The village was called Oakhaven, a name that felt far too peaceful for a world that had already tasted the copper tang of my blood. It sat at the hem of the Iron-Spine Mountains, a cluster of timber and stone that seemed to huddle together for warmth against the encroaching shadows of the peaks. For the first few days after my awakening, I was little more than a specter haunting the outskirts of the town. My sixteen-year-old muscles were lithe but unconditioned, and my mind was a fractured mirror, reflecting the grim memories of a forty-year-old strategist against the vibrant, terrifying reality of this new world.
An old woman named Martha had found me staring at a stream with the intensity of a man looking for his soul. She saw a boy who looked lost; I saw a woman who needed labor. We struck a silent bargain. She provided a hayloft that smelled of dust and summer, and I provided the back-breaking effort required to clear the granite "teeth" from her fallow fields. It was in those fields, under the unrelenting heat of a golden sun, that I first began to test the limits of my rebirth.
Every time I gripped a stone, I felt it—a low, rhythmic hum vibrating in the marrow of my bones. It wasn't just physical strength. When I focused, the heat in my chest would uncoil, flooding my limbs with a borrowed power that made the heavy granite feel like hollow wood. But the "hum" was a greedy thing. Each time I used it to heave a boulder, a sharp, stinging pain would blossom behind my eyes, and a slow trickle of blood would inevitably find its way down my lip. I was trading bits of my own vitality for every display of force, a dynamic I understood all too well. Power was never free; it was only ever financed.
As the weeks passed, I spent my evenings at the Boar's Head, the village's only tavern. I sat in the corner, a ghost in the shadows, listening to the desperate cadence of men who knew their world was ending. The air was thick with the scent of cheap ale and the sour sweat of fear. The talk was always of the North, and specifically, of the man who was carving a new map out of the old kingdoms: Baron von Heisenburg.
"They say his infantry doesn't eat," a traveler whispered one night, his eyes darting toward the door as if the Baron's hounds might burst through at any moment. "They say he's got mages who can stitch a man's spirit to his armor so he never has to sleep. He's not just taking land, Silas. He's taking the very air we breathe."
Silas, a veteran with one arm and a face like a dried plum, spat into the rushes. "Scare stories for children. Heisenburg is just another noble with a bigger ego than his treasury can support. The Southern Coalition will meet him at the river, and that'll be the end of his 'New Order.'"
I watched them from the dark, feeling a cold, familiar cynicism rise in my throat. I knew the Southern Coalition. In my past life, they were a collection of bickering lords who couldn't agree on a lunch menu, let alone a battle plan. They were fighting for a past that had already been buried. The Baron, however, was fighting for the future. He was a man who understood that morality was a luxury for those who weren't holding a sword.
"The Southern Coalition is already dead," I said, my voice cutting through the tavern's low hum like a winter frost. The room went silent. Silas turned his one good eye toward me, his brow furrowing.
"The stray speaks," he mocked. "What do you know of the South, boy? You've got the dirt of a farm on your boots and the look of a pup who's never seen a real blade."
"I know that hope is a poor shield against a man who uses magic as a siege engine," I replied, standing up. I didn't use the hum, but I let the weight of my past life—the cold authority of a man who had commanded thousands—settle into my posture. "The Baron isn't coming to steal your grain, Silas. He's coming to change what it means to be a man in this world. You can stay here and wait for the 'heroic' Coalition to save you, or you can go where the power is."
I walked toward the recruitment poster pinned to the door. It featured a crown being crushed by a wolf's jaw. I didn't care about the Baron's ideology. I didn't care about his "New Order." I cared that he was winning. I had died as a pawn for a losing Duke; I would not repeat the mistake of backing the wrong horse twice.
The journey to Raven's Crag, the Baron's primary recruitment hub, took me three days. I walked until my boots were shreds of leather held together by mud and willpower. I saw the Baron's influence long before I saw his fortress. I passed villages that had been "integrated"—their walls rebuilt with black stone, their young men gone, their elders working with a grim, robotic efficiency. There was no chaos, no looting. It was a terrifyingly perfect clockwork society.
