Consciousness returned slowly.
At first, Leylin felt nothing but dizziness, a lingering, nauseating sensation as if his body and soul were struggling to realign after being violently torn apart and stitched back together. His thoughts came in fragments, scattered and dull, like echoes reverberating through a hollow cavern.
He did not move immediately. Instead, he focused on breathing.
In… out.
Arcane circulation stabilized little by little, mana flowing back into familiar channels. The burning pain in his temples eased, though a deep ache remained, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Only then did Leylin open his eyes. Blue. An endless, unfamiliar blue stretched above him.
Not the arcane-filtered twilight of Suramar. Not the oppressive gloom of the Tomb of Sargeras. This was an open sky, vast, clear, and indifferent.
Leylin pushed himself up slowly, his palms pressing into coarse sand and scattered stone. The ground beneath him was solid, real, and faintly warm from the sun overhead.
"…I'm alive," he murmured.
His gaze swept outward. He was on an island. A small one.
Rugged stone jutted from the shoreline like broken teeth, battered smooth by countless tides. Sparse vegetation clung stubbornly to the land, wind-twisted shrubs, low grasses, and a few gnarled trees bent permanently toward the sea.
Beyond that—
Ocean. Endless ocean. The horizon curved gently in every direction, broken only by distant specks of land, small islands scattered like crumbs across a vast blue expanse.
Leylin frowned.
"This isn't the Broken Isles," he said quietly.
He stood, testing his balance. His legs trembled briefly, then steadied. Aside from residual spatial disorientation, his body was intact. No broken bones. No obvious internal damage.
That alone was a miracle. Closing his eyes, Leylin extended his senses.
He reached for the familiar pulse of ancient ley lines, the deep, resonant flow he had felt so clearly beneath Suramar, threading through the Nightwell and the land itself.
Nothing. His brow furrowed. He pushed further, extending his perception outward, deeper, straining against distance and interference.
At first, there was faint resistance… then—
Silence. No response. No echo. No connection. Minutes passed. Leylin slowly opened his eyes, expression grave.
"I've been thrown far," he muttered. "Very far."
Whether the spatial rupture had simply hurled him across the sea… or flung him into an entirely different region—or even a distorted layer of time—he could not yet tell.
The possibility unsettled him. Different timeline… different points in history…
He clenched his fist, feeling mana answer his will without delay. His spells still functioned. His arcane constructs responded. His memories remained intact.
That was enough for now. Leylin exhaled slowly, forcing his thoughts into order.
First priority: survival.
The island was small, but not barren. Over the next several hours, Leylin moved methodically.
He gathered edible fruits from low shrubs, tested freshwater seepage near rocky outcroppings, and fashioned a crude container using magic to store what water he found. He caught small fish near the shallows, using precise bursts of arcane force rather than wasting energy on elaborate spells.
Efficiency over comfort.
By the time the sun dipped lower in the sky, he had enough provisions to last several days. Only then did he sit at the island's highest point, watching the sun's slow descent.
West… east… Leylin tracked its path carefully.
"If my memory serves," he murmured, "the Broken Isles lie west of the Eastern Kingdoms."
Which meant, if he wanted land. Civilization. Answers. He needed to go east. Leylin stood. There was no hesitation.
With a practiced flow of mana, his form shimmered, bones lightening, muscles reshaping, skin giving way to feathers. In moments, a hawk stood where a man had been—eyes sharp, wings strong, instincts humming beneath disciplined thought.
Leylin flexed his wings once. Then launched himself into the sky.
The wind caught him immediately, lifting him higher, carrying him forward. The island shrank beneath him, swallowed quickly by the endless sea.
As he flew eastward, Leylin kept his gaze fixed on the horizon. Wherever I've landed, he thought calmly, this world hasn't escaped me yet.
And somewhere beyond the ocean, fate was still moving.
—
The journey had stretched far beyond Leylin's expectations.
At first, he had tried to measure time by discipline alone—counting sunrises, marking sunsets, gauging the slow ache in his body as proof that another day had passed. But the ocean was mercilessly uniform. The sky repeated itself in endless shades of blue and gray, and even exhaustion blurred into something dull and constant.
Somewhere along the way, he stopped counting.
Storms came and went. There were nights when violent winds forced him down onto jagged rocks or barren islets barely large enough to rest upon. Other days were calm, the sea beneath him like a sheet of glass, reflecting the sun so brightly it burned his eyes even in hawk form.
