The ping from his phone was a soft, insignificant sound in the vast, echoing silence of the great hall. Rex lowered the dust mask from his face, the fine, ancient grime coating his sweat-dampened skin. He wiped a strong, calloused hand on the thigh of his worn work jeans and pulled the device from his pocket.
The notification was from his crypto wallet. The final, colossal transfer had cleared. The last of his digital fortune—a fortune built on lines of code, speculation, and a wild, improbable gamble that had paid off beyond his grandest teenage dreams—had just been converted into cold, hard, traditional currency and then immediately spent.
He stared at the screen, the numbers barely registering anymore. They were too abstract. But the reality was not.
He was now the sole, undisputed owner of Château de l'Aube Oubliée—the Castle of the Forgotten Dawn. And not just the castle. The deed, which he had pored over for months with lawyers and historians, specified the structure, the ten acres of land upon which it stood, and the entire, mostly ruined, medieval village contained within its crumbling perimeter walls.
A slow smile spread across his face, cutting through the dirt. It was a good face, he'd been told. Strong jaw, high cheekbones, eyes the color of a stormy sky that could either sparkle with wit or harden with a disconcerting intensity. At twenty-three, he carried himself with a confidence that belied his age, a confidence forged not from birthright, but from the self-possession of a man who had built his own destiny from nothing.
The smile felt foreign on his features. He hadn't had much to smile about in the frantic, two-year whirlwind of learning and acquiring that had followed his windfall. This was different. This was the finish line. Or rather, the starting gate.
His gaze lifted from the phone screen and swept across the hall. Sunlight streamed in through high, arched windows, their stained glass long since shattered, illuminating motes of dust dancing in the air like forgotten spirits. The vaulted stone ceiling was blackened in places by centuries of hearth smoke. The floor was a patchwork of broken flagstones and determined weeds pushing their way up from the earth below. The air smelled of damp stone, old rot, and the pungent, honest scent of his own sweat.
This was his. All of it.
His plan was, by any sane measure, insane. His friends from university, the few he'd kept in touch with, thought he'd lost his mind. "A castle, Rex? Really? What are you going to do, LARP as a king?"
He hadn't bothered to explain the full scope. They wouldn't have understood the quiet, gnawing certainty in his gut that the shimmering, interconnected world they lived in was a fragile illusion. A house of cards in a gathering wind. He saw it in the increasingly volatile markets, in the tense geopolitical headlines, in the creeping dependency on systems no one truly understood anymore.
His crypto fortune wasn't an end; it was a means to an end. A lifeboat.
And this castle, this forgotten piece of the past, was his ark.
His festival—the "Renaissance Faire of the Forgotten Dawn"—was the public-facing excuse. A grand, year-long project to restore the castle and town to a state of authentic, living history. The permits, the suppliers, the event planners—they all saw a eccentric, wealthy young man with a passion for the medieval. They didn't see the deeper purpose.
The "supplies" for the festival were, in reality, a multi-year stockpile for a small town. Canned goods, dried grains, medical kits, water purification tablets, seeds, tools, fuel, and spare parts for everything from generators to water pumps. They were already arriving at a secured warehouse in Marseille, ready to be shipped here once the initial renovations made the site accessible.
The "props" for the festival included the collection of historically accurate weapons and armor now being carefully cataloged by a specialist in London. Swords, axes, polearms, longbows, crossbows—all fully functional. Not for show, but for a far more primal purpose: defense.
For two years, while his lawyers handled the labyrinthine purchase, Rex hadn't been idle. He hadn't been partying on yachts. He had disappeared into a self-imposed boot camp. He'd spent six months with a former Royal Marine in Scotland learning survivalism, tactical combat, and field medicine. He'd apprenticed with a master stonemason in Wales, his hands bleeding until they were tough as leather. He'd taken intensive courses in mechanical engineering, renewable energy systems, and practical agriculture. He learned how to fell a tree, how to dress a wound, how to repair a diesel engine, and how to plant a crop that would actually yield food.
He was preparing for a world that might never come. But if it did, he would be ready.
A cool breeze whispered through a gap in the wall, carrying the scent of pine and wild thyme from the surrounding forest. Rex walked to the great, empty window frame and looked out. Below him, the red-tiled roofs of the abandoned village slumbered in the afternoon sun. Beyond the moss-covered outer wall, the world was green and peaceful, deceptively serene.
He took a deep, cleansing breath. The digital world, with its pings and notifications, was already fading into irrelevance. Here, the reality was stone and soil, wind and water.
The transaction was complete. The preparation was underway. The future was a blank page.
He was Rex. And this was his kingdom, waiting to be awakened.