When I reached Raven's Crag, the sheer scale of the operation nearly broke my resolve. It was a city of iron and ash. The mountain itself had been hollowed out, its peak replaced by obsidian spires that seemed to pierce the very clouds. The sound was a constant, rhythmic hammering—thousands of blacksmiths forging the tools of a continent's subjugation.
I stood in the recruitment line for hours, surrounded by the desperate, the broken, and the ambitious. When I finally reached the table, the sergeant didn't even look up. He was a man with skin like tanned leather and eyes that looked like they had been burnt out by too much sun.
"Name?"
"Adam Hilt."
"Experience?"
"I know how to win a war that hasn't started yet," I said.
The sergeant looked up then, his gaze heavy and skeptical. He saw a boy of sixteen with soft features, but he paused when he met my eyes. Most boys his age looked at him with fear or a false, bravado-filled heat. I looked at him as if he were a ledger I was deciding whether to keep or discard.
"Another philosopher," he grunted, dipping his quill. "We've got a special unit for boys like you. We call it the front line. You'll be meat for the Southern pikes by next month. Tent seven. Get your kit and don't speak unless you're bleeding."
The training that followed was a systematic attempt to erase the soul. We were woken before the first light by the sound of iron rods striking shields. We were fed a gray mash that tasted like salt and sawdust, and we were pushed until our lungs felt like they were filled with broken glass. The instructors were not men; they were extensions of the Baron's will, devoid of pity or humor.
This was where I began to truly tap into the Crimson Reverie. During the long, midnight marches carrying packs filled with stones, I would let the hum take over. I would imagine a thread of crimson light connecting my heart to my feet, pulling me forward when my muscles refused to move. I watched as other recruits collapsed, their spirits broken by the relentless grind. But I thrived. My mind, forty years deep in the art of endurance, found a perverse joy in the pain. It was proof that I was alive.
The turning point came during a combat exercise. We were given wooden bludgeons and told to fight until only one man in each group was standing. I was pitted against a group that included Kael, a former blacksmith's apprentice who stood nearly seven feet tall and had the temperament of a cornered bear. He had spent the week mocking my "pretty face" and my lack of physical bulk.
"I'm going to enjoy this, Hilt," Kael roared, swinging his club in a wide, clumsy arc. "Let's see if your big words can stop a piece of oak from meeting your skull."
I breathed out, letting my heart rate drop until it was a slow, steady thrum. I didn't look at Kael; I looked at the space he was about to occupy. As he lunged, I triggered the Reverie. The world didn't slow down, but my perception of it became crystalline. I could see the sweat flying from his brow, the slight tremor in his left knee, the exact moment his balance shifted too far forward.
I reached out with my mind, not to strike his body, but to touch his will. Fear, I projected. It was a sharp, jagged thought.
Kael hesitated for a fraction of a second—a momentary vertigo that made him blink. It was all I needed. I stepped inside his reach, the wooden club in my hand feeling weightless. I struck the pressure point behind his ear, then his solar plexus, and finally swept his lead leg.
He went down with a heavy thud, gasping for air. The rest of the group froze. I stood over him, my chest heaving, the faint red glow in my eyes slowly receding. I didn't feel triumph. I felt the familiar fogginess creeping into my thoughts, the "tax" of the magic.
"Get up," I said, my voice projecting a calm, unshakable authority. I didn't mock him. I didn't strike him while he was down. I offered him my hand.
Kael looked at my hand as if it were a venomous snake. Then, he looked at my eyes. He saw something there that wasn't sixteen years old. He saw a leader. He took my hand, and as I pulled him to his feet, I felt a new kind of power—not the hum of magic, but the weight of loyalty.
I wasn't just a soldier in the Baron's army anymore. I was the center of a new web. And as I looked up at the obsidian towers of Raven's Crag, I knew that the Baron would eventually have to notice me. Not as a pawn, but as the only man who truly understood the game he was playing.