A rusted hook, a sharpened shard of processed slag, sometimes a length of chain—these were Roric Altan's tools. His movements, once impetuous, were now a grim calculus of bone, joint, and leverage. Many whispered of his unwavering devotion to the Altan family, a fierce loyalty that burned through the coal-choked air of the Iron Commonwealth. He had heard the murmurs. *“Such conviction,”* they’d say, *“a true son of the old ways.”* Their words were always the same. He gave them the same cold answer. *“Conviction, my ass.”* Some recoiled, others mistook his fury for patriotism, a burning desire for retribution against the merchant guilds who’d devoured his ancestral lands. They thought it was vengeance for a lost lineage, a ruined name. His truth was far more sordid. He never spoke it. A son cast out, a wastrel whose youthful arrogance had festered into open contempt for everything he now fought to reclaim. Decades clawing through the refuse heaps of forgotten routes, mapping the broken veins of the earth, had etched the bitter lesson onto his very bones. Too late, he learned. His family’s Keep, a pillar of defiance in the encroaching industrial sprawl, consumed by alchemical fire and the cold machinations of the guilds. He arrived to find only ash, the smoke a choking monument to his folly. Regret became a gnawing beast within him. He wept then, not for honor, but for the apology he could never deliver. The chance for absolution, stolen. What drove him now – vengeance for a family he’d disowned, or vengeance for the forgiveness he craved – the lines had blurred into a single, agonizing purpose. Life was a protracted penance. Each day, a fresh iteration of the past’s cold grip. Yet, at the edge of that long, brutal existence, as the final blow struck, a strange vision bloomed. Flashes of childhood, bright and fleeting. The sting of jealousy, the casual cruelties he inflicted. The crushing realization of his pathetic exile, wandering a world indifferent to his plight. The war, the Commonwealth’s hunger, the inferno that devoured his home. The grinding decades spent seeking both atonement and blood. Right until the end. His death had been a fitting release, a ragged exhalation of a life lived on the fringes. He had seen the worst of them fall, their stolen power crumbling. But one regret, a raw, unhealing wound, persisted even as his lifeblood spilled. *“I should have apologized.”* The true calamity, the Iron Commonwealth’s rapacious greed, was beyond his power to stop then. But his own sins, the slights and cruelties, those he could have atoned for. He wished, with his last, fading breath, to meet them again. To be recognized. To finally offer those desperate words. Then, a sudden, searing lance of pain. His skull throbbed, a drumbeat of inexplicable agony. Roric gasped, a raw sound tearing from his throat, his body coiling upright. A jumble of voices erupted around him. Faint at first, then sharpening into distinct cries. *“Eldest young master, he’s awake!”* *“Fetch the healers! Inform the patriarch!”* Roric’s hands flew to his temples, pressing against the insistent ache. The bewildering clamor forced his eyes open, forcing him to confront the impossible. Faces swam into view, both achingly familiar and jarringly young. A figure pushed through the small crowd, his brown hair tousled, a mischievous glint in his eyes that Roric remembered well. It was Kael, his childhood attendant. Unaged. Impossible. “Young Master, you are well?” Kael’s voice, a ghost from three decades past, held a frantic edge. “Your eyes… can you see this?” He waved a hand before Roric’s face. The deluge of questions, the boundless concern from a voice Roric hadn’t heard since before the Commonwealth’s great advance, overwhelmed him. Kael, his loyal, exasperating Kael, stood before him, impossibly young, impossibly alive. “Healers! Quickly! They said he’d be fine!” Kael’s frantic pleas cut through the growing din. Roric grappled with the surreal, his mind refusing to reconcile what his senses presented. *What in the Coil’s name…* Beyond the recovery room’s grimy window, the training yards of Altan Keep stretched, sun-dappled and vibrant. The ancient grey walls, still scarred by old skirmishes but unmarred by the fire, stood firm. Distant glimpses of House Altan’s guard, their ceremonial pauldrons bearing the Serpent’s Coil