A metallic tang clawed at Cain’s throat. His lungs, suddenly too large and coarse, rasped with each breath, pulling in a foul cocktail of stale ash and something vaguely like ozone. Pressure thrummed behind his eyes, a dull ache that eclipsed the blinding light that had just consumed him. He was aware of a rough, vibrating surface beneath his hands, something cold and gritty. Rough spun fabric chafed his bare arms. This wasn't the plush gaming chair he’d spent a decade molding to his backside. This wasn’t his apartment. This wasn’t *his* reality.
Close your eyes.
And ask yourself.
If this is the beginning of a very, very brutal game, what am I supposed to do now?
First, you understand the situation and get all the information you can.
He forced himself to take another ragged breath. The air here was heavy, thick with the scent of unwashed bodies and something industrial—burnt oil, perhaps, or slag. His heart hammered a brutal rhythm against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the sudden, cold dread. He was a survivor, always had been. Panic was a luxury he couldn't afford.
Slowly, his eyes cracked open. The world swam into a grimy, flickering focus. Not LED streetlights, but arcs of sputtering arcane light cast long, distorted shadows across what looked like a massive, soot-stained hall. Colossal gears, rusted and immobile, loomed like ancient totems. Steam hissed from ruptured pipes, weeping condensation onto the grimy floor. And everywhere, men. Scores of them. Beefy, unwashed, clad in rough tunics and leather straps, their skin scarred and branded with the crude sigils of the Ironclad Imperium's lowest castes.
They stood in loose ranks, a silent, expectant crowd. Before them, atop a low, iron-plated dais, a hulking figure addressed them. His voice was a guttural rumble, amplified by some unseen device. “Congratulations! Young Forgelings!”
Forgelings. Cain’s mind, despite the shock, latched onto the term. A low-caste designation. New recruits. This was a ceremony. A recruitment drive, perhaps. He scanned the faces, grim and reverent. None looked at him. None looked away. He was just another lump of raw material.
He tried to recall. What had he been doing? The God-Engine. The final boss of `[Aether & Cogs]`. Nine years, poured into that simulation, mastering every cog, every aetheric circuit, every brutal stratagem of the Ironclad Imperium. He’d activated the final portal. Then the warning, a flash of white, a surge of energy.
And now this. A cold knot tightened in his gut.
“As of today, you will leave the Sacred Foundry and be reborn as true Cogs of the Imperium!” the hulking figure roared. High Forgemaster Rorek, a deep, primal part of Cain’s mind supplied, with chilling certainty. A Cog-Priest, tasked with overseeing the induction of new blood into the machine. The memory was too vivid, too immediate, for it to be anything but true.
Cain closed his eyes again, letting the words wash over him. He was no medic, but he felt like he was having a particularly vivid, visceral hallucination. Or a breakdown. Yet the grit under his hands, the metallic stench, the reverberation of Rorek’s voice in his chest, felt too real.
“Now come out one by one, and choose a weapon that suits you!”
He needed data. First, himself. He looked down. His hands were not the lean, calloused hands of a man who’d spent years manipulating a console. These were massive, thick-fingered, ridged with old scars. They flexed, responding to his will, a strange, alien sensation. He lifted one, examining it. It was like looking at a stranger's limb. The nails were chipped, cut short. A faint, smudged tattoo snaked up his forearm – a stylized gear, common among the lower echelons of the Imperium's labor castes.
He moved. His body felt heavy, slow, yet powerful. Broad shoulders, thick muscles that strained against the rough tunic. Crude tattoos, geometric and mechanical, covered his chest and arms. He didn’t recognize any of them as his own.
No shirt. Just like the source material. Only here, it wasn't about savagery. It was about showing loyalty through branded flesh, through the marks of service and submission.
He was a Forgeling. A raw recruit. A blank slate, in a body that wasn’t his own.
Kidnappings, elaborate pranks, shared psychosis. He discarded each possibility as quickly as it formed. His analytical mind, honed by years of sifting through countless variables in `[Aether & Cogs]`, refused to entertain such mundane explanations. This wasn't mundane. This was impossible, yet undeniably real.
“Come out, Roric, third son of Thane!”
The language. These weren’t the grunts and roars of ancient barbarians. This was a guttural, heavily accented Imperial dialect, filled with hard consonants and clipped phrases. A language he had never learned in his previous life, yet understood with seamless clarity. It was as if the syntax and vocabulary had been directly hardwired into his brain.
