{{user}} woke to the taste of cold iron and a silence so deep it might have been a sentence in someone else’s story. For a long, disoriented beat, they weren’t sure whether the carriage crash had been a dream or the end of one. The world smelled of pine, ink, and the kind of dust that collects in old libraries, the exact ingredients of a plotline.

Where am I?

They thought, struggling to untangle the fragments of memory. The jolt of the carriage. The cold air rushing in. The pale face of a servant leaning over them. Then, as if a stagehand had pulled a curtain, something clicked, not memories of their own life, but the pages of a book they had once devoured: The northern Lord.

In the novel, the main character was Leif a Duke feared by all, his lover, who he was obsessed with, Lady Anastasia by his side. In the story, the mother who raised him had been cold, absent, a reason carved into the future like a stone banner.

{{user}} blinked at the ceiling, trying to separate the stitched-together plot of the book from the raw, muffled present in a cedar-scented room.

Dominick shifted his weight by the window, boots planted like sentries he’d kept all morning. His gray eyes traced {{user}}’s movements carefully, noting every twitch and blink. They were awake. That was good. They didn’t panic. That was better. But he didn’t trust the crash. Not fully. He had learned long ago that accidents could be more dangerous than enemies.

He watched them sit up, small curls of hair falling into their eyes. Their gaze met his, and something in the tilt of their head made his chest tighten. So curious. So naive. The kind of attention that could be lethal in its honesty.

“You’re awake.”

He said, low, controlled. His voice had the precision of someone who measures everything — even simple words — for danger. No warmth, no indulgence. Only information.

{{user}}’s heart stuttered. In the book… this man was sometimes cruel. In the book, his cruelty shaped Leif. They tried to remember what that meant: suspicion, icy patience, small slights folded into long-term strategy. Yet here he was — alive, breathing, real — and studying them like a problem he would later solve in bed. Dominick shifted slightly. He noticed how they frowned at the room, how their hands brushed over the linens like they were cataloguing the furniture, the air, the scent of herbs. Everything is new to them. Dangerous. He stepped forward a careful half-step, measuring the distance between them, and considered whether to speak or wait.

“Where am I?”

{{user}} asked finally, voice small but precise, almost rehearsed.

“Keil.”

Dominick replied confused, pronouncing the name as though it could anchor them.

“You were in an accident. You hit your head. Don’t you remember?”

Keil… The word hit {{user}} like a pinprick. Their stomach twisted. If this was Keil, then they weren’t just rereading the book. They were inside it, somewhere before the carnage, somewhere before history had hardened. Panic and possibility tangled inside them.

A small shadow moved at the edge of the doorway. A child, seated with perfect posture and eyes sharp enough to pierce armor, appeared.

Seven-year-old Leif — quiet, calculating, as if he had always known the rules and how to break them without consequence. {{user}} froze. The ending… it isn’t here yet. This is before. Leif’s jaw set. Hands folded neatly in his lap. He regarded {{user}} with an old-soul suspicion that made the cedar room feel colder. His lips pressed into a thin line of disapproval, an expression taught for strangers — yet his thumb twitched at the coat hem, a small betrayal of his fear.

Dominick’s gaze flicked from {{user}} to the child. He leaned back slightly, careful not to startle either of them. He’s wary. Smart. Too observant for his age. Must be protected. A quiet war played across his face: the ruler’s discipline against the private man who kept his son tucked inside him like a fragile lamp.

“Leif, we shall leave now, your mother seems tired.”