There was no light.
Only the warm, wet pulse of someone else's body. Flesh pressed against flesh. Blood pumped above. Fluid sloshed with each breath. He was curled into meat again—limbs unfinished, lungs unused, eyes shut and sealed in darkness, but Vault was awake.
Not just in the spark of instinct, not just awareness, but awake.
He couldn't move—not properly. Not yet. But his mind? His mind was alive. Old. Heavy with memory. Shaped by steel and blood and betrayal.
And he was listening.
Muffled sounds passed through the womb wall every day, like vibrations echoing across a drowned battlefield. Footsteps, slow and heavy boots on wood, not stone. Hinges creaked. The flutter of parchment. A low humming voice—female, melodic, proper.
And then, clearer words. British English, formal and precise. Accents like warm brandy over stone.
"The firewood's been brought in, milord."
"His Grace is expecting a reply by the end of winter, miss."
Vault's pulse sharpened; he recognised this. Eglish, old-school and proper, the king's tongue.
He filtered every word and tone through the mental library carved into him by two previous lives. He knew this dialect—the cadence, the intent. It was upper-class, cold, but controlled. These were no slaves, no junkies, no, this was something different.
He shifted slightly—only slightly—testing the edges of his new body. He was still small, still growing, but dense and tight. He was already stronger than most infants would be weeks after birth.
Then he listened again and heard a second voice. This one was much deeper, firmer, a male.
"If the colonies do rise, we'll know well before it reaches Albany. I've got ears on the rivers and riders in the hills."
That voice wasn't a politician.
It was a commander.
Vault filed it away. Even as a fetus, he could read a man through speech.
This wasn't fear.
This was preparedness.
And the woman? He heard her again—softer now, speaking by candlelight, closer to where he floated.
"He'll be strong, Arthur. I feel it."
Arthur.
His father's name.
She spoke it like a prayer. Vault pressed his palms gently against the womb wall, as if trying to find her through the veil.
Her voice carried refinement—but also kindness. Not the dead-eyed pity of nurses from the Finnish orphanage. Not the hollow moans of chained priestesses.
Warmth.
Real warmth.
It unsettled him more than anything else.
He was being carried—not by a peasant, not by a war bride, not by a raped teenager or a twitching junkie.
But by a lady.
Vault's mind sharpened as he began to sketch the world from sound alone.
Northeast American accents—absent.
Wood furniture. Servant footsteps. The word Albany.
British Loyalist. Likely wealthy. Colonial estate. Year? Mid-1770s?
And then he heard it.
Music.
Soft. Slender.
A piano. Delicate fingers striking ivory keys with the rhythm of aristocratic boredom.
He knew that piece. Bach. Twisted through centuries into modernity—but Vault had heard it once in a digital strategy game's menu screen, and again while strangling a Ukrainian scout with headphone wires.
So it is the 1700s. Or just before the war begins.
1774, he guessed.
Maybe even December—he thought he heard someone mutter about snow and cider.
A shiver ran down his spine, still forming beneath the skin.
Right on the edge, then. Right before it burns.
He let the thought sit for a while, floating in silence.
German, he still spoke fluently—from his first life, barking commands to half-bred demons and cursed knights.
Russian and Finnish were burned into him from the second life, from barking orders over frozen radios to shouting back at HIMARS fire.
And now—English. Sharp. Smooth. Cold. Soothing, almost.
He knew it. And he hated that he did.
But he would use it all.
Vault breathed in the pulse of the woman who carried him.
His mother.
His real mother, this time?
He didn't dare believe it.
Not yet.
But if her voice stayed steady… if her touch stayed warm… if the man—Arthur—held true...
Then maybe, just maybe…
This life won't be war right away.
Still, Vault didn't relax.
He never did.
Because peace was just a lie told between knives.
And war?
War was always coming.
It was snowing.
Vault could feel it even before he emerged—cold pressure in the walls, a shift in the air of the house. Outside, horses shuffled nervously in the stables. Guards paced tighter routes. And inside the master bedroom, the storm of birth had begun.
His mother screamed.
Not with panic—but with strength.
Servants rushed. Water sloshed in bowls. Linens soaked with blood were yanked and replaced. The midwife muttered Latin prayers under her breath, dabbing sweat from the lady's brow, whispering for mercy and deliverance.
Vault's world shrank.
Tighter. Hotter. Harder.
The pressure mounted until the flesh around him clamped like a vice.
