Chapter 1: The Death of Jack Morrison
Jack Morrison stared at the ceiling of his apartment, the blue light of his computer screen casting ghostly shadows across the barren walls.
Three a.m. again. The fourth consecutive night he'd worked until his eyes burned and his fingers cramped. Silicon Valley demanded nothing less than everything.
Outside his window, San Francisco's skyline glittered with the false promise of dreams realized. Thirty-four years old and what did he have to show for it? A failing startup, mounting debt, and a body that felt twice its age.
"Project complete," he muttered, hitting the final keystroke with bitter satisfaction. The algorithm was finished—an AI system designed to predict market trends with unprecedented accuracy.
Not that it mattered. The venture capitalists had already pulled their funding, citing "market uncertainties." Tomorrow, he would liquidate what remained of the company assets and inform his small team they were unemployed.
Jack stood and stretched, his spine cracking in protest. The kitchen beckoned—empty save for half a bottle of bourbon and some stale crackers.
He poured three fingers of amber liquid into a smudged glass and drank deeply, feeling the familiar burn trace a path down his throat.
His phone vibrated against the counter. A text from Brian, his last remaining friend who hadn't been consumed by the tech world's relentless pace.
Still coming to Tahoe this weekend? Might be your last chance before winter. You need it, man.
Jack sighed. The mountains had once been his sanctuary, a place where the constant hum of servers and ambition faded into the whisper of pines. When was the last time he'd gone? Two years? Three?
I'll be there, he typed, surprising himself with how quickly he made the decision. Need to clear my head.
Decision made, exhaustion crashed over him like a wave. He stumbled toward his bedroom, collapsing onto sheets that hadn't been changed in weeks. Sleep, mercifully, came quickly.
Morning arrived with cruel brightness. Jack showered quickly, packed a small bag, and loaded his autonomous Tesla. The car had been his one indulgence when the company had briefly shown promise—a symbol of the future he thought he was building.
"Drive to Tahoe, Mountain View Resort," he commanded, settling into the passenger seat.
"Route calculated. Estimated arrival: 3:17 PM," the car's pleasant voice responded.
Jack reclined the seat and closed his eyes as the vehicle merged onto the highway. He should use the time to craft emails, to strategize his next venture, to network. Instead, he surrendered to the gentle motion of the car and fell into a dreamless sleep.
He didn't see the semi-truck jackknife three cars ahead. Didn't hear the cascade of screeching brakes and crumpling metal. Didn't feel the impact that sent his Tesla careening through the guardrail. Didn't know the moment his heart stopped beating.
Jack Morrison died instantly, his life ending in a tangle of advanced machinery and twisted metal on the shoulder of Interstate 80, forty-three minutes into his journey to the mountains.
Darkness.
Then—sensation.
Pain lanced through his body, a thousand needles pricking every inch of his skin. Jack gasped, filling his lungs with air that tasted of earth and strange spices. His eyes flew open to a thatched ceiling above him.
"He awakes!" A woman's voice, accented and unfamiliar.
Jack tried to sit up, but his limbs felt wrong—heavier, yet somehow weaker than he remembered. His fingers grabbed at rough blankets covering him, the sensations alien and overwhelming.
"Careful, Tarkhan. The fever nearly took you." A weathered face appeared above him—an elderly woman with deep smile lines and eyes the color of tarnished copper. Her skin was a rich umber, her silver hair braided elaborately around her head.
"I... where..." His voice emerged strange to his ears, deeper and rougher than his own.
"Still with us, thank the Five Celestials," the woman said, pressing a cool cloth to his forehead.
"Three days you've burned with fever. The village was preparing your passage rites."
Jack's mind raced, confusion giving way to panic. This wasn't his body. This wasn't his home. This wasn't even his world, unless he'd somehow been transported to a historical reenactment village while unconscious.
"Mirror," he croaked.
The woman frowned but reached for something beside the simple cot. She handed him a polished metal disc. Jack raised it with trembling hands.
The face that stared back was not his own.
High cheekbones. Strong jaw dusted with stubble. Eyes the color of amber, wide with shock. Hair black as midnight, cropped close to the scalp. Young—perhaps early twenties—but with a scar running from left temple to jawline.
Jack—no, not Jack anymore—dropped the mirror with a clatter.
"Tarkhan, be careful! Metal goods are precious here in the outlands." The woman retrieved the mirror, concern etching deeper lines into her face.
