A snarling growl awoke Mark from his dreams of burning settlements. In the dreams, armies of bestial warriors had been marching through burning wreckage—carrying severed heads by their matted hair. They marched by foreign yet strangely familiar corpses—as if their faces belonged to people he should recognize.

His heavy lids fluttered open as the growl grew louder and more urgent. Eyes widening, he locked on the gnarled fangs from which the low growl emanated. Saliva dripped from the razor-sharp maw as a wolf stalked within a few meters. It stepped slowly and deliberately through the blanket of snow perched atop the forest’s undergrowth.

His lip trembled, and he went to scream, but his breath caught in his dry, pained throat. Mark’s head spun, and his body ached. Terror gripped him, and Instinct took over as he raised his hands over his face to shield himself.

Gloves?

Mark had never been one for wearing gloves, and the tight, black leather lined by copper wires with tiny plates in line with his knuckles and finger joints was the last thing he expected to see. Not that he had time to ponder the thought.

Roaring, the wolf leaped forward, and Mark squeezed his eyes shut as his body tensed. He cowered behind his hands. An angry crackle sounded as static rippled through the gloves. A bright flash of lightning shot forth in a blink, slamming into the wolf with a thunderous bang. Charred and smoking, the wolf’s furred corpse fell lifelessly into the snow beside him.

“What the hell?” Mark muttered, looking down at his gloved hands as thin ribbons of smoke swirled up.

His vision blurred, and a memory flashed: He was stuck, bumper to bumper, on the Golden Gate Bridge. He heard the groaning of metal. It had lasted barely several seconds before the ground collapsed, sending him and all the other unfortunate souls crashing into the dark blue beneath.

A startled gasp claimed him as if he’d awoken from drowning, and Mark wiped the sweat from his brow as he steadied his breathing.

I’m alive. But, but… I was dead. What is this? 

Mark swallowed, pulling his hands away from his face and glaring down at them. Thick sleeves reached his wrists. He appeared to be wearing a dark blue trenchcoat—thick and warm, it was made for a harsh winter. Beneath the trenchcoat were dark leather sleeves lined by the same copper wires as his gloves. 

His panicked hands ripped the coat open, revealing a leather vest covered in wires. And the wires continued down his trousers until leather boots replaced them.

Where did this come from?

Shuffling to his feet, Mark patted himself down as he pivoted, hopelessly trying to make sense of his situation.

A thumping ache stabbed into his head, and he grasped at his temples as he let out a soft moan. It felt like his brain was expanding, threatening to burst through his skull.

An anguished cry escaped his lips before he could clench his jaw to silence it.

“Imperator Atlas?” A high-pitched voice came echoing through the forest.

Mark dizzily spun toward the voice’s direction, narrowing his eyes as he struggled against his suddenly blurred vision.

Every time the pain stabbed at him, memories flowed through his thoughts—memories from another person.

A baby-faced teen with dark hair pushed his way through the wiry branches of the leafless forest. He wore a white robe and carried a crossbow. 

Imperator Atlas. That boy is calling out for me.

Spikes of pain flashed through his brain as the hazy memories invaded deeper. His body belonged to this Imperator Atlas—or at least, it had. 

Miasma. Poison. A cloud of death that plagues this world. The Imperator had been poisoned by it months ago. He had come here alone and in secret. To let the poison take him in privacy. 

“Acolyte,” Mark shouted back and squinted as he made out the youth’s features through the foliage. “Callum.”

The memories came in doses but seemed to be able to force relative information to the forefront.

“You’re okay,” he said, panting as he pushed through a final wall of thin, sticky branches. “The ferals were saying you looked odd this morning. I’m sorry, Imperator. I didn’t mean to break orders… But—but, I was worried.” The Acolyte said, his words fast and shaky as if he had stepped out of line.

“I’m okay,” Mark slowly said. He wasn’t. This was all too much, too quickly, and it felt wrong to say otherwise. 

“Good,” the boy swallowed and straightened. His eyes darted down to the blackened wolf before shooting to the cloudy sky.

He’s scared of me. Of course, he is; I’m his Imperator. 

“Relax,” Mark said. Is that my voice? It’s deep and grizzled—like I was born Marlboro Red hanging out my mouth.

The boy tried to relax a little, but he still looked stiff.

“The fort, let’s head back,” Mark said as he flicked through the foreign memories like a photo album as they came to him. 

“Yes, Sir!” The boy saluted and turned, leading Mark back through the trail he had snapped into the twiggy branches.

Within a few minutes of crunching through snow, they reached a well-trodden path. The forest thinned as they followed it, and mounds topped by straw dotted its sides. Beside one of the straw mounds, a fire burned. A dirty, dreadlocked figure dressed in brown rags squatted at the fire's side. And they appeared to be roasting a small rodent on a stick.

Mark’s eyes settled on the filthy figure, and the feral’s narrow gaze looked up at him in return. Those creepy, pin-pricked pupils followed as they walked.

