Physical weakness humbles even kings. By the third morning, Kael could barely stand without the world spinning. His muscles, honed for high-G maneuvers, were cannibalizing themselves. He dragged himself toward a thin, winding trail of beaten earth—a path he had spotted from a ridge.
As he lay there, his mind drifted back to the night of the crash. Champagne. The bored disdain he'd given a junior driver who had asked for advice.
"If you have to ask how to take the corner, you've already lost," he had sneered.
The memory felt like a lead weight. All that posturing, the wealth, the "Veyron City" built in his image—it was a cardboard kingdom. Here, Kael Veyron wasn't a legend. He was just biological matter that hadn't eaten in seventy-two hours.
The Sound of Iron
The forest's silence shattered—not with the roar of engines, but with a rhythmic, metallic click-clack on stone, and a low, haunting hum that vibrated through the air. Kael felt it through his cheek before he even heard it.
Mass. Velocity. Life.
Emerging from the bioluminescent haze was a herd of massive, survival-engineered beasts. Barrel-chested and powerful as bulls, they moved on long, obsidian-hard legs. Each possessed four eyes—two vertical pairs that glowed faintly in the darkness—and four curved horns sweeping back from their skulls. Their thick, matted coats served as armor against the brutal forest nights.
And behind them, guiding the herd with a long, crook-necked staff, was a girl.
The Choice of the Vanquished
She appeared to be in her early twenties, dressed in practical reinforced leather. Her gaze fell on the mud-stained man in shredded silk, and she froze. Her staff, tipped with a glowing amber stone, pulsed with a warning light.
Kael knew the moment demanded surrender. In any other world, he would have stood tall, demanded assistance, or flaunted his dominance. But the ego that had driven him to a hundred finish lines was buried under three days of mud, hunger, and exhaustion.
As she raised her staff, he didn't move to fight. He didn't boast. Slowly, agonizingly, he rolled onto his back and extended his hands, palms upward and empty—the universal signal of the unarmed.
"I'm… lost," he rasped, his voice a dry rattle stripped of velvet confidence. "No threat. Just… lost."
The girl—Lyra—watched him with the sharp, guarded eyes of a shepherd checking for a predator's trap. She didn't approach immediately. She whistled, and the herd shifted into a protective semi-circle, their four-eyed gazes locking onto him.
"You're a long way from the Spires, Star-fall," she said, cautious but not cruel. "And you look like you've been chewed up by a Snap-vine and spat back out."
"I don't know… where the Spires are," Kael admitted. For the first time in his life, honesty was his only currency. "I don't know where anything is."
The Border of Trust
Lyra didn't offer him a hand. She didn't invite him into warmth or safety. In this world, trust was as scarce as clean water.
"My village is a league East," she said, pointing her staff toward the path's end. "You can follow, but stay ten paces behind the last bull. When we reach the gates, you stay at the perimeter, near the watchfires. Do not cross into the village proper."
Kael nodded. It wasn't the VIP treatment he was used to—but it was a lifeline.
As he limped behind the herd, smelling the heavy, musky scent of the beasts and listening to the sharp click-clack of their hooves, a realization struck him harder than any crash in Veyron City. In his old world, he had built his life on speed and dominance. Here, survival depended on the mercy of a girl and the patience of her herd.
Survival wasn't a solo race. It was a slow, grueling process of earning a place in a world that didn't care about his name.