"Perhaps the fever has affected your mind. Do you remember your grandmother Anya?"
Memories crashed into him like a tidal wave—not his memories, but Tarkhan's. A childhood in a sprawling city of stone and glass.
The decree that sent his family to this settlement called Eastward Hope. His parents' deaths during the first harsh winter. Anya raising him alone these past five years.
Yet alongside these alien recollections, Jack Morrison's thirty-four years remained intact—code and algorithms, boardrooms and betrayals, a life culminating in a highway collision he somehow knew had killed him.
"I remember," he managed, though which life he was confirming, he wasn't sure.
Anya's shoulders relaxed slightly. "Good. The transmigration sickness affects everyone differently. Some lose pieces of themselves on the journey from the capital."
Transmigration. The word echoed in his fractured consciousness. It meant something different to Anya—the physical relocation of citizens from the Kingdom of Elthas to its untamed borderlands. But for Jack, it described his impossible circumstance with eerie precision.
"How long have we been here?" he asked, testing the waters of Tarkhan's knowledge while buying time to process his situation.
"Five years since we left the capital," Anya replied, her gaze distant
"Five years since His Majesty's Transmigration Initiative brought us to carve civilization from wilderness." Bitterness tinged her words.
"Five years of breaking our backs to grow food in stubborn soil while court nobles grow fat on our labor."
She stood abruptly, placing a wooden cup beside his cot. "Drink this tincture when you feel strong enough to sit. I must check on the spring plantings—fever or no, we must eat come harvest time."
After Anya left, Jack—Tarkhan—whoever he was now—forced himself to sit up despite the room spinning around him.
The humble dwelling was a single room with a central hearth, rough wooden furniture, and bundles of dried herbs hanging from the rafters. Afternoon light slanted through small windows covered with oiled parchment instead of glass.
He raised the cup to his lips, grimacing at the bitter taste but drinking it all. Almost immediately, a strange warmth spread through his chest—not unpleasant, but alien. It felt like liquid light flowing through his veins, pooling somewhere deep in his core.
With the sensation came another flood of Tarkhan's memories—whispered tales of cultivation, of those who could harness the energy of the world to strengthen body and spirit.
Such practitioners were rare in the outlands but common in the capital. The noble families were said to have cultivated for generations, extending their lives and amassing power.
The tincture contained trace elements of something called heartwood sap—expensive and carefully rationed, but essential for those with cultivation potential.
Anya had been secretly giving it to him since childhood, purchased with precious coins she earned selling intricate embroidery to traveling merchants.
Tarkhan had shown signs of aptitude but had never managed to properly begin cultivation, despite Anya's hopes.
The village overseer—a minor noble with minimal cultivation—kept close watch on any who showed promise, reporting them to the capital. Those identified rarely returned to their families.
Jack looked down at his—at Tarkhan's—hands. Young, calloused from farm work, but steady now as the tincture did its work. He closed his eyes and focused on the pool of warmth in his core, trying to make sense of it.
To his surprise, it responded, swirling like a miniature whirlpool. Jack's analytical mind—the mind that had built complex algorithms and navigated Silicon Valley's cutthroat ecosystem—approached the phenomenon methodically.
If this energy followed rules, he could learn them. If it behaved like code, he could understand its syntax.
Drawing upon both Tarkhan's fragmented knowledge and his own problem-solving abilities, Jack attempted to circulate the energy as cultivation manuals allegedly instructed.
The warmth moved sluggishly at first, but with each heartbeat grew more responsive to his will.
Sweat beaded on his brow as he guided the energy through what Tarkhan's memories identified as the Twelve Celestial Meridians—pathways through the body that cultivators spent years learning to navigate.
For a novice, opening even one meridian fully could take months of dedicated practice.
Jack opened three in the span of an hour.
The door creaked open. Anya entered with a basket of early greens, freezing when she saw him sitting cross-legged on the cot, eyes closed in concentration.
"Tarkhan?" she whispered, setting down the basket.
Jack opened his eyes, a faint golden glow fading from their depths. "Grandmother," he said, the term feeling right on his tongue despite his confusion.
"I think I've begun to cultivate."
Anya's basket clattered to the floor, vegetables scattering across dirt-packed earth. "Impossible," she breathed, rushing to his side and taking his wrist.
Her fingers pressed against his pulse points in succession, her eyes widening. "The meridians... how have you..."
