"Where the f*** are we?"
Kimmy stirred first, rolled onto his back, and patted the ground for his HK. Frost-brittle grass, not cellar concrete. That alone was wrong.
Behind him Yosuke "Zukes" Hirogawa stood, cloak flapping in a cold breeze that carried no city smell. He squinted at a sky the colour of bruised steel. "Dawnless," he muttered.
"What?" Mateo "Teo" Vargas-Rodriguez asked, hefting the MRGG-A as he rose to one knee.
Lewis "Lew" Stewart gave a sharp Brisbane laugh. "Dawnless, aye? Next you'll tell me we've dropped into bloody Middle-Earth, mate."
Tamang "Wade" Weixing shrugged a shoulder, eyes scanning the tree line with the calm of a marksman born to high desert. "Have no idea, I think. But horizon is clean. No muzzle flashes."
Oleksei "Leksi" Levchenko knelt, tablet already out. He tapped the screen twice, waited, tapped again. "No GPS. No cell. No SAT L-band. Everything's dead, guys."
Zukes exhaled through his nose, almost a laugh. "So. We finally got isekaied, huh?"
Teo frowned. "Isekai? Those shows Seg used to rant about?"
"You gotta be shitting me," Kimmy muttered, but he looked at the horizon the same way a sailor tastes air before a storm.
Lew chuckled. "Add it to the list of new ones, mate."
Wade adjusted the cloak he'd fashioned from a weather sheet, eyes never leaving the distance. "Better we hide what we brought if that is true."
Kimmy nodded once. "Christ, you're right."
***
They stood on a low rise in the middle of rolling fields. Patches of snow clung to dead stubble; here and there lay islands of rubble: broken masonry, splintered rafters, sacks of grain ripped open like burst sandbags. Beneath one ruin, hidden by deliberate collapse, lay the mouth of a concrete shaft: the only piece of Seg's survival compound dragged through the white flash intact.
They set to work.
Kimmy, Teo, and Zukes hauled sacks of hay and wheat, spreading them wide to hide blast-sheared timber and the faint square of the trapdoor. Lew and Wade muscled a concrete slab—once part of the farmhouse foundation—over the hatch. Leksi handled the detail work, scattering chaff, then drawing a quick false plough-furrow pattern with a broken rake so the ground looked wind-scoured, not freshly disturbed.
When they finished the bunker mouth was just another hump in a field choked with debris. If the world had farmers, they'd need to clear half an acre before they found NATO-grade ordnance.
They pulled rucks from the shaft: heavy frames loaded with boxed 5.56, 6.5, .300 Win Mag, loose VOG-25P rounds, foil-wrapped MREs, water bladders, and vacuum-sealed energy bars. Rifles went inside the packs, pistols stayed holstered. Black turtlenecks and cargo pants would stand out in any place that still used woad and wool, so they draped themselves in cloak-shaped sheets of ripstop, charcoal-dusted for dullness.
Zukes took point with a lensatic compass. It had no grid, just cardinal instinct. They started east, where a faint smudge of woodsmoke teased the cold air.
They walked in silence, crunching energy bars between breaths. The bars tasted of peanut dust and memories of a world that had ended twenty hours earlier in a double flash over Ontario.
Twenty minutes out Lew kicked a lump in the frost—a broken wagon axle charred on one side. "Not our debris," he said. "Old."
"Civilisation ahead, then," Zukes answered. "Keep spacing. Cloaks up."
Wade flipped his hood, voice low. "And when they ask whence we come?"
Kimmy snorted. "From a land that no longer exists."
"Good enough," Teo said, checking the SAW hidden under canvas. "Let's find the locals before our luck runs dry."
They moved on, six ghosts wrapped in grey cloth, leaving behind a buried arsenal and the last physical link to a planet that had burned itself out. The sky never brightened, but the smear of woodsmoke grew thicker, curling up from somewhere beyond the far ridge. A town, perhaps, where answers waited, or at least a language they could learn to lie in.
Zukes tucked the compass into his cloak and lengthened his stride. The others matched him, one heartbeat behind, all positioned to cover each other's flanks; a single organism bred by war and held together now by the simple need to keep moving. Dawn might never come, but distance still could be eaten, yard by yard.
***
The town looked almost normal from a distance.
Roofs, smoke, a palisade of sharpened logs; a proper gate straddling the rutted road. A timber sign hung crookedly beneath the crossbar, carved with a name in curling runes none of them could read.
