Aldric's eyes snapped open, his chest heaving as he drew in desperate gasps. The Scourge Monarch's attack had given him no chance to fight back. He had died before his brain could even process it.
He calmed down and observed his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was the silence. There were no screams from his Kingdom's citizens and soldiers. No familiar explosions and the grinding of metal teeth tearing through flesh.
Just... regular quiet.
He lay there, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. No, not unfamiliar. He knew this ceiling. The water stain in the corner shaped like a dog. The cheap fluorescent light fixture that flickered when the neighbor upstairs walked around.
This was his apartment. His old apartment.
His heart hammered against his ribs. Strange. This was all strange. He should be dead. The Scourge Monarch had killed him. He'd felt his body disintegrate, felt his consciousness scatter like ash in the wind.
So why was he staring at his apartment ceiling?
Aldric sat up slowly. His body moved differently. It felt lighter and easier to move around. His heavy injuries were nonexistent. No broken ribs. No internal bleeding. No wounds at all.
He looked down at his hands.
They were smooth, unmarred. No calluses from years of sword work. No scars from thousands of battles he had fought. These were the hands of someone who spent their days typing on a keyboard, not gripping a weapon.
"No..." The word came out as a whisper.
He stumbled out of bed, his legs shaky. The apartment was small, cramped. A studio that barely fit a bed, a desk, and a tiny kitchen area. Clothes were scattered on the floor. Empty ramen containers littered the desk next to a computer that was still running.
Everything about this place screamed failure. A life lived in the margins. A corporate slave's existence.
This was the reality of his past life.
Aldric's breath came faster as realization dawned on him. He pushed past the clutter, heading for the bathroom. The door was stuck, so he had to shoulder it open. The dark bathroom was barely big enough to turn around in.
He flipped on the light and looked in the mirror. 'Wait, how did i know the position of the light switch in this unfamiliar darkness.'
A stranger stared back at him. No. This was not a stranger. It was a fucking ghost.
The face was younger. In the mid-twenties. The cheekbones were sharper, less weathered. The hair and eyes were the same gray, but they lacked the weight, the burden of command that had marked Emperor Aldric Thorne's gaze.
This was Aldric before the created the Crimson Empire. Before the wars. Before everything began.
His hand reached up to touch his face, half-expecting it to be an illusion. The reflection mimicked the movement. The contact was solid, real.
"This... this can't be..." His voice was different too. Higher. Less gravelly from years of shouting orders across meeting rooms and battlefields.
His legs gave out. He collapsed against the bathroom wall, sliding down until he sat on the cold tile floor. His mind raced, trying to make sense of the impossible.
He'd died. He remembered dying vividly. The Scourge Monarch had raised his hand, and a brilliant white light shone, disintegrating everything on its path. The game's system message confirmed his death.
But he was here, still alive. In a body that shouldn't exist anymore.
But then he remembered the final system messages before his consciousness disappeared entirely.
[SYSTEM ERROR: Temporal Anomaly Detected]
[Unknown Item Initiating Protocol: REGRESSION]
"Regression."
The word echoed in his mind like thunder.
He'd gone back. Somehow, impossibly, he'd been sent back in time. Back to before everything started. Back to when he was just Aldric, a 24-year-old programmer working himself to death in a corporate hellscape.
His breathing steadied as the realization sank in. If this was real, if he truly had regressed...
He stood up, steadier now. His eyes found the small calendar hanging on the bathroom wall. It was one of those free promotional calendars, the kind banks gave out. He'd never bothered to take it down.
The date stared back at him.
'October 28th'
The numbers didn't register at first. Then they did, and his blood turned to ice.
"October 28th."
There was seven days before Dominion Online's official launch.
Seven days before the game stopped being a game.
Seven days before 60% of humanity died in The Great Purge.
"No..." Aldric gripped the sink, his knuckles turning white. "No, no, no..."
His mind flooded with memories. Not the hazy recollections of a dream, but sharp, crystal-clear images that cut like knives.
Aldric remembered the launch day. November 3rd. The excitement as billions of players logged into Dominion Online for the first time. The stunning realistic graphics. The revolutionary full-dive technology that made everything feel real to the touch, including the blades of grass.
He remembered the first hour. Players spawning in different starting zones. Choosing their classes to begin exploring the massive world.
He remembered the second hour. When the logout button stopped working.
He remembered the third hour. When the system announcement appeared in blood-red letters across everyone's vision.
[WELCOME TO THE Dominion World]
[SURVIVE FOR 30 YEARS]
[FAILURE = PERMANENT DEATH IN REAL WORLD]
[PRIZE = CONTINUED EXISTENCE... IN A HIGHER REALM]
He remembered the panic, the chaos that the message had caused. The desperate attempts to force-logout that failed, every single one.
He remembered the first deaths. Players who thought it was a joke, who tested the permadeath system by doing something reckless.
Their real bodies were probably found dead in their VR pods, their brains fried by some mechanism no one understood.
He remembered the first month. 30% of Earth's population dead.
He remembered the first year. 62% gone.
He remembered the wars that followed. Players turning on players as resources grew scarce. Alliances forming and breaking. Kingdoms rising from the ashes.
He remembered building his empire in such chaos. Recruiting his Dukes and the best of all, meeting Seraphina.
He remembered all twelve years of his reign. He remembered the Scourge. He remembered dying.
All of it flooded back in a torrent that threatened to drown him. Aldric gasped, gripping the sink harder. The memories were too much, too heavy. How could one mind hold all of that? Thirty-eight years of life compressed into a 24-year-old brain.
But somehow, it fit. Somehow, he contained it all.
Slowly, his breathing returned to normal. The panic receded, replaced by something else.
Clarity.
If he was truly back, if this was real, then he had a chance. A chance to fix everything. To prevent the deaths. To save Seraphina. To avoid the mistakes that had led to his empire's fall.
Seven days. That was all he had.
He had seven days to prepare before hell descended on Earth. No. Before hell descended on the Dominion World.