The rain had fallen for a day and a night without cease. Outside the military outpost, in the designated burial pit, a hand clawed its way through the mud.
The night sentry dropped his lantern with a clatter, the light guttering as he scrambled back to the guardhouse. "Commander!" he gasped, his report tumbling out in a terrified rush.
The Commander seized his scimitar, motioned for the lantern, and led the way back into the downpour. They advanced with caution, their boots sinking into the churned mire.
Through the silver curtain of rain, a silhouette sat motionless amongst the dead.
The Commander raised the lantern. Its weak glow revealed a soldier in tattered leathers, his back to them, propped against a cairn of skulls like a macabre throne.
"Identify yourself," the Commander growled, his grip tightening on his blade.
A faint, strained voice carried back on the wind. "Vanguard Legion. Heavily injured. Can't move."
*Can't move?*
The Commander's posture relaxed a fraction. He lowered his blade and took a step forward. "A brother from the Vanguard. Let me help you up."
"My thanks."
"Think nothing of it. *Die.*"
The scimitar cut a silent, silver arc through the rain, aimed with lethal precision at the seated soldier's neck. It was a perfect strike, swift and decisive. The head toppled from the shoulders and rolled back into the pit with a wet thud.
One cut. Problem solved.
A smirk touched the Commander's lips as he began to sheathe his weapon. Then his eyes widened. "*Shit—*"
A figure erupted from the corpses at the dead soldier's feet. A flash of cold steel severed the Commander's sword arm at the elbow. The limb, still clutching the scimitar, spun away. A geyser of blood painted the rain crimson for an instant before the storm washed it into the mud.
Agony, white-hot and blinding, lanced through the Commander's skull. In the dark reflection of his dying pupil, he saw the attacker—a shadow descending from its leap.
A saber's point filled that reflection.
Then, darkness.
---
**Kaelan Rook** wrenched his saber free from the ruin of the Commander's eye socket. The body crumpled backward into a puddle with a final, sodden gasp.
He remained standing, saber held ready. The relentless night rain scoured the grime from his face, revealing eyes that held a light too sharp, too knowing for this place.
At his feet, the Commander's abdomen distended with a wet, gurgling sound.
Kaelan took a steadying breath, reversed his grip, and plunged the blade into the bloated flesh.
An inhuman shriek tore the air. A plume of black mist burst from the wound, seething with violent motion. The stomach tore itself open, and a desiccated, claw-tipped limb shot out, fingers grasping at nothing.
Before the horrid thing could find purchase, Kaelan twisted the saber hilt with all his strength.
"*Die.*"
A single, cold command.
The writhing ceased. The demonic claw went slack.
Silence returned, broken only by the drumming rain.
Fetid black blood began to pool beneath the corpse. Seeing it, Kaelan finally allowed himself a shallow exhale and withdrew his blade. He stared down at the grotesque form, his voice a low murmur meant only for himself.
"A **Skin-shedding Blood Demon**. Nested this early, in a minor officer… Unusual scenario. The reward should be significant."
He focused inward, summoning the authority he knew. "**System.**"
One breath. Two. Three.
Nothing.
Only the eternal sigh of the wind and the rain answered him.
Kaelan's brow furrowed. He scanned the scene: the burial pit behind him, the demonic corpse at his feet, the petrified militia recruit trembling a dozen paces away, his lips quivering with unsounded terror.
"Strange," Kaelan muttered. "Quest not cleared."
The System's silence was confirmation. The objective remained open. His gaze settled on the recruit. *There's something I've missed.*
He tried to take a step forward to investigate and nearly collapsed. In the adrenaline of the fight, he'd ignored it, but now the pain announced itself—a thousand needles searing through his muscles. His legs were slabs of lead, every movement a monumental effort.
*This… is wrong.*
His last memory was of the final, cataclysmic clash with the Demon Lord at the end of all things. He'd channeled every ounce of his power for the killing blow. He should have been ejected, logged out, *finished*.
Instead, he wore this broken, pain-wracked body, dumped into this anonymous, rain-lashed hellscape.
*Where in the shattered realms am I?*
Squinting against the rain, Kaelan dragged himself toward the terrified recruit. He forced his body into a semblance of military posture. "**Proud Steed Vanguard, Kaelan Rook. Reporting.**"
"Y-you… you killed the Commander!" the militia stammered.