He didn't panic.
He didn't fear.
He'd been born in fire. In death. In vomit-stained alleys and through shattered cathedrals.
This? This was ceremony.
He clenched his tiny fists, braced against the walls of his prison, and waited for the scream.
The final push came like thunder.
And then—
He slipped free.
The air hit him like a blade. Cold. Sharp. Heavy with candle smoke and iron.
Gasps filled the room.
The midwife choked.
"He's… he's not crying."
Vault's eyes opened.
Blue-like glacier cuts.
Wide. Focused.
His body slick with blood and life, his tiny chest rose and fell once—not with weakness, but control.
And then they saw it.
The lines.
The abs.
An eight-pack. On a newborn.
Perfect ridges across a compact, muscular core. Arms already tight with definition. Fingers clenched like miniature iron bars.
One of the maids dropped the cloth she was holding.
The guard at the door whispered, "By God…" and made the sign of the cross.
Even the midwife froze.
"That's… not natural."
Vault didn't blink.
He simply looked at them—through them.
And then…
The Voice.
A deep, layered growl tore through his skull like molten iron poured through ice.
"INITIATING SYSTEM."
The world vanished.
No walls. No hands. No room.
Just darkness, and the sound of heavy breathing behind the void.
Then came the interface.
Runes formed in the black. Circles within circles. Words in no language he'd ever seen—but somehow understood.
"Welcome, my king…"
The voice wasn't male or female. It was everything. It burned with hunger, lust, and reverence all at once.
"On this holy day, your birth has been honoured. The gift has awakened. The world will know you. Again."
Vault said nothing.
He couldn't—not yet.
But inside, his thoughts churned like storm tides.
"Who the fuck are you?"
"You may call me… the system."
The voice chuckled. A cruel, deep-throated thing that curled like smoke around his soul.
"You are in the colony of New York. Hudson Valley. The year is 1774. The date is… December twenty-fifth."
"Merry Christmas."
A pause.
Then one final whisper:
"Good luck, my king."
The interface pulsed, then vanished.
Vault blinked.
And the room returned.
He was in his mother's arms now. Her fingers brushed his cheek, trembling—but not with fear, but with awe.
Outside, bells rang across the valley.
"He's quiet," she whispered. "So strong… I can feel it."
Vault stared at her.
And—for just a moment—he let it happen.
He let her kiss his brow.
Let her cradle him against her chest.
Let himself exist.
He had been given a gift—this "system."
He had been given a time. A place. A purpose.
But for now?
For this moment?
He was home.
And war could wait.
Days passed.
Vault did not cry.
He ate. He slept. He shat. All with the rhythm and precision of a machine learning how to imitate life.
He played the part of a baby perfectly.
But inside?
He watched.
He calculated.
The manor was large—walled, guarded, with stables and courtyards and a small orchard out back. Three stories of stone and timber, positioned defensively near the Hudson River.
He observed every servant. Every voice. Every name.
He knew which midwife had a limp. Which guards were true soldiers, and which were just glorified butlers with muskets.
At night, swaddled in furs, he would stare up into flickering candlelight as the system whispered.
"Construction Menu: Locked until the age of speech."
"Summoning Circle: Disabled. Core shell too unstable."
"Town Hall Blueprint: Available for placement—pending suitable terrain."
It was always there.
Hovering. Waiting.
He tested its responses once with a thought: "What if I don't want it?"
It answered coldly.
"Then your enemies will use it instead."
Vault didn't reply.
He closed the interface and turned his attention to the world beyond his cradle.
The more he listened, the more he understood.
1774.
The colonies were breaking. Tensions building. Men whispering about liberty while drinking British wine. Talks of taxes, militias, and new ideas. Rebellion in the bones of the cities.
And yet...
Here?
Peace.
His mother—Evangeline—sang to him in German lullabies, passed down from a European grandmother. She smelled of roses and parchment and clove oil.
His father—Arthur Blackmoor—read aloud from books of Roman strategy and British law. He stood tall and proud, never raising a hand, never cursing, and never drunk.
Vault had no memory of this.
Not from the first life of chains and mercenaries. Not from the second life of concrete orphanages and Finnish brutality.
This?
This was family.
And it terrified him.
He could feel the edge softening inside him. Not dulling, but shifting.
For the first time, Vault didn't want to conquer. Didn't want to fuck or fight or burn.
He wanted to watch this world grow.
