Kael Ardent woke under a linen sheet that smelled of ale and iron and the old house damp. He knew the feel of the cloth and the angle of the rafters; he knew, absurdly, the model name of a phone he had never owned in this life. Memory arrived like a keyed lamp: sudden, exact.
He remembered snow.
Not the abstract of snow — the taste of a bus handrail in winter, the click of a zipper, the feeling of a childhood that ended in a different century. He remembered caves of server racks and fluorescent light. He remembered a voice teaching him to think in lists. He remembered how to fix a bike chain and how to make coffee with a French press.
He also remembered two facts that belonged to the world he had been born into: how to ride a horse well enough to be tolerated in a melee, and the name of his father's steward. Those two things fit this life like a glove.
Under his ribs, something cold slid awake. Not pain. A precise chill, like a narrow blade of winter. It threaded into his chest and expanded until thought itself felt cool at the edges. The cold came with symbols that scrolled through his head for a breath like a banner: SYSTEM: FROST CODEX ATTACHED. PROFICIENCY PANEL LOADED.
A small window of information winked along the back of his sight. It was not a voice. It did not speak. It was text.
[PROFICIENCY PANEL — KAEL ARDENT]— Strength: 12 (+)— Swordsmanship: Trained — House Voss Drill (inherited)— Riding: Competent— Ice Affinity: Unknown → TRACE DETECTED— Mana Purity: 0.2% (ambient)— Frost Codex: Sealed (0/12 Seals)— Codex Slots: Passive; Active Techniques Locked
He blinked. The panel vanished the way a struck light dies. The room smelled of stew and iron, and beyond the window the Ardent estate's yards moved like a low tide: stable hands, boys sparring, the distant sweep of the keep. People murmured. Life was blunt and immediate.
He had thirteen years to fill before anyone expected more than a second son. That was useful. He had memories of other decades folded into him, but he kept those like a pocketknife — useful tools, not introductions.
The Frost Codex did not speak. It did not beg. It existed as an imprint in the weave of marrow and thought. The thing had been fitted to him in this life by some agent unknown; its seals sat over knowledge like padlocks. Names of materials scrolled across the edge of his vision and left afterimages: dragon-ice, deep-sea pearl, mana-iron, midnight saltstone. Rare things. Hard to find. Each seal listed a cost and an effect and nothing more.
He tested it. He concentrated on the faint trace the panel had flagged. Something tightened in his chest like the first breath of winter. Moisture in the air above his palm crystallized. A sliver of frost stitched itself on his knuckles and then melted at his skin like a lie. The codex reacted to intent and mana the way an instrument reacts to pressure. It recorded; it waited.
"Kael." The voice at the door was his mother's: practical, cool. She had no patience for theatrics. "You were supposed to be up an hour ago. Marcus is already in the yard, and Lord Ardent expects you to attend the steward."
He hid the oddness in the shape of a laugh and sat up. He could taste snow still, an afterflavor that did not belong to the summer. The panel offered nothing else. Seals: twelve. Locks: twelve. Potential: large and silent.
He had time. He had a codex with no will of its own and a panel that tracked what he practiced. He had a family that would present obligations and cover. He also had a knowledge that the wizard-doctors who passed through the kingdom did not treat ice lightly. The old stories warned of wizards who burned villages to pry secrets from their soil. That fact sat like a stone in his stomach. He folded it into his plan: train like a knight. Ride like a storm. Hide like a second son.
The codex waited. The house moved on around him. For now, a boy with two histories would learn to keep one of them in his sleeve.