sigil, glittered in the light. His family’s emblem. Once a source of endless, foolish pride. Now, a stark reminder of what he had lost. The Keep, whole and unburnt. A sight he had yearned for with the desperate hunger of a dying man. His mind churned, refusing to accept the impossible reality. Kael’s voice, louder now, pulled him back. “Young Master? Can you see me? Oh, by the Forge’s flame, our young master! Someone find the head healer!” Kael had always been prone to dramatics, even as a boy. This was no different. Roric tried to speak, to order the clamor to cease. “Master, you must rest now. Complete quiet.” One of the maids, a nervous young woman he recognized, echoed Kael’s urgings. It was too much. The pain in his head surged, mirroring the chaos around him. Then, the recovery room door creaked open. “B-brother, are you alright?” That voice. Roric’s head snapped towards the sound. Peering through the narrow gap, a round-cheeked boy with his own fiery red hair and startlingly bright eyes looked in, apprehension clouding his face. Elian. His younger brother. The boy of monstrous talent, whose skill with a blunted training sword had surpassed Roric’s own decade of practice in a mere three cycles. The same brother he had envied, despised, and whose tragic end he had mourned with blood-soaked regret until his final breath. “Master! You need to rest!” Kael moved swiftly, blocking the doorway, his eyes still on Roric. “Eldest Young Master, please lie down.” The headache returned with crushing force. Roric clutched his skull. Seeing Elian, seeing Kael, the bandages on his head, the dull ache – a chilling sense of déjà vu washed over him. He knew this moment. This was the day. The official duel. The day his jealousy had peaked, fueled by the hushed whispers of the Keep’s retainers. The day he had lashed out, savagely, at Elian when he came to visit. *“Get out! You bastard, you insolent whelp! How dare you…”* Three years of such abuse, culminating in that venomous outburst. Words that had driven Elian away forever, the boy who had patiently endured every sneer, every slight. In his dying moments, Roric had cursed that memory above all others. *A dream? Am I dreaming even in death? But the pain…* He couldn’t just lie there, trapped in a replay of his greatest shame. Not again. Even if this was just a dream, a phantom echo of a past he yearned to change, he had to act. He had decades of unsaid apologies burning in his throat. “It’s alright. Elian, come in.” “Forget it. Come here, Elian Altan.” The boy’s face, etched with worry, visibly brightened. Elian moved with a youthful eagerness that belied his tentative posture, rushing to Roric’s bedside, bowing his head repeatedly. “Brother, I’m truly sorry. I should have been more careful…” Elian, small for his age, with an innocent face and a heart even kinder. A common training mishap, nothing more, yet the boy was genuinely distraught. Roric’s past self, consumed by a petty, corrosive envy for such a pure soul, now seemed utterly laughable. “It’s fine. I’m okay. Stop apologizing.” The boy’s confused expression, the unexpected warmth of his small hand as it grasped Roric’s own – it was all too real, too visceral. This was his chance. The things he had failed to say. The truths he had stifled. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Not at all.” He wanted to smile, to offer comfort, but the grim specter of the future he remembered chilled him. His past self’s escalating cruelty, the eventual stripping of his heir status, his expulsion from the family. A flood of regretful memories, now amplified by faint, shifting echoes of futures yet to unfold. *This boy, he died like that…* Elian, forced to lead the House after their father’s premature death in the Commonwealth’s war, had fought relentlessly on the front lines by royal decree. The Altan forces, already weakened, were bled dry. While they held the imperial army at bay, the crown had fled, leaving Elian to face the Commonwealth’s wrath alone. Captured. Tortured. Publicly executed, a gruesome display of imperial dominance. He had been used, broken, and discarded. This future, Roric thought, should not, *could not*, happen again. Overwhelmed, Roric’s arms tightened around his brother, a convulsive, desperate embrace. “I’m sorry, Elian. Your brother is truly sorry.” Words of atonement, stifled