The guard's question hung in the vast, silent cavern, sharp and heavy with disbelief. "Lord Lancelot?"
For a second, my brain blue-screened. I had two sets of memories fighting for control. One was a 28-year-old marketing drone who would have stammered and asked where the nearest bathroom was. The other was Lancelot Ashworth, third son of a Baron, who would have… well, what would he have done? Lancelot's memories were a frantic blur of terror and desperation leading up to this point.
Before I could answer, the lead guard took a cautious step forward, his torch held high. He was a grizzled, middle-aged man with a thick mustache and the weary eyes of someone who had seen too much. His name surfaced from Lancelot's memories: Garrick. Captain of the Ashworth household guard.
As he got closer, something new prickled at my senses. It was a pressure, a physical weight in the air that emanated from him. My new draconic senses, tuned to the Aether around me, were screaming a warning. This man was a wall. A solid, dense, unbreachable wall of power. In the language of the world I now inhabited, he was an Expert. A Tier 4.
In the gaming terms my old brain defaulted to, he was a mid-level boss, and I was a level one player who had just finished the character creation screen and accidentally stumbled into a high-level zone. The chaotic fizzle of mana I could barely control felt like a child's sparkler next to the steady, controlled burn of the furnace inside him. I felt my shoulders tense, a primal instinct to either run or hide.
Then, a smaller figure pushed past the two guards. "My lord!"
It was a young woman, perhaps a year or two younger than Lancelot's seventeen years. She wore the simple, practical dress of a servant, her face smudged with dirt from their journey. Seraphina. Lancelot's personal maid. The name hit me like a physical blow, and with it came the memories from the book, far more vivid and terrible than Garrick's.
I saw her not as she was now—a concerned young woman—but as she would become. A brilliant witch, wreathed in silver light, holding back a tide of horrors to protect a cornered Lancelot. I saw her smile, the one the book described as being as rare and precious as a star in daylight. And I saw her final moments: a rune-carved dagger plunged into her own heart to unleash a sacrificial spell that saved his life and ended hers.
She was the first real casualty of his heroic journey. The first person whose death was meant to fuel his rage.
And here she was, alive and breathing and running toward me with tears welling in her wide, worried eyes. My newly forged Dragon Heart gave a painful lurch in my chest.
As she drew closer, I could feel her power, too. It wasn't the oppressive wall that Garrick projected. It was a quiet, steady warmth, like a hearth fire. Controlled. Stable. She was an Artisan—Tier 3. A full tier of mastery above my own chaotic, sputtering state. Her power, though lesser than Garrick's, felt infinitely more refined than the raw, explosive energy I was barely containing.
"Seraphina," I managed to say. The name felt strange on my new tongue, my voice a rough baritone that cracked with disuse.
She stopped just short of me, her gaze flickering between my face, the smoking ruin of my hand, and the colossal dragon corpse I was using as a leaning post. "You're alive," she breathed, a mix of awe and profound relief. "We… we thought…"
"The mission is complete," Garrick cut in, his voice sharp and professional. He never took his eyes off the dragon. "We've found him. Now, what in the seven hells happened here, my lord?"
His question was a landmine. What could I possibly say? 'Well, the original owner of this body died from a magical overdose, and my soul from another dimension got pulled in as a replacement?' Yeah, no.
"I… don't remember everything," I said, falling back on the oldest trick in the book. It wasn't even a complete lie. The memories of the last few days were a nightmarish soup. "I was running. From the dungeon break. I stumbled in here."
"And the dragon?" Garrick's gaze was skeptical.
"It was like this," I lied, gesturing vaguely at the dead behemoth. "Dying. It… lashed out. There was a blast of energy. That's the last thing I remember clearly."
It was a flimsy story, but it was the best I had. Garrick grunted, a noncommittal sound. He was a soldier, not an inquisitor. His job was to retrieve the Baron's son, not solve a mythological mystery. He was happy, I realized, but not for me. He was happy because his mission wasn't a failure. For the third son, a failure would be tolerated, but success was always better for a captain's career.
Seraphina, however, was different. Her concern wasn't about a mission report. She took a step closer, her eyes fixed on my torn and bloodied clothes. "You're hurt. We need to get you warm."
Before I could protest, she was shrugging off her own thick traveling cloak. The gesture was simple, practical, but for me, watching the woman who was fated to die for this body, it felt impossibly heavy.
"I'm fine," I said, my voice rougher than I intended.
"You are not," she insisted, her tone leaving no room for argument as she draped the warm, wool cloak over my shoulders. The simple human warmth was a stark contrast to the buzzing, alien energy thrumming under my own skin.
I looked at her—at this young, determined woman who the world would one day turn into a tragic hero. I thought of the promise I'd made in the heart of the fire. This time, we save them all.
It had been an abstract idea then, a vow against a story. Now, looking at her face, it had a name.
Garrick gave the cavern one last, wary look. "We leave now. The mountain is unstable. Lord Lancelot, can you walk?"
I pulled the cloak tighter around myself, the fabric hiding the subtle, inhuman changes to my body. I gave a short, sharp nod, pushing myself off the dragon's corpse to stand on my own two feet. My legs felt steadier now, my body slowly starting to listen to my commands.
"I can walk," I said, meeting the captain's gaze.
It was the first step. The first step out of the tomb that had been my cradle. The first step into a story I was going to rip apart and write anew.