"Waymeet Hollow," Zukes said after a moment, sounding the words out in the rough Midlands tongue Wade had been drilling into them for the last two years. "Halfway town. Figures."
"You sure that's what it says?" Kimmy asked under his breath.
"Sure enough not to sound like an idiot," Zukes replied, cloak hood shadowing his face.
They joined the trickle of carts and foot traffic approaching the gate. Their cloaks hid the outline of rucks and rifles; pistols rode under armpits, where only a frisking would find them. The gate-sergeant squinted at them as they passed under the timber crossbar. He was a thick-shouldered man in boiled leather, spear butt propped in one hand.
"Whence come you six?" he asked, eyeing their boots and the way they walked.
"South farms," Wade answered smoothly in accented Midlands. "Lost caravan. Look for hire, for food."
The sergeant's eyes flicked from one face to the next. Wariness softened a notch when he saw their age: not fresh boys, not swaggering sellsword youths, but men with crow's feet and the quiet of those who had seen too much.
"You carry steel?" he asked.
"Aye," Zukes said. "Knives only."
Half true. He let his cloak fall just enough to show the hilt of a mundane camp blade at his belt. The sergeant grunted, marked something on a grubby slate, and with one stout, chapped hand, waved them through.
Inside, Waymeet Hollow opened like a shallow cup in the land. Four roads met at a muddy square: north to the Midlands cities, south toward the Outlands, east and west to lesser villages. Stone-front shops shouldered up to timber inns. A smithy clanged at one corner; the smell of coal-smoke and cooked onions drifted from an alehouse.
"Not bad," Lew murmured. "Bit like a quiet market town back in Queensland. If you squint."
"Don't squint too hard," Teo said. "You'll see the bits that are missing. No wires. No poles. No cars."
"No gun stores," Leksi added. "Tragic."
"First order of business," Kimmy said, "is looking like we're not here to invade Westeros."
"Wrong universe," Teo told him. "That's Lord of the Rings."
"Mate," Lew said, "if you mix up Tolkien and Martin again I'm leaving you in the next cave."
They drifted toward the smithy's clanging heart. The smith was a broad woman with arms like hammers and soot on her cheek. Blades in various states of polish hung on pegs behind her: simple shortswords, long cut-and-thrust blades, a few heavier cleavers that might serve as falchions.
"We need steel," Zukes said quietly in their own language. "Local pattern. Nothing flashy."
Kimmy nodded, stepped forward, and switched tongues. "We are caravan's guard, lost work," he told the smith in careful Midlands. "Our blades broke. We need six swords, plain, strong."
The woman eyed his cloak, his hands, the way his fingers flexed like a man who knew the weight of more than kitchen knives. "You lot look more like grey monks than guards," she said. "Got coin?"
Kimmy untied a small leather purse and spilled a few round, dull-yellow discs onto the counter. They were melted from world-gold coins, filed smooth and stamped only with a crude L symbol for Lobo. But gold was gold. The smith's eyes sharpened.
"Right then," she said. "You want length like a legion blade," she nodded at Lew, "or farmer's chopper?" She held up two patterns.
"One of each long," Zukes said. "Four middling. Balance good. No tricks."
They left ten minutes later with six scabbarded blades wrapped in oiled cloth, new weight hanging against old scars. A few heads turned, but swords on hips were nothing unusual here.
Lodging came next. Kimmy haggled the price of two small rooms at an inn called The Cart and Candle in a mix of coin and promise of later odd jobs. The innkeep, a sour old fellow with more ears than teeth, accepted when Lew paid in more of the strange smooth gold.
"You mercs?" the man asked as he counted.
"On a good day," Teo said.
"Well, keep your good days outside my walls," the innkeep grunted. "No brawling, no fire starting, no creeping into maids' rooms, and we'll get on."
They carried their rucks up creaking steps to the second floor. The two rooms were small and low-beamed, each with two pallets and a stool. They locked the doors, set Kimmy's little door-wedge under one for habit's sake, and finally exhaled.
For the first time since the white flash, there was a wall between them and the unknown.
Teo dropped onto a pallet and tugged his new sword free of the cloth wrap. It was a decent piece: straight, double-edged, the kind that would become invisible in a line of similar steel.
He turned it in his hands, watching the lamplight run along the edge.
"So," he said in English, voice somewhere between wonder and weary amusement. "We really got reincarnated as Game of Thrones characters, right? What am I, then? Darth Vader?"
