The cold ground started to ache into his bones. That familiar feeling of life slowly returned. His entire backside could now feel pain again. Slowly, gently, weaving things into place. Strands of data and blood melded together.

Suddenly, a surge of power arose within him from the darkness. A piercing light struck the clouded night, and suddenly, the boy gasped out loud. A terrible ache scolded him as he awoke to an intense pain.

"Huuuuueee—-ugh ch guyeuk "

A series of violent coughs broke free from his dried mouth, forcing him to steady a sore palm across his chest. Moments passed as the world's air finally flowed better through his lungs. The boy raised his head with his eyes half closed. For a few moments, everything felt strange and new.

He stretched his limbs to the fullest like a cat, and a deep yawn exclaimed out from his gaping mouth. The air never tasted so good, he thought to himself.

Thinking about the air, the boy recalled noticing something strange about things in his foggy view. His eyes opened tiresomely, but they quickly widened with a look of great surprise. He took a willful gaze into the new world above him.

Once his vision finally cleared, he discovered a grandeur ceiling staring back at him from above. He moved his body slightly, and a series of intense pains assaulted him. Alarm bells suddenly rang through his brain.

This familiar sensation, this was pain.

"W-wait...I'm alive? H-how is that posi-"

Zachary gasped for air and jerked his upper body into a seated position. He regretted the swift movement, feeling every nerve in his body screaming out in pain.

"Arghhhh!" he grimaced loud enough to probably be heard, but he was quickly shocked into silence the second he captured what his voice sounded like. A frail, childish hand covered his mouth. Unsure where that voice had come from, he muttered a few more things just to make sure and was confident his voice had changed.

Next, Zachary looked down and inspected his body; this wasn't his body. This was a child's body, a brown-skinned child with a bony frame. He was dressed in a long, baggy white gown; it smelt fresh and new.

He delicately removed the heavy silk duvet. His legs were scrawny and childlike. Zachary sat there in a short daze, contemplating what sort of logical response there was to all of this.

'Maybe...there's a perfectly logical explanation to all of this.'

Zachary shuffled his feet off the edge of the large bed. Dangling his skinny legs over the side before slowly lowering them against the wooden floorboards.

He put a little force into standing firm against the floor and, rather comically, lost his balance. He landed face-first against the ground with a loud smack.

Zachary could only laugh childishly after nursing away the twinging pain against his face. He was alive; this feeling birthed a nostalgic joy within him, but alarmingly, this was certainly not the body he knew of before. Zachary raised his helm and noticed a tall mirror placed across the room. After a brief pause, he crawled to the mirror; he reached it by its foot and lifted his head, steadying his face before it.

'Well I'll be damned.'

Zachary thought to himself, touching the baby-faced features of the stranger staring back at him.

His brown hair was styled in numerous thick, twisted locks, each banded with multiple pale pink rubbery rings that contrasted with the dark purple hue of his hair.

His face was angular, with a prominent, chiselled jawline and high cheekbones. He blinked a few times and observed his peculiar eyes, which sat relatively narrow and sharply angled upwards at the outer corners, giving him a natural piercing gaze.

The irises were a bright, vivid purple, adding to the overall mysterious allure of his new appearance. Zachary touched his face to make sure he wasn't dreaming.

'Shit! Have I really...reincarnated?'

The sheer thought of that made his heart tremble. The door snapped open just before Zachary could delve deeper into this insane reality. He blinked once and felt a looming shadow towering over him.

"Young master! Y-yo-y-you're awake! " a feminine voice laced with affection bellowed noisily.

Roland covered his ears before he was given a moment to respond. Suddenly, he was hoisted off the ground like a sack of rice and laid back against the soft bed. The feeling made him incredibly uncomfortable. The culprit was a surprisingly tall woman dressed in a maid's outfit. She was broad-shouldered and bulkier than any of the women he was used to seeing.

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"Oh heavens, you finally opened your eyes! Praise the great divines! This is so unexpected! We thought you were...oh dear (sobs) look at me go (sobs) I just...hyuk...I just couldn't imagine losing you as well."

Her voice filtered in a gentle whimper, but gentle was putting it mildly. Zachary shifted slightly away to avoid the downpour of tears from wetting him.

The sobbing brute of a maid wasn't nearly showing the sort of demeanour he'd expect from someone of her size. As he watched her dampen the ends of her black dress with tears, the term "friendly giant" came to mind.

"Oh dear, look at me go...one thousand apologies, young master. I'm just so glad you're alive and well. We thought you'd never wake up after... oh... consuming that (sobs) hyuk-oh dear, this is just too much to bear for me right now. " The blubbering maid lifted her large frame off the bed, and Zachary felt the bed prop itself back up.

The maid hurried out of the room. Zachary watched the floorboards creaking as she stomped out of the lavishly large room he was in.

He merely sat there in silence for a short while. Zachary cocked one of his brows upward, wondering if he was currently experiencing a lucid dream right now.

'Ok, let's not panic Zach. There must be a perfectly explainable reason behind all of this.'

His thoughts and memories felt airy. He still remembered a small fraction of his old world, but there was a strange sense of detachment from those flashing images swirling around his thoughts.

'It's almost like my memories are falling out of my head.'

