Title: Empire of the Reborn
Prologue: The General's Rebirth
In the twilight of a modern world, one man died quietly in a hospital bed, forgotten by history but not by time. He had once been a history professor obsessed with overlooked figures of the early Americas, especially those who walked the blurred lines between empire and republic, conquest and freedom. His name was Miguel Herrera, a Mexican-American who had spent his life trying to prove that history was not written in ink, but in choices.
Miguel's last thoughts were not of this life, but of José María de Echeandía—a real, enigmatic governor of Alta California in the 1820s, born in Mexico but loyal to a crumbling Spanish Empire before swearing allegiance to the First Mexican Republic.
And then Miguel awoke.
But not in his hospital bed.
Not even in the 21st century.
Instead, he gasped for breath under a blinding sun, surrounded by the scent of gunpowder, horse sweat, and burning oil. A battlefield. He looked down and saw a uniform—not of a scholar, but of a soldier. He was in his mid-thirties, battle-hardened, with callused hands and a scar running from his cheek to his ear.
He was General José María de Echeandía. And it was the year 1820.
The Mexican War of Independence was in its final phase. Spain was cracking. Miguel—now Echeandía—had the knowledge of what was coming: the empire, the republic, the chaos, the betrayals.
But he also had a chance to change it.