Pain was the first thing he felt.
Not the dull ache of a stiff neck or the lingering throb of a headache but a sharp, invasive agony, burning through his abdomen like a blade still lodged there, twisting with every breath. It stole the air from his lungs and dragged a hoarse groan from his throat.
Cold followed.
A biting, merciless cold that seeped into his bones, crawled under his skin, and made his fingers tremble no matter how hard he tried to clench them. The scent of iron filled his nose.
Blood.
Too much blood.
I'm… not at home.
That was his first coherent thought.
The second was far more unsettling.
This hurts too much to be a dream.
His eyelids fluttered open.
Above him stretched a wooden ceiling carved with ancient runes and beast motifs wolves, ravens, serpents locked in eternal struggle. Thick beams of dark timber crossed overhead, each one etched with history and soaked in centuries of smoke and frost. A massive wrought-iron chandelier hung low, its candles half-melted, wax dripping like frozen tears.
This wasn't his apartment.
It wasn't even his world.
He tried to sit up and screamed.
White-hot pain tore through his stomach, and his vision burst into sparks. His hands flew instinctively to his abdomen, fingers coming away slick and crimson. The blood was warm against his skin, steaming faintly in the cold air.
"Fuck—!"
The voice that escaped his lips wasn't his own.
It was deeper. Rougher. Laced with a clipped northern accent noble, restrained, yet frayed by blood loss.
Panic surged.
He forced himself to breathe slowly, swallowing it down as his gaze dropped to his body.
Broad shoulders wrapped in a fur-lined tunic soaked red. Long limbs, lean and hardened by years of training rather than raw talent. Pale skin marked with old scars nothing legendary, nothing awe-inspiring. Just the quiet evidence of survival.
A silver signet ring rested on his right hand, engraved with a wolf's head crowned in iron.
Memory crashed into him.
Snowfields without end beneath a steel-gray sky.
Black banners snapping in frozen wind.
A fortress carved into a cliff of ice and stone.
And a name.
Valen Arkwright.
His heart skipped.
No.
That wasn't possible.
Valen Arkwright wasn't real.
He was a character.
A Non-playable character.
From a game.
A game he had played obsessively years ago Eternal Dominion: Ashes of the North. A brutal fantasy RPG infamous for political depth, unforgiving combat, and the way it punished players who mistook nobility for safety.
And Valen Arkwright,
He swallowed.
Valen Arkwright was supposed to be dead.
Ten years before the main storyline.
Killed in what the game described as a "minor succession conflict," his death reduced to a few lines of lore just enough to justify the rise of a new Count backed by a brilliant, merciless noblewoman.
This is before the game begins, he realized.
Ten years before.
The chill that ran through him had nothing to do with the cold.
A door slammed open.
Boots thundered against stone.
"My lord!"
A man rushed in, tall and broad, his beard braided in the northern style. Chainmail glinted beneath a black tabard bearing the silver wolf crest. His eyes widened when he saw Valen awake.
"You live," he breathed. "By the Frost Father… you live."
He dropped to one knee instantly.
"Captain Edrik," Valen said and froze.
The name surfaced without thought.
Edrik Frosthelm, Loyal to a fault, one of the few figures in the northern arc who never betrayed the player, no matter the choices made.
Edrik looked up sharply. "You remember me."
Valen's throat burned. "Hard to forget a face like yours."
Edrik let out a shaky breath. "You were stabbed, my lord. In your own chambers." His expression darkened. "The keep is in chaos. Half the banners have already changed colors. Lady Morwen has declared your stepbrother the rightful Count."
There it was.
The storm's eye.
Morwen Arkwright.
His stepmother.
A woman the game described as elegant, brilliant, and utterly without mercy. She had married Valen's father for position and after his death, she had moved with frightening precision.
And her son,
Kael Arkwright.
Younger, Smiling, Beloved
Where Valen had been considered reliable, Kael was inspiring.
Where Valen was known as a decent swordsman trained, disciplined, but unremarkable Kael was spoken of as gifted.
And in the original timeline?
Kael won.
Valen exhaled slowly, pain flaring with the motion.
"So the civil war begins," he murmured.
Edrik's jaw tightened. "It has already begun."
As if summoned by the words, the sounds reached them shouts echoing through stone corridors, steel striking steel, the distant roar of men killing men.
The Northern County of Arkwright the realm's frozen frontier, rich in untamed land and buried power was tearing itself apart.
Valen closed his eyes.
Ten years.
Ten years before the world was supposed to notice this place.
Ten years to change everything.
But first
He looked down at the wound again.
The stab was clean. Precise. Not the work of a panicked assassin.
This had been planned.
"Who did it?" he asked quietly.
Edrik hesitated.
That told Valen everything.
"…Your personal guard," the captain said at last. "Sir Albrecht. He opened the door himself."
Valen almost laughed.
A short, breathless sound.
Just like the game.
So faithful it was almost insulting.
"So it's all moving on schedule," he murmured.
Edrik leaned closer. "My lord?"
Valen opened his eyes.
They were colder now. Blue-green, like frozen sea glass beneath ice. Eyes that, in the mirror, had once been described as unremarkable.
They were anything but now.
"Help me sit up."
"My lord, your wound—"
"That wasn't a request."
Edrik obeyed.
Pain tore through him as he rose, but Valen didn't cry out. This body knew endurance. Not greatness just stubborn refusal to fall.
As he sat there, memories surfaced. Not his own but Valen Arkwright's.
A childhood lived in another's shadow.
A father distant and demanding.
A stepmother's perfect smiles hiding knives.
A younger brother whose eyes always lingered too long.
Valen Arkwright had never been exceptional.
Just competent
Just present
Just enough to stand in the way
That was why they tried to kill him
"Send word to the loyal houses," Valen said. "Frostvein, Blackmoor, Anyone who still flies my banner."
Edrik hesitated. "And if they refuse?"
Valen's lips curved slightly.
"Then they've already chosen."
The words came easily.
Too easily.
Edrik bowed. "As you command."
When he left, Valen's gaze drifted to the mirror on the far wall.
The man staring back had long platinum-blonde hair streaked with silver, loose around sharp, weathered features. Blood traced his mouth and jaw. His blue-green eyes were alert calculating.
Not a hero.
Not a prodigy.
But alive.
Dangerous.
Valen Arkwright—the noble meant to die.
And behind the civil war, behind Morwen, behind Kael…
The magicstone mines.
The true reason the North mattered.
The reason powerful hands far beyond this frozen county were already moving.
Valen met his reflection and spoke softly.
"They stabbed the wrong man."
Outside, the northern wind howled, carrying blood, betrayal and the first whispers of something far larger than a family war.
Somewhere in the keep, Lady Morwen smiled.
She believed the board already won.
She had no idea.
The game had changed.