I remembered dying.
Not in a glorious way, not like a hero who'd fall in battle with steel in hand. My death was ordinary, pathetic even. A quiet hospital room, the weak beep of machines, and the scent of antiseptic. I was only thirty-four, yet my body had betrayed me. Heart failure. A cruel, mundane end.
My eyes had closed for the last time, or so I thought.
Yet when I opened them again, it wasn't to the sight of hospital lights. It was to a cold sky, gray with storm clouds. Snowflakes drifted past my vision, and my breath misted in the air. My body ached, my wrists were bound, and my head pounded like a drum.
I wasn't in a hospital.
I was sitting on a cart.
The man across from me wore rags, his beard scraggly and dark. Another sat beside him, clad in fine blue and silver—regal even in chains. My heart sank as realization clawed its way through my mind. I knew this scene. I'd seen it dozens of times before.
"Hey, you. You're finally awake."
Ralof's words hit me like a hammer.
This was Skyrim. The opening cart ride, the beginning of the game I'd sunk hundreds of hours into. But this wasn't pixels. This was real—the creak of wood, the icy sting on my skin, the reek of sweat and fear.
Somehow, impossibly, I'd been reborn here.
Panic was useless. My fate was sealed. Helgen loomed before us, stone walls casting long shadows in the morning light. I knew what was coming—names called, prisoners lined up, and heads rolled.
When the captain pointed at me, demanding my name, I froze. What name could I even give? My old one from Earth, or something new? In the end, I croaked out my real name, trembling as the scribe scribbled it down like it mattered.
The headsman sharpened his axe.
The prisoner before me knelt, the sound of the blade biting through flesh searing itself into my mind. My turn was next.
Then the roar came.
The sky tore open, and fire rained down.
A dragon—black as night, wings blotting out the sun—descended in fury.
I didn't need to think. I ran.