Ferals. Mark shifted through the memories. These wild people dug their homes straight into the frozen mud and mounted straw atop them. This land was filled with barbarians, but ferals were, for the most part, harmless.

As the forest thinned behind them, a clearing took its place, dotted by dozens of feral hobbles and a spiked timber palisade behind them.

He spotted another robed youth waving as they approached. And the palisade’s timber gate groaned open. Through it came two more robed youths carrying crossbows.

Fort Winterclaw. An outpost at the edge of—no, not the edge—well beyond the edge of civilization. We’re deep in barbarian territory. Outcasts sent here by the empire are to be forgotten.

“You got the acolytes worried,” smirked a well-built, sandy-haired man with dark stubble and dressed in studded leathers as he stepped between the robed youths at the gate. “I'm starting to think they don’t like the idea of being stuck here alone with me.”

Master-at-Arms, Henric Dawn.

“Neither would I,” Mark said, attempting to impersonate the man he saw in the memories.

“What in the dead emperors were you doing out there, anyway? The Daggers howl, and you know what that does to the barbarians. The damn savages are crazy enough at the best of times.”

“I can look after myself, Henric.”

“Easy for you to say. Get yourself killed out there, and I’ll be the one left to deal with this shithole alone. I hate to imagine what kind of asshole they’d send me to replace you. I know you lot have a doctrine and all that, but the last guy I worked with didn’t even play cards or drink. Can you imagine how boring that gets?”

He’s told me this before.

“I’ve heard it before, Henric,” Mark said, passing into the fort.

“Well, I’m just saying,” Henric said, ordering the acolytes around with hand gestures as he turned to follow. 

Pulling a wooden wheel lever, the acolytes hastily closed the gate.

Inside the fort was a dozen log cabins lined in a circle, all facing toward the inward. At the center of the fort was a well. And at the far ends of the palisades were two log blockhouses opposite each other. 

This Atlas guy was the commander of this little, stranded fort. That makes me the commander.

Glancing around his surroundings, Mark aligned the dead man’s memories to his surroundings, noting the buildings’ purposes. His eyes settled on the cabin opposite him. His cabin.

Privacy; that’s what I need—a moment to get my head straight.

“Imperator, are you still planning on providing today’s lesson to the acolytes?”

“I need a moment, Henric,” he said, slamming the door behind him as he entered the cabin.

“What’s crawled up him?” Henric muttered under his breath. His brow sharpened as he turned, catching the intrigued acolytes as they burst back into action. “Keep your noses where they belong,” he said, passing a couple of acolytes with their heads down.

 

Mark slammed his back against the closed door and took several hyperventilating breaths.

This can’t actually be happening, can it? I’ve never had a dream that felt this real or lasted this long. I’m either in a coma, gone insane, or I really was freaking reincarnated as this Atlas guy for some reason. Reason? Mark thought about the word. Did there need to be a reason? He wasn’t sure if life had a reason. Therefore, jumping to the conclusion that reincarnation seemed irrational.

Okay, calm down. There’s nothing to be done about it. I need to get the facts straight. That was easier said than done. The memories of Atlas were cloudy and confusing, and with every passing second, they drifted away like a dream.

“Paper,” he mouthed, wildly eyeing his room and locking onto a desk beside the bed.

Struggling to search the fading memories, Mark pulled open a drawer full of papers and grabbed a handful. He took a quill from its ink well and began scribbling whatever fleeting details he managed to grab hold of.

Four messy pages marked by a combination of ranting notes and poorly drawn pictures covered the desk as Mark crinkled his brow.

“I can’t,” he sighed, leaning back in the chair. “They’re all gone. It’s just me and this body now.” 

No matter how hard Mark tried, all he drew were blanks. Atlas’s memories were gone. Only those he had consciously thought about and, in turn, filed away into his own memory remained. And the shitty notes he had just scribbled down.

How am I supposed to figure this place out now? 

Swirling around on the chair, Mark stared up at the ceiling.

A plan. That’s what I need. Let’s start with what I know, thanks to Atlas’s memories. I’m in the middle of nowhere, in a fort no one cares about. I’m the leader of this place. I’m wearing an Imperator suit that basically makes me a human lightning rod. We’re surrounded by murderous barbarians that see us as heretical invaders. And besides Henric, the cook, and their healer, there are two dozen acolytes—half of which are teenagers.

“Will I reincarnate again if I die?” Mark mouthed. Not that it mattered. He had no intention of testing it.

The Daggers howl. Mark recounted Henric’s words as he spun. They rang a bell, but the memory had gone.

Swirling back toward the desk, Mark extended a foot to stop himself against it. 

“Huh?” He craned forward. 

The plain leatherbound book didn’t look particularly remarkable, but he could read the foreign script. 

Cartography?

Gently opening the book, he found the maps of what must have been the region. And it didn’t take long to find what looked like a range of massive, pointed mountains labeled “The Daggers.”

Pictures were drawn beneath the mountains depicting frizzy-haired barbarians and wolves. His eyes glided across