Kimmy stared at him. "Dummy, Vader is Star Wars. You're more like… I dunno, Oberyn. The idiot who dies doing something flashy."
"Ouch," Teo said. "Harsh but fair."
Leksi had his own sword out, testing the flex. "Lew is Stannis," he said. "Grim face, no jokes."
Lew snorted. "Could be worse, mate. Could be Theon."
"Wade is clearly the quiet faceless man from Bravos," Teo added. "Shows up, kills a god, goes back to eating lentils."
Wade shrugged modestly. "I just prefer alive, I think."
The humour lasted exactly until Zukes unrolled his bundle.
Wade's steel was no surprise. He laid his plain longsword on the pallet, then drew a second sheath from under his cloak. This one was shorter, curved, its leather worn smooth with years. The kukri came free with a whisper, broad and heavy, the dark metal etched faintly near the spine.
Everyone in the room glanced at it with the same mix of respect and wariness.
"Still got that thing," Lew said. "Thought you lost it in Kherson."
"I would not lose this," Wade replied. His English carried the cadence of Xinjiang classrooms, precise but soft. "Was my uncle's. He was Gurkha in old days. Blade must drink before it sleeps again."
He ran a thumbnail over the edge, testing. A fine bead of red appeared on the skin. Wade nodded once, satisfied, and cleaned the blade before sliding it back into the sheath.
It was Zukes' turn then.
He knelt by his ruck and pulled out a long, lacquered case that had no place in a peasant inn. Black wood, edges bound in worn brass, the lid inlaid with a faint family crest: three narrow leaves fanning from a central stem.
Leksi blinked. "That made it through?"
"Dragged this stupid thing across three wars," Kimmy muttered. "Of course it did."
Zukes opened the case.
Red silk, padded and still bright despite time and travel, cradled a single sheathed blade. The scabbard was black lacquer, the cord wrap deep indigo worn where a hand had rested a thousand times. The tsuba was plain iron, subtly shaped. There were no ornaments, no ostentation; just flawless, balanced simplicity.
For a moment, the room was very quiet.
Lew let out a low whistle. "Bloody hell, mate."
Teo leaned forward. "Is that…?"
"Katana," Leksi finished for him. "Old one. Not tourist crap."
Zukes lifted the sword free with both hands, respectful without quite meaning to. He did not draw it; even his Western friends understood there was a weight to that gesture. He looked almost embarrassed under their stares.
"Lahaina brought it out of Kyoto when my parents sent us to DC," he said softly. "Family blade. Hirogawa line. Would have been… impolite to let it burn with the house."
"And you didn't mention you had an actual samurai sword sitting in the bunker?" Teo said.
"You never asked," Zukes replied, mouth twitching. "Too busy arguing Star Wars lore."
Kimmy regained his voice first. "Well," he said. "If we are going full fantasy disguise, that thing definitely beats your new farmer's pig-sticker."
"Not for show," Zukes said. "For last resort. If we run out of everything else."
Wade nodded. "Last steel for last breath. Is good custom."
Lew scrubbed a hand over his face. "Just when I think we've peaked on weird," he said. "We're hiding RPGs under wheat sacks, buying castle-era swords, and our point man's packing a legit ancestral head-chopper."
Teo lay back on the pallet, sword across his chest, staring at the smoke-stained ceiling. "We are absolutely isekai characters," he said. "Seg would be loving this."
Kimmy's expression softened for a heartbeat. "Yeah," he said. "He'd say we rolled the hard mode."
Zukes closed the case and slid it under the bed, within easy reach.
"Hard mode or not," he said, "tomorrow we go to Mullvane. Big guild-city. More work, more eyes, more trouble. Tonight we sleep. Cloaks on hooks, pistols under pillows. We play along until we know the rules."
Wade moved to the small shuttered window and cracked it a finger's-width, listening to the muted sounds of Waymeet Hollow below: a cart, a barking dog, a late drunk singing off-key.
"Quiet place," he said. "For now."
"For now," Zukes agreed.
They doused the lamp. Six men lay down in two small rooms in a town that had never heard of nuclear fire, aircraft carriers, or satellite uplinks. Outside, the crossroads dozed, unaware that its newest, strangest guests had brought a dead world's ghosts with them, and planned to walk into its greatest adventurer city as if they were just another band of grey-cloaked sellswords.