for a lifetime, now spilled forth. Heartfelt regret, a raw wound, flowed with his tears. “B-big brother? Why are you crying?” Elian’s small hands patted Roric’s back, confused. “I’m so sorry. I really am sorry.” So much to say, yet only this single phrase repeated, choked with emotion. The grizzled veteran, trapped in a younger body, wept. And the child, so small by comparison, offered what solace he could. Time passed, both fleeting and eternal. “Brother, I’ll return soon,” Elian said, a soft smile on his face, before slipping away. As the others watched in stunned silence, Roric closed his eyes, a fervent prayer burning in his chest. If this was no dream, if he truly had returned, he would change everything. --- When Roric opened his eyes again, the world was still vibrant. A warm shaft of sunlight sliced through the recovery room window. The cheerful chirp of a Coal-Thrush rode a refreshing breeze, sweeping away the cloying stench of alchemical disinfectants. He pushed himself from the bed, his movements fluid, unburdened. His body. He ran his hands over his chest, his arms. The numerous scars, the calloused hands from ten years as a merc and twenty as a route-runner, were gone. His knees, which had ached with the chill of every dawn, felt strong, supple. “…It wasn’t a dream.” Up to his very last breath. *“Where is the arcane engine?!”* *“You dare steal the Commonwealth’s asset!”* *“Let’s die together!”* The complete disintegration, the agonizing fire, was as vivid as the scent of dust. Yet, he was here. Alive. Whole. A visceral clenching tightened in his gut. Excitement, cold and sharp, shot through his limbs. The past he had longed to rewind. A chance to dismantle the unfolding doom. The impossible, made real. But how? Logically, it defied all understanding. The realms of Chronos and Aether, even the arcane texts agreed, were untouched domains, far beyond the meddling of even the primordial gods. To claim he had returned from the future… *At best, declared a madman. At worst, burned for blasphemy by the Guild Enforcers.* Yet, what else could explain this? Only one wild conjecture pulsed in his mind. *That explosion. More potent than expected. But still…* Returning from being reduced to atoms. It was ludicrous. He had seen hundreds vaporized on the slag-fields. Had they all returned? The thought was absurd. He wracked his brain, but no answer presented itself. He muttered aloud, discarding the fruitless speculation. Decades of harsh living had taught him: if thought brought no solution, action was the only path. At that moment, the recovery room door creaked. A young maid, Elara, peered in tentatively. Her eyes met his. She froze, then bowed so deeply her head almost touched her knees, trembling violently. “I beg your pardon, my lord.” Her reaction puzzled Roric. Her face, already pale, bleached to a stark white at his lack of immediate response. “I apologize! I shall take more care next time!” she stammered. What was she apologizing for? Before Roric could articulate the question, Kael burst into the room, almost tripping over his own feet. “By the Forge, Master! Elara disturbed your sleep. My apologies, my lord. I should have reminded her.” Kael positioned himself protectively in front of the maid, waving her away with a stern glance. This familiar posture, Kael shielding someone from *him*, brought a fresh wave of shame. He remembered. *“I said to keep it quiet! Even the servants don’t respect me?! You worthless wretches!”* A throbbing headache, a cruel illusion, brought forth hazy, venomous mirages. Tiny acts of cruelty, overshadowed by his greater sins, paraded before him. The shame burned, searing through his chest. “Calm yourself, our lord. This child, I will deal with. Do not agitate yourself…” Kael began, trying to soothe Roric, but the words only fueled the internal fire. “It’s not that. Elara, was it?” Roric’s voice, rougher than he intended, cut Kael off. His words were a command, not a question. “Oh, by the Coil! My lord… no, she is leaving.” Kael tried to usher the terrified maid out. Roric held up a hand, silencing him. “Elara. Stand straight. You did nothing wrong.” Roric fixed his gaze on her, the cold, pragmatic core of his being already assessing this new path. He wouldn't be that monster again. This time, he would build something different.

The Scars of Memory