The wind screamed across the barren plain, a continuous, abrasive sound that seemed to scrape at the very steel of the sky. It carried a fine, pale gray dust that stung Kael Veynar's exposed skin like shards of glass. The cold was a visceral enemy, seeping into the carriage's cramped interior despite the heavy woolen cloak Kael had pulled tight around his shoulders.
He sat on a hard, rattling bench, the carriage wheels grinding against the cracked, parched earth with a mournful, cyclical creak. Every jolt sent a spike of discomfort up his spine, a constant reminder of the frail body he now inhabited. In his hand lay the Baron's Writ of the Ashen Frontier, a thick roll of parchment sealed with the elaborate, unmistakable royal crest. It was a sentence disguised as duty, a death warrant wrapped in noble ceremony. Kael's lips curled into a bitter, inward smile.
Three months ago, Kael had been Adrian Cole, a U.S. Army lieutenant, age thirty-two, overseeing supply chain stability and agricultural pilot projects in regions ravaged by conflict. His world had been one of satellite data, diesel fumes, and the harsh geometry of desert fortifications. Then came the accident—a blinding flash of steel and asphalt on a highway—and he awoke here. He was now Kael Veynar, the forgotten, weakest son of Duke Veynar, a youth condemned by his powerful family for his lack of magical talent and inconvenient existence.
The irony was acute. Before he could even taste the privileges of the nobility he had been reborn into, the decree had arrived: exile to the Ashen Frontier, a supposed wasteland where crops failed with catastrophic predictability, where bandits thrived on desperation, and where local whispers claimed monsters haunted the permanent twilight.
It was no honor. It was a calculated, quiet execution.
Kael pulled the cloak tighter, attempting to preserve what little body heat the carriage could trap. Despair was a luxury he could not afford. Adrian Cole, the logistics officer, had been trained to assess and respond to crises, not to mourn them.
He caught his reflection in the polished brass casing of the carriage lamp—a face both familiar and foreign. Medium brown hair, slightly tousled from the wind. A strong jawline, lightly tanned skin, and eyes that held a quiet, calculating focus. The features were ordinary, his build average—fit enough, but not imposing or scarred like the knights who rode outside. He looked, precisely, like a man built for support and analysis, not frontline combat.
It was almost eerie how closely this body resembled his own from his first life. As if whatever force had pulled him across worlds had chosen a vessel that wouldn't feel entirely alien—a small, subconscious mercy.
Then, a pulse struck his mind. It was not a voice, nor a vision, but a sharp, mechanical input, like a tremor along a fault line. It was undeniable, originating from a source utterly alien to this world's concept of magic.
[DANGER ALERT: The carriage driver intends to abandon you before reaching the frontier. Threat probability: High.]
Kael froze, his composure fracturing for the first time since his rebirth. His gaze snapped forward to the front of the carriage, where the driver hunched low. The man's shoulders were tense, his grip on the reins too tight, and his eyes flicked backward every few minutes with a nervous, guilty speed.
Adrian's instincts—the combat vigilance honed by years of managing convoys in hostile terrain—stirred in Kael's body. He was no longer just a disgraced noble. He was a soldier who had kept supplies alive in deserts riddled with IEDs, who had seen betrayal in the eyes of men before. Logistics, discipline, survival, and now this inexplicable system: these were his only weapons.
He began a cold, internal calculation. If the driver deserted, the few knights escorting the carriage—paid by the Duke, Kael's enemy—would follow orders only so far. Stranded halfway across this desolate plain, without a guide, without centralized authority, he would be left to the elements, or worse, the opportunistic bandits the barony was notorious for. The danger was not immediate violence, but controlled failure: a slow death by neglect.
So this is the gift, Adrian thought. Not strength, not wealth, not magic, but prescience. The ability to forecast and interdict catastrophic failure.
The nobles thought they had buried him in ruin. The driver thought he could leave him to die in the wastes. But Adrian Cole had spent a lifetime studying the mechanisms of collapse, and he had no intention of being discarded.
Outside, the wind howled like a primal warning. Kael's fingers tightened around the parchment of the Baron's Writ. His heart beat with a strange, clinical calm, the same clarity he had felt before every mission briefing.
Exile? No. This was an ambush. And ambushes were meant to be countered with superior planning and calculated aggression