“War-Axe! Excellent! May your swing be true, Cog!”
Second, the familiarity. A strange sense of déjà vu prickled at him. The scene, the stern Cog-Priest, the rows of nervous recruits. This wasn’t just a random event. This was the opening sequence of `[Aether & Cogs]` when one chose the “Ironclad Recruit” origin. The first choice, the first weapon, the first step into a world of grim survival. The tribal chief had been replaced by a High Forgemaster. The woods by a grim forge-hall. The savages by Imperial Forgelings. The parallels were too stark to be coincidence.
“Come out, Lyra, second daughter of Sol!”
Cain’s breath hitched. He wasn’t just *in* the game. He *was* a character *in* the game. The implications were staggering, terrifying. His meticulous simulation, his years of mastery, were now terrifyingly real. Every tactical decision, every engineering principle, every social nuance he'd studied now meant life or agonizing death.
“You chose the Arc-Pistol! A smart choice for one of sharp intellect!”
Arc-pistol. The flash of arcane energy, the crackle of aether. This was the Ironclad Imperium. This was `[Aether & Cogs]`.
His body tensed, the rough fabric scratching against his skin. A soft murmur rippled through the ranks of Forgelings nearby. Someone shifted. A young man, barely out of his youth, his face pale with confusion, mumbled. “What… what is this… why am I here?”
Cain’s head snapped towards him. The man’s eyes were wide, darting about, mirroring Cain’s own initial disorientation. His voice, thin and reedy, held the unmistakable cadence of a man from Cain's old world. He sounded like a gamer. A player.
“Uh… `[Aether & Cogs]`? Is this… is this the game?”
An electric current of dread shot through Cain. Another one. Just like him. His eyes darted to the High Forgemaster Rorek. Rorek’s head, bald and gleaming, tilted almost imperceptibly. His massive frame stiffened. His voice, when it came, was a rumble of controlled fury. “Who spoke?”
The young man, Jax, son of Rykker, as Cain's implanted knowledge supplied, flinched. He looked up, his confusion warring with a dawning terror. “Me? I just… I asked if this was a tutorial. I just completed the final boss of `[Aether & Cogs]`, and…”
Rorek moved. A blur of hardened steel and oiled leather. The High Forgemaster wasn't just a priest; he was a warrior, a veteran of countless brutal campaigns. A heavy gauntlet, reinforced with arcane-infused steel, closed around Jax's throat. Jax sputtered, his feet kicking futilely. Cain felt nothing but a cold, calculating fear. He knew what was coming. He’d seen it play out in the simulation, a rare event triggered by anomalous behavior, a ‘bug’ or ‘glitch’ in the system. But this wasn’t a simulation anymore.
A sickening CRACK echoed through the hall. Jax’s body went limp, a sudden, horrifying deadweight. Rorek's other hand, a blade of honed ceramite, flashed. A swift, brutal arc. The air whistled. A spray of hot, visceral fluid erupted, painting the grimy floor. Jax’s head detached with a wet thud, tumbling from his shoulders, eyes wide and unseeing. It rolled once, twice, before settling against an iron grate, a grotesque caricature of youthful confusion. The body, still clutched in Rorek's gauntlet, shuddered, then collapsed in a gushing torrent of crimson, splattering across the boots of the recruits. A thin line of fluid, warm and viscous, spattered across Cain’s own cheek.
He watched the blood gush from the headless trunk, staining the cracked ceramite of the forge floor. His stomach churned, but no bile rose. No nausea. No emotional shock. Only a detached, observational certainty. This was real. And it was brutal. His decades spent immersed in the simulated horrors of `[Aether & Cogs]` had, it seemed, prepared him for this.
“An aberrant presence, a void-thing, resided in the soul of Jax, son of Rykker,” Rorek’s voice boomed, chillingly calm. His heavy gaze swept over the silent, terrified recruits. “Young Forgelings, erase from your memory all the words this void-thing has just uttered! Such thoughts are poison!”
Cain’s mind raced, processing the implications with cold precision.
Information 1: I am an 'aberrant presence,' a 'void-thing.'
Information 2: If this is found out, I will die, brutally.
Information 3: That fate could have been mine. My neck is still intact.
