The world was wrong.No rumble of engines, no hum of fluorescent lights, no cold bite of metal tools in hand.
Instead, there was the soft creak of wooden beams overhead, the distant crash of waves against stone cliffs, and the heavy scent of salt and smoke hanging in the air.
Jackson stirred, his mind clawing toward awareness.
He opened his eyes to a dimly lit room — stone walls veined with moss, dark oak beams supporting a sagging ceiling. A narrow window let in weak sunlight, distorted by rippled glass.
Above him, thick tapestries hung to guard against the coastal chill.To his side, a battered wooden desk sat littered with half-used candles, parchments, and what looked like a crudely carved wooden sword.
He shifted, and a pang shot through his body. His arms were small, soft, foreign.
"What's—" His voice cracked, high and unfamiliar.
He pushed back the rough wool blanket covering him and stared at his hands: small, chubby fingers. The body of a child.
Panic flared. He scrambled to sit up but the world swayed dangerously, and he collapsed back against the straw mattress.
The door creaked open.
A woman in a plain brown dress hurried in, a linen cap tucked over her hair. Her hands were calloused, her face drawn with worry.
"My lord Jackson! Praise the Ancestors, you're awake!" she cried, rushing to his side.
Jackson stared at her, words failing him.
She placed a cool hand on his forehead and smiled in relief. "The fever has broken. You've given the entire manor a fright."
"Jackson," he echoed inside.
Fragments of alien memories tumbled into his mind:A towering man with a braided beard, a stern voice calling him "son."Two older boys with sneering smiles, practicing with steel swords.Lessons on riding horses, on sword grips, on controlling the mana within the body.
His breathing grew ragged.This — this wasn't a dream.
He remembered now:The factory.The broken machine.The crushing weight of iron beams.The fading of his Earth life.
He had died.
And been reborn as Jackson Rockfield, third son of the Baron of Rockfield, five years old and frail after surviving a brutal fever.
The woman — his caretaker, perhaps a nursemaid — fussed over him gently, tucking him back into the bed.
"Rest, my lord. Your father will wish to see you when you are stronger."
As she worked, Jackson noticed strange details — the carved symbols along the beams, faint and worn by time.Old rituals, forgotten or ignored.
Magic here was no casual tool. It was rare, heavy, ritualistic — a thing of sweat, blood, and preparation.
Not like the stories of wizards in fairy tales.Here, the blade and the body ruled first.
But deep inside him, something else stirred.
A hunger.A whisper.
It came with the taste of iron on his tongue — faint, but unmistakable.Something hidden within this new body... waiting.
Jackson closed his eyes, forcing calm.
He was alive. In a new world, harsh and unknown.
But he would survive.He would build.He would rise.
Not through strength of arms alone — but through the iron will and mind of an engineer reborn.