Colonel Edric Valerian stared at the classified intelligence report, his blood turning to ice. Operation Shadowfang had been compromised. He reached for his secure phone, but the device remained dead despite his frantic attempts to power it on.
Sabotage.
Thirteen years of military intelligence work had honed his instincts. The pieces fell into place with brutal clarity—the inexplicable troop movements near the border, the delayed communications, and now this. He had minutes, perhaps seconds.
The office door burst open. Major Kessler, his most trusted lieutenant for seven years, stood in the doorway with three armed men behind him.
"Major, we need to evacuate. The operation is—" Edric began, but stopped when he saw the pistol in Kessler's hand.
"I'm sorry, Colonel," said Kessler, his voice devoid of emotion. "The Rhadani government made a compelling offer. Your strategic brilliance has become... inconvenient for certain interested parties."
Edric's hand moved instinctively toward his sidearm, but Kessler was faster. The first bullet punched through his chest, the impact throwing him against the wall-mounted tactical map of the disputed territories. As he slid down, leaving a crimson smear across the topographical features he had studied for months, he heard Kessler give the order to the others.
"Make it look like the insurgents. The colonel was working late alone. Standard procedure."
The second bullet pierced his abdomen. The third, his right lung. Edric tasted copper as his vision dimmed. His thoughts turned to the cascade of consequences—the border territories would fall within weeks, thousands of civilians in the refugee corridors would be slaughtered, and the regional destabilization would trigger conflicts that could last decades.
All because he'd trusted the wrong man.
As darkness claimed him, his final thought was one of bitter regret—not for his own life, but for the strategic failure. He had seen the patterns, tracked the anomalies, but missed the betrayal closest to him.
Amateur mistake, Valerian.
The void took him.
Cold. Unbearable pressure. Confinement.
These were Edric's first sensations in what should have been oblivion. Instead of nothingness, he felt himself being forced through a constricted space, his consciousness fully intact despite the impossibility of his situation.
Am I in hell? The tactical part of his mind—always analyzing, even now—registered that he shouldn't be thinking at all. The dead don't think.
Light burst around him, blindingly bright after the darkness. Massive hands gripped him, and his body—impossibly small, weak—was lifted into the air. The sensation of cold air on wet skin shocked him, and without conscious control, his lungs expelled a cry.
A newborn's wail.
The world came into focus gradually—blurred shapes, overwhelming sensations, and the realization that he, Colonel Edric Valerian, 43-year-old military strategist with four combat deployments and a PhD in International Strategic Studies, was now inhabiting the body of an infant.
"A healthy boy, my lord!" announced a female voice. "Your fourth son!"
Through blurred vision, Edric saw a bearded face looming over him—harsh features, cold blue eyes, and a crown of braided blond hair streaked with gray. The man wore what appeared to be ceremonial armor, with intricate knotwork patterns hammered into the metal breastplate.
"Four sons," the man rumbled in a language Edric shouldn't understand but somehow did—an archaic-sounding tongue with rhythms like Old Norse. "The gods have blessed House Valverian greatly. What strength does he show?"
A woman's exhausted voice answered from nearby. "He has the mark, Jarl Sigurd. On his shoulder—the raven's wing."
The bearded man—Jarl Sigurd—took Edric from the midwife's hands, studying him with evaluating eyes rather than paternal warmth. "Then the bloodline remains strong in him. He shall be named Edric, after my grandfather who wielded Stormcaller in the Battle of Raven's Gorge."
Edric? My name again?
The coincidence disturbed him as much as the situation itself. As the newborn body he now inhabited was wrapped in furs and returned to the arms of a woman with sweat-drenched golden hair, Edric's military mind began to process his circumstances.
He had died. He was certain of that.
Yet here he was, born again in what was clearly not his world—a medieval realm with jarls and ceremonial armor, bloodlines with "marks," and references to battles that had never appeared in any history book he'd studied.
As the woman—his new mother—pressed him to her breast, Edric's strategic mind began its work. First priority: survival. Second: intelligence gathering. Third: adaptation.
He had been given something impossible—a second life.
He would not waste it.