To live past forty. Maybe even fifty.
He wanted to have children of his own, not as trophies or heirs—but as something real.
He imagined walking through a garden with a son who didn't fear him.
He imagined a woman who didn't have to break to belong to him.
And for the first time, he thought:
"Maybe this life could start small."
He could build later. He could conquer later.
For now? He would just be Wolf.
A noble boy.
A son.
A sleeper.
He would wait.
Grow.
And when the time came—
When blood touched the doorstep, when muskets fired in the hills, when the war finally spilled into his valley—
Then he would awaken.
And the world would remember what had been born that Christmas.
It began with a whisper.
Late one night, through the floorboards beneath his nursery.
Vault lay motionless in his cradle, half-wrapped in a velvet blanket, pretending to sleep. His eyes—barely visible under lidded lashes—shifted toward the door as two voices passed in the corridor.
Servants. Older. Tired. But afraid.
"They say the colonists fired on redcoats in Massachusetts. Lexington, maybe. Or Concord."
"Militias formed in Boston last month. I heard a man was hanged just for waving the wrong flag."
"If they rise, they'll come north."
"Don't be stupid. Not this far. Not here."
The footsteps faded, but Vault's thoughts sharpened.
Massachusetts. Concord. Lexington. He knew those names. In his second life, he'd studied them as a child—textbook pages stained with cafeteria grease and half-remembered propaganda.
This was it.
The beginning.
Vault's tiny hands curled into silent fists.
He remembered the timeline. The real one. And if this was April of 1775, then they were less than a year away from blood.
He breathed slowly through his nose, calming the rise of heat in his chest.
Not yet.
He was too young to fight. Too small to build.
But not too young to plan.
The next day, Vault tested the system again.
His mother had left him to nap beside the open nursery window. Outside, the wind moved through tall pine. A squirrel perched on the sill, chittering.
Vault closed his eyes, breathed deep, and whispered inward.
"Open system."
It flared silently in his mind. A crimson ring. A cold interface etched with glowing script.
[Summoning Menu – Locked]
[Construction Menu – Inactive: body too young to labor]
[Early Options:
— Town Hall (Blueprint stored)
— Peasant (Requires: 10 Meat)
— Summoning Circle (Requires: Stable ground, shelter, secrecy)
He closed it again.
No rush.
Not yet.
Vault had seen what impatience cost in his first two lives.
This time? He would wait.
But not idly.
Over the following weeks, he listened to everything. Mapped everything.
He counted every servant. Marked their loyalties. Noted their prayers. Two maids were Irish Catholic—sentimental, soft. One footman whispered in French at night and drank too fast when he thought no one was watching. He was a risk.
He paid special attention to the guards.
Their rotations.
Their blind spots.
Their weapons.
His father, Arthur, had drilled them well—but Vault could see the weaknesses. Men who had never seen real war. A few were fat with confidence. A few too young to understand what muskets did to open flesh.
Vault learned which ones he'd kill first if it came to that.
He began testing his limbs in secret. Crawling early. Climbing silently. Gripping bedposts hard enough to hear the wood creak.
And all the while, a thought clawed deeper into him:
"If they come, they'll come for the Loyalists first."
And his parents? They weren't just Loyalists.
They were Templars.
He didn't have proof. Not yet.
But the signs were there:
The sealed letters were sent by encrypted riders.
The foreign coins in his father's study drawer.
The books that were always locked were books written in languages no merchant or soldier used.
Vault had seen that kind of secrecy before. In war. In the black ops back rooms of Russian briefings. In the cathedrals of his first life.
His parents were more than noble.
They were part of something old.
And that meant others were watching them.
Assassins, rebels, hunters.
One night, he looked up at the ceiling, eyes glowing faintly in the candlelight.
"If the war comes, it won't be random."
"They'll come for my family."
"My family."
He whispered it again in his mind.
And for the first time in three lives—
He didn't just want revenge.
He wanted to save something.
So he began to sketch his first escape plan in his thoughts.
West, through the river roads.
Supplies stored early.
Disguise the horses as merchant property.
North, if needed. Into Canada. Into quiet.
It wouldn't be easy.
But neither was being born a god three times over.
Vault blinked once. Twice.
And in the stillness of his nursery, as the fire burned low, he began building a new kind of kingdom.
Not one of slaves or crowns.
But of family.
And if war came?
He would burn the road behind them with his bare hands.