He rubbed his temple in deep thought, pondering deeply before hearing the sound of a door opening for the second time this morning. Zachary followed the noise with haste, his eyelids quickly lowered, observing the stranger who had appeared by the door.

The fellow stood opposingly tall, clothed in strange clothes Zachary expected people from a particular time in history to wear: black boiled leathers, heavy boots, and thick fur slung over his shoulders. Zachary narrowed his gaze a little and was assured that it was the empty head of a bear propped on the bulky man's shoulder.

'Wait, have I gone back in time! How the hell is that even possible. Shit-shit-what do I do now.'

He tossed his gaze around the pristine room in search of any clues about what time this was.

Meanwhile, the fellow approached him with measured steps now that he was close. Zachary noticed the outline of a long sword sat in a leather scabbard. Where he came from, no one walked around with swords like that anymore.

'Oh man, I've gone back in time, haven't I'

Roland shuddered just at the thought of that. But he snapped free out of his daydreams, realising he was being silently watched.

The man had a black forked beard and long combed hair gracefully falling down his neck. The neat hair was a striking contrast to the herculean rough build. But Zachary would completely forget about his appearance once the tall man began descending to a single knee.

"It's a pleasure to finally meet you. Apologies for my abruptness, but...sigh, this meeting of ours has been a long time coming. My name is Brutus. I am the Lord of this manor, and I was a friend to your mother." The hulking figure lowered himself to a single knee. Zachary flinched a little before his brain started absorbing every piece of information being told to him.

'Brutus?' He thought to himself, 'what kind of name is Brutus?' Zachary was almost sure he was in a world where swords and castles were the norm. The dress sense alone was a clear giveaway as well. 'Wait my mother?' Zachary caught himself quickly, understanding he was being addressed as the current body he was now housing.

He needed to massage his glabella just to gather himself. But to the stern watching man called Brutus, he thought he was suffering from a migraine.

"Young Lord, is everything alright? Shall I fetch the nurses for aid, or would you prefer—" Zachary's hand shot up out of reflex from the growing annoyance he felt from all these strange occurrences.

'I died and woke up in a world like this.' He pondered darkly before a deep sigh broke free from his lowered face.

"You're the owner of this castle? So what am I...wait a minute what the hell is th-"

Zachary's words choked in his throat. Just by coincidence, his gaze just so happened to fall against the opened drapes framed around the squared window. A beam of sunlight walked in and beyond the inner confines of this stoned chamber. A birth of emerald carpeted the entire land as far as he could see.

Rolling hills and tall, smoky blue mountains hung in the backdrop like watercolour paintings. The picturesque scene was truly a marvel. But nothing in the natural view of the world could provide this level of shock on its own. Zachary found his feet moving. He delicately climbed down the bed and walked towards the window.

He rubbed his eyes a few times before narrowing his gaze to lessen the bright rays of the sunlight. In the heavens above, Zachary saw what he could only perceive as a flying large winged creature, with a sizeable compact body and noticeably thin tail trailing behind it. There wasn't a world where these same creatures could go unnoticed, yet their very existence here reaffirmed Zachary that he was far away from home.

"Dr-dragon?" he breathed, almost too stupefied to remove his rattling gaze from the beast he thought only lived in the tales of children's books.

The creature was far away, so he couldn't see its precise outline. It had dark or greyish scales. Zachary had read enough manga in his old world to know that there was a dragon up there. Its wingspan was so wide that he noticed small tears and holes, while the sunlight behind it fractured through.

"Y-young lord...are you ok?" The deep voice from his rear stirred him back to reality again.

A startled Zachary wasn't sure how to address this obviously respectable fellow. However, it was glaringly obvious Brutus was hiding something from him. That worrisome face was hard to ignore.

"Ah, forgive me. I was...just looking at that...hey that's a dragon out there right? A real-life Dragon?"

He couldn't contain his excitement, stealing occasional glances at the giant flying creature outside.

Brutus drew a concerned look as he sized him up and down.

"Forgive me young Lord, but how much do you remember before...ahem, you last woke up...I guess."

Zachary studied those words carefully. The brute had a point. Zachary couldn't remember anything; his memories and thoughts were swirling around in a constant storm. Some things were easier to remember, while a whole host of other things proved quite the opposite. So, Zachary decided to play the role best suited for this situation.

"I...I can't remember most things. Please can you tell me...ahem, can you tell what's happened to me...please?"

With the help of his natural childlike voice, his words flowed like a harpist's string of sorrow. Brutus's hardened exterior instantly melted, and the fellow lowered his sad gaze in deep thought for a few moments.

'Tsk, hope I haven't overdone it and made him depressed now?" He thought inwardly.

After a while, Brutus searched his thoughts before clearing his throat to answer.

"That falls in line with what we expected. I have already exhausted the expertise of all the healers across the realms. Sigh...no one was able to determine how long or how to wake you up."

Zachary watched on patiently in silence, 'So I...I mean, this previous owner's body was in a coma?'

He imagined the coma must've been for quite some time, judging by both this man and the maid's reaction to seeing him.

Despite that, nothing could've prepared Zachary for the answer he was about to hear.

"3-3-3 years!" He blurted out in shock.

Brutus massaged his temples before beginning the arduous and long story concerning Zachary's new life.