A cold dread, sharp and sudden, gripped his spine. This was not a game. There were no respawns, no save points. This was survival, stark and uncompromising. He wiped the spatter from his cheek with the back of his hand. It smelled of iron and something coppery. Blood. Real blood.
“Quartermaster Jek! Report this anomaly to the Overseer. Dispose of the tainted flesh!” Rorek commanded. “The induction ceremony will proceed!”
Blood pooled on the floor, but the ritual continued. None of the other Forgelings batted an eye. Perhaps such brutal displays were common, a grim part of life in the Imperium. Or perhaps their fear was simply too great to show anything but stoic obedience. Cain mirrored their blank expressions, forcing his own face into a mask of grim determination.
No one should feel any sense of incongruity while looking at me. To them, if found out, I would be nothing but a 'void-thing' who had possessed the true owner of this body.
“Next!” Rorek barked. “Kael, son of Varran, come out!”
Cain froze. Kael. Son of Varran. His name? He didn't know his name. This was a critical failure, a potential death sentence. His blood ran cold. If he didn't move, he'd be suspicious. If he moved at the wrong time, he'd be suspicious. The fear was a living thing, squirming in his gut. A raw, visceral fear that bypassed his usual detached analysis.
“Next!”
He scanned the recruits. No one moved. No one stirred. They all stood rigid, eyes fixed forward. A desperate, irrational hope flickered: *What if it’s not my name? What if he’s calling someone else?*
“Next!”
But that was a gamble. A weak, desperate hope. His life had rarely been kind enough to allow for such luxuries. He needed a plan. A solid, calculated risk. He watched the High Forgemaster, the rhythm of his calls. Two seconds between each name, a beat of expectation, then the guttural command. It was a pattern.
“Next!”
He kept his chin steady, his gaze unwavering, but his eyes darted, taking in the micro-expressions of the Forgelings around him. The slight shifting of weight, the nervous glance, the subtle twitch. He was looking for any indication that a name belonged to someone else. Any hesitation. Any flicker of recognition that wasn’t his.
“Next!”
The calls continued. One, two, three… he counted them, tracking the silent responses, or lack thereof. His heart hammered, each beat a painful throb in his ears. This was it. This was the moment. The most probable outcome. He had to trust his observation, his experience from a thousand simulated scenarios.
“Next!”
Eight calls had passed since Kael, son of Varran. Eight individuals had stepped forward. Then, the rhythmic pattern broke. Rorek’s voice boomed again: “Come out, Drakk, son of Rhol!”
Two seconds passed. Then three. No one moved. The silence in the vast hall stretched, taut and thick with unspoken tension. Drakk, son of Rhol, was either not here, or too terrified to step forward. Either way, no one had reacted.
This was his chance. The highest probability. The moment he had been waiting for.
Cain stepped forward. His boots, heavy and unfamiliar, thudded on the ceramite floor. He didn't hesitate. His heart was a frantic drum, but his breath was steady, his shoulders squared. Every fiber of his being screamed 'danger,' but his analytical mind overrode it all. This was the most likely path to survival. He had to take it.
Step. Step. Step.
He walked towards the weapon racks, towards the towering figure of High Forgemaster Rorek. If his judgment was wrong, if this wasn't his name, then the fate of Jax awaited him. Rorek would question him. Ask for his mother. His lineage. Questions he couldn’t answer.
Yet, he didn't waver. His steps were firm, projecting a confidence he didn't feel. He reached the dais, stopping before the array of simple, brutal weapons: aether-charged cudgels, crudely forged hatchets, short, heavy carbines. Rorek’s gaze, cold and assessing, swept over him. But there was no suspicion. Only a grim, approving nod.
“Young warrior, choose your tool!”
He lived. The words resonated in his mind, sharp and clear. Less than ten minutes since the blinding light, since the familiar hum of his gaming rig. Ten minutes in this new, brutal reality. He’d accepted it. Denying reality was for fools, for those who didn't understand the ironclad rules of survival.
Kael, son of Varran. From now on, this was him. He had to become this Forgeling, completely. He reached for a heavy, bladed trench shovel, its edge glinting under the arcane light. Pragmatic. Versatile. A digging tool, a melee weapon, a brutal shield against the unknown.
He didn't know for how long. He didn't know if he could ever return home. But for now, the objective was clear. Survive. And perhaps, just perhaps, master this brutal, unforgiving world as meticulously as he had its simulation.
The shovel felt heavy, solid, and undeniably real in his grip.
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