"It was not the Commander," Kaelan replied, his voice flat as he assessed the man. *Old-style leather armor. No spirit-energy coupling ports. This is antique gear—not even the penal battalions use this junk anymore.*
He glanced down at his own equipment. Identical antiquated junk. All his end-game gear, his artifacts, his implants… gone.
A profound wrongness settled in his gut.
The recruit edged closer to the pit, staring at the Commander's deformed remains. "But… how did you know? When you struck…"
"Caution," Kaelan shrugged, the movement sending a fresh spike of pain through his shoulder. "He attacked first." He trudged back, grabbed the corpse by its remaining arm, and hauled it before the recruit. "Look. A **Skin-shedder**."
He used his saber tip to peel back the ruined stomach, revealing the monstrous form within: obsidian skin, a nightmare face, vertical slit-pupils staring blankly at the storm.
Confronted with the physical evidence, the recruit's fear mutated into a cold, dawning horror. Memories of comrades dying mysteriously over the past days clicked into a terrible new pattern. A shiver that had nothing to do with the rain went down his spine. He looked at Kaelan with newfound, shaky gratitude.
"You said… Kaelan Rook?"
"Yes."
"Proud Steed Vanguard?"
"Yes."
"Your identification?"
Kaelan fished the heavy disc from his belt. He hefted it in his palm, frowning. *It weighs a kilo. Modern ident-tags are lighter than paper.* The confusion deepened. He tossed it to the recruit.
The man caught it, scrutinizing the engraving in the dim light: **Proud Steed Vanguard – Kaelan Rook**. The characters were crude, punched deeply into aged bronze. It was genuine, in the way a relic is genuine.
The recruit sighed, the last of his militant tension bleeding away into exhaustion. "A living soul. Finally. Come. We can't linger outside." He turned and began trudging toward the outpost gate.
"Understood," Kaelan said, his mind racing. He caught the badge as it was tossed back, running his thumb over the primitive engraving.
*Obsolete. Archaic.*
A terrifying hypothesis, too vast to consider, slammed into his thoughts. He looked up, his eyes locking onto the recruit's retreating back, the old leather, the oiled-lantern light…
He couldn't stop the question. "Brother. What year is it?"
The recruit glanced back, puzzled. "The **Last Peaceful Year**, of course. What other year would it be?"
**The Last Peaceful Year.**
Kaelan's world froze.
Suddenly, a torrent of data—thick as a waterfall, blue as glacial ice—cascaded across his vision. It wasn't in front of his eyes; it was *inside* his mind.
***CLICK.***
A voice, vast and mechanical, resonated in his skull.
**[Temporal coordinates confirmed: The Last Peaceful Year.]**
**[Chronal stream stabilized. Egress from space-time vortex confirmed.**
**[Conclusion: Subject has successfully retro-extracted from the Apocalypse Timeline.]**
**[Identity re-established. Designation: Human. Vanguard Legion. Proud Steed Division. Soldier: Kaelan Rook.]**
The System was online. But Kaelan felt no triumph, only a yawning, vertiginous disbelief.
*The Last Peaceful Year.* This wasn't the game's start. This was its *backstory*. A historical setting mentioned in lore fragments. The real world—*his* world—of players wouldn't connect to this reality for another year.
*Have I regressed… to before the game even began?*
*Did I go back in the real world, too?*
His heart hammered against his ribs. He looked around with frantic, new eyes.
Ahead, the recruit was almost at the outpost gate. Beside it, he could now sense the faint, telltale shimmer of a basic **Obfuscation Array**—not an invisibility field, but a perceptual dampener.
Beyond the outpost, in the vast, rain-swept desolation, a titanic, mountainous silhouette flickered in and out of existence against the storm-lit sky.
Slowly, deliberately, Kaelan raised his forearm to his mouth and bit down, hard.
The pain was immediate, sharp, and vivid. Two neat rows of teeth marks welled with beads of crimson blood.
*It hurts.*
*This is not a dream.*
Kaelan Rook stood like a statue carved from the storm itself, letting the icy deluge soak him to the bone, washing away the blood of the demon, but not the terrifying, exhilarating truth now solidifying in his mind.
He was here. And he was *early*.