The north wind howled like a starving wolf, its icy teeth gnawing at the marrow of men's bones.
Kael pulled his worn woolen tunic tighter, his breath hitching in a plume of white mist. He stepped out of the woodshed, squinting against the blinding glare of the snow-covered courtyard of Blackstone Keep.
Late afternoon, he thought, judging the slant of the pale sun. The wood is stacked. I might actually get a moment's peace before the Steward finds another way to break my back.
He massaged the dull ache in his lower spine and retreated into the shadows of the woodshed, sinking onto a rough-hewn cedar stump. As the snowflakes danced outside the narrow slit of a window, his mind drifted back to a world of neon and glass.
In his past life, he hadn't been a laborer. He had been a high-level programmer on Earth, a specialist in "Zenith Online"—the world's first 90% immersion VR experience. He had been at the top of his game until a surge of high-voltage current from a faulty neural link fried his brain, dragging him into the dark.
He had woken up here, in the decaying Varentis Empire.
Initially, he thought he was trapped in a glitchy build of Zenith. The geography was similar, but the timeline was wrong. The game started in the Year of the Prophet; here, it was the 23rd Year of the Mad Emperor's Reign. There was no "Log Out" button. There was only the cold, the hunger, and the realization that this was no simulation. This was a nightmare made of flesh and blood.
The body he inhabited belonged to a farmhand's son. His mother had died in the blood and screams of a difficult labor; his father followed six months ago, taken by a wasting sickness that turned his lungs to ash. On his deathbed, the old man had begged Kael to seek out Aunt Martha in Ironforge City, whose husband served as a local Tax Collector.
But Kael was a prideful man, even in this life. He had left his younger brother, Eren, with their aunt and sought work as an indentured servant at Blackstone Keep, the seat of the local Baron.
A few weeks ago, the original Kael had spent his meager wages on a skin of rotgut ale to numb the cold. He had passed out in a snowbank, his heart stopping as the frost claimed him.
When the eyes opened again, a different soul looked out from them.
Kael stood, shaking off the memories. It was time for the evening rations. Blackstone Keep was a cruel place, but it provided three meals a day—the only reason he had survived the winter.
He made his way to the kitchens, his wooden bowl in hand. The Head Cook looked at him with the same revulsion one might reserve for a plague-ridden rat.
"Keep back, you hacking wretch!" the cook spat, waving a heavy iron ladle. "I'll serve you. Stay right there. I won't have your lung-rot tainting my broth."
The man slopped a ladle of thin, grey oat porridge into Kael's bowl and tossed two chunks of hard black bread onto the counter. Kael didn't argue. He had spent the last week battling a fever that would have killed a lesser man in this godless era. He was healing, but his copper pennies had been drained by the local apothecary for bitter-root tinctures.
He forced the dry, tasteless bread down his throat, ignoring the grit between his teeth. Survival, he knew, was the only virtue that mattered.
"You. Recruit. Get over here."
Kael had barely sat down when the Overseer barked at him, pointing a gloved finger. Beside the man lay a long object wrapped in coarse black canvas. Kael's pulse quickened. He knew that shape. It was a corpse.
"Take this meat out to the Ravine," the Overseer commanded. "Bury it deep. I don't want the wolves dragging it back to the gates."
In Blackstone Keep, servants weren't employees; they were property. If a Lord decided a servant's life was forfeit, the Town Hall didn't ask questions. Kael had seen this three times already in his few months here.
A trembling kitchen hand was assigned to help him. The boy, barely sixteen, was pale as a ghost, his knees knocking together.
"Steward... please, can't someone else—" the boy started, but a sharp glare from the Overseer silenced him.
Kael loaded the body onto a creaking wooden cart. Together, they pushed it through the sally port and into the dark woods beyond the walls.
"Kael... maybe we just leave it here?" the boy whispered, his voice cracking. "The snow will cover it."
Kael looked at him with cold, dead eyes. "Unburied bodies breed the corruption. If the Baron's scouts find it, they'll put your head on a pike for negligence. Start digging."
The Varentis Empire took plague seriously after the Great Rot a decade ago. Abandoning a corpse was a death sentence.
They dug. The ground was frozen, requiring back-breaking effort to carve out a shallow trench. As they prepared to roll the canvas-wrapped body into the earth, the "corpse" moved.
A pale, calloused hand—thick with the scars of a warrior—shot out from the black shroud, seizing Kael's ankle with the strength of a crushing vice.
A raspy, blood-choked scream tore from the canvas.
"Help... me! Help..."
The kitchen boy shrieked, falling backward into the snow, his breeches darkening with urine.
Kael froze. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. It's alive. But as he looked at the hand, he saw the sigil ring on the finger. He recognized the man. This wasn't a servant. This was Sir Janson, the Master-at-Arms who taught the Baron's guards the Way of the Talon.
The rumors were true then. The Baron's fourth wife had been caught in a scandal, and Janson was the rumored lover. This wasn't an accident; it was an execution.
If Janson lived, and the Baron found out Kael had helped him, Kael's life wouldn't last the hour.
Kael's eyes narrowed, a cold, predatory light flickering in his gaze. He didn't hesitate. He grabbed the heavy iron shovel, reversed his grip, and slammed the sharp edge of the blade into the man's neck.
Thuck.
Blood sprayed, hot and metallic, painting Kael's face and tunic. Janson's grip tightened for a second, then went slack. Kael struck again. And again. He didn't stop until the blade crunched through the vertebrae and the head rolled away within the canvas.
He breathed heavily, his hands trembling. This was his first kill. The morality of his old life screamed in the back of his mind, but he silenced it. This was a world of monsters. To survive, he had to be the coldest monster of them all.
"Go back," Kael said to the sobbing boy on the ground. "I'll finish this. If you speak a word of this, I'll tell the Steward it was your idea to leave him alive."
The boy scrambled to his feet and vanished into the treeline without a second look.
Kael turned back to the body. He stripped off his blood-stained tunic and threw it into the pit. He smeared mud over the splatters on his trousers. Then, his eyes fell on Janson's belongings. The man had been executed in secret; they hadn't stripped him yet.
He reached into the dead man's tunic and pulled out a small pouch. Inside were six silver stags. A king's ransom. An average peasant earned four silvers a year; this was ten months of grueling labor in a single bag.
Then, his fingers brushed something cold. A silver amulet, etched with strange, pulsing runes.
As his skin touched the metal, a jolt of frigid energy surged up his arm, settling in his chest. His vision blurred, and a translucent, ghostly light flickered before his eyes.
[ --- SYSTEM INTERFACE --- ]
User: Kael
Path: None
Aether Points: 8 Units