A heavy knock interrupted her examination. They both stiffened, exchanging a look of alarm.
"Village inspection!" called a gruff voice. "By order of Overseer Darius, all dwellings are to be examined for contraband cultivation materials!"
Anya moved with surprising speed, sweeping the cup that had held the tincture into the folds of her skirt.
"Get back under the blankets," she hissed. "Appear fevered still!"
Jack complied, pulling the rough covers to his chin just as the door swung open. A hulking man in a blue uniform stepped inside, hand resting on the hilt of a short sword. Behind him stood a slighter figure in robes embroidered with silver symbols.
"Healer Anya," the guard acknowledged with minimal respect.
"We've received reports of unauthorized cultivation materials in the eastern quarter. The Overseer's diviner will inspect your dwelling."
The robed figure stepped forward, raising hands adorned with silver rings. Jack felt something probe at him—not physical, but a pressure against his mind and the newly awakened core of energy in his chest.
"This boy," the diviner said, voice high and reedy. "He burns with fever?"
"Three days now," Anya replied, her face a perfect mask of grandmother's concern.
"The spring planting always weakens him."
The diviner approached the cot, eyes narrowing. Up close, Jack could see the man's pupils were unusual—vertical slits like a cat's.
"No ordinary fever," he murmured. "I sense... potential."
The guard straightened. "Potential? Should we report him to the capital?"
Jack's heart raced. Tarkhan's memories provided enough context to know that being identified as a cultivation prospect would mean being taken from Anya, from this village—conscripted into whatever purpose the kingdom deemed worthy.
The diviner's slitted eyes locked with Jack's. Something passed between them—a moment of assessment, of calculation. Then, unexpectedly, the diviner's thin lips curved into a faint smile.
"No," he said, turning away.
"A false reading. The boy has a trace affinity common among those from the Eastlands. Useless for true cultivation—it merely produces symptoms similar to spiritual awakening during illness."
The guard looked disappointed. "You're certain? Overseer Darius would reward identification of viable candidates."
"Would you question my expertise, guardsman?" The diviner's voice turned frigid.
"I have served three generations of the Overseer's family. This boy will never cultivate to any meaningful degree."
After a perfunctory search that revealed nothing, the two men left. Anya waited until their footsteps faded before sagging against the closed door.
"Why did he lie?" Jack asked, sitting up again.
Anya shook her head in bewilderment. "Diviner Wei has always been a loyal servant of the Overseer. I've never known him to falsify a report."
She approached Jack cautiously. "What did you do, child?"
"Nothing," Jack replied honestly. "He looked at me, and... decided something."
Anya studied him with new wariness. "The fever has changed you, Tarkhan. Your eyes, your voice... even how you hold yourself."
Jack swallowed. Should he tell her the truth? That her grandson's body now housed the consciousness of a man from another world entirely? She would think him mad or possessed.
"I had... dreams," he said carefully. "Dreams of another life, another world with metal carriages that move without horses and buildings that touch the clouds."
"Fever dreams," Anya said, though uncertainty tinged her voice.
"Perhaps," Jack conceded. "But I woke with knowledge, Grandmother. I know how to cultivate in ways I didn't before."
Anya was silent for a long moment, her weathered hands twisting the fabric of her skirt. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision.
"Tonight," she whispered.
"Tonight, when the village sleeps, we will talk properly. There are things you should know—things about your parents, about why we were really sent to this settlement." Her eyes darted to the windows, suddenly fearful.
"But for now, rest genuinely. What you've accomplished—opening multiple meridians at once—should have exhausted your reserves completely."
Strangely, Jack didn't feel exhausted. Beneath the lingering weakness of Tarkhan's fever, he felt a vitality he hadn't experienced in years—perhaps had never truly known in his previous life.
As Anya busied herself preparing a simple meal, Jack closed his eyes and returned his attention to the swirling energy in his core. Where before it had been a small pool, now it resembled a slowly spinning vortex, drawing in something from the air around him. With each breath, the vortex grew stronger.
Jack Morrison had died on Interstate 80, but in this moment, Tarkhan of Eastward Hope had never felt more alive.
Whatever this new existence meant—whatever secrets awaited him—he would face them with the combined resources of two lives: the determined problem-solver from Earth and the cultivation potential of a world where magic flowed like blood through the veins of reality itself.
Night would bring answers. And perhaps, at last, purpose.