He did not know how many days—or weeks—had passed since the Tomb of Sargeras collapsed inward on itself.
Only that it had been far too long. When land finally appeared on the horizon, Leylin almost dismissed it as a mirage.
Green hills rose gently from the sea, their slopes untouched by fel corruption. Forests stretched wide and deep, breathing with life. Rivers cut silver paths through the land, and the air carried scents of soil, wood, and smoke, ordinary, human smoke.
Not demonfire. Not arcane devastation. This isn't the Broken Isles, Leylin realized, heart stirring faintly.
He circled high above the coastline, cautious despite the peaceful sight. There were no infernal scars, no Legion encampments, no twisted creatures roaming the land. Instead, he saw farms, grazing animals, and roads worn smooth by generations of travel.
Civilization untouched by recent catastrophe.
Eventually, fatigue forced him down. He landed near a wooded rise and remained perched for a long while, observing. Only when he was certain there was no immediate danger did he allow the transformation to unravel.
Feathers dissolved into skin. Wings folded into arms. The sharp clarity of a predator's senses dulled into human perception.
Leylin exhaled slowly. He wrapped himself in a cloak, pulling the hood low. Whatever era he had arrived in, discretion would be his greatest ally.
Following a dirt road inland, he walked for nearly an hour before signs of habitation became unmistakable, fences, stacked firewood, wagon tracks pressed deep into the earth. The air grew warmer with the smell of cooked food.
Then he saw it.
A tavern. The building leaned slightly to one side, its wooden beams dark with age. A painted sign depicting a foaming mug creaked lazily above the door, swaying with the wind.
Leylin paused before entering. Information first, he reminded himself.
He pushed the door open. Sound exploded outward. Laughter, shouting, the clatter of mugs and plates, boots stamping against wooden floors.
The tavern was packed wall to wall with people, mostly farmers and laborers, their clothes rough, their faces flushed red from drink and relief. Relief was the dominant emotion here. Not fear.
Leylin slipped inside like a shadow, barely drawing a glance. He approached the bar, set down a few coins, and accepted a mug without speaking. Then he retreated to a dark corner where the light barely reached.
And he listened.
"…I'm telling you, the Alliance crushed 'em," a broad-shouldered farmer declared, slamming his mug down hard enough to splash ale. "Once Lord Lothar rallied the armies, the orcs didn't stand a chance."
Another man scoffed. "Rallied 'em straight into his grave. Orc champion took him down like nothing."
A moment of silence followed that comment—brief, respectful.
"A hero's death," someone muttered. "Bought us victory."
Leylin's eyes narrowed slightly beneath his hood. Lothar is dead. He listened closer.
"Doesn't matter now," a third man said loudly. "Turalyon took command after that. Pushed the orcs all the way back. Even chased 'em through the Dark Portal itself."
That sentence struck like a hammer. Leylin's grip tightened around his mug.
Through the Dark Portal…
"So the war's done," another voice chimed in. "Stormwind avenged. Lordaeron safe. We won."
"We won," several echoed, raising their mugs.
Others were less celebratory.
"Won, aye," an older farmer said quietly. "But at what cost? Villages burned. Families gone. And now they're putting orcs in camps like livestock."
That sparked argument instantly.
"They should've been executed!"
"Enough blood's been spilled!"
"They'll break free one day, mark my words!"
Leylin stared into his mug, thoughts racing. The Second War… is over. There was no doubt now.
He began aligning memories with facts, timelines snapping into place with chilling precision. The Second War had begun in the fifth year after the Dark Portal opened.
If Turalyon now led the Alliance, if the orcs were imprisoned rather than invading, then time had not merely moved on.
It had leapt forward. For two years, he calculated calmly. At least.
Two years lost to warped space and shattered timelines.
"…They say the Alliance is preparing something," a farmer whispered conspiratorially. "An expedition. Back through the Portal. To finish it."
Leylin's heart sank—and steadied.
The invasion of Draenor.
The final campaign. The shattering of the orcish homeworld. The beginning of another catastrophe masquerading as victory.
History was unfolding exactly as he remembered.
Which meant—
He drained the rest of his ale and set the mug down gently.
"I see," he murmured under his breath.
He was no longer merely displaced in space. He was displaced in time. And now, standing in a noisy tavern filled with people celebrating a hard-won peace, Leylin understood something with unsettling clarity:
The world had moved forward without him. But it had not escaped its fate. Slowly, deliberately, he rose from his seat. The next war was already forming in the shadows.
And this time—
Leylin intended to be there when it began.