Basic Material Science'.]
A quest? Alaric thought, his heart hammering. So it's not just a memory. It's a progression system. I have the blueprints for a modern world in my head, but I have to prove I can handle the basics before I can build the complex.
He looked at the 500 starving, terrified souls stumbling across the gray sand. He looked at the "Muted Mist" that supposedly killed mages. He looked at Kaelen, the man who guarded him out of pity and a dead woman's wish.
This wasn't Earth. There was no internet, no safety nets, and no second chances.
"Move!" Alaric shouted, his voice cracking the silence of the beach. "Unless you want the Ouroboros to be your headstone, follow the General! We're moving to the cliffs!"
He took his first step onto the jagged rocks. He was no longer a student in Tokyo. He was a Sovereign in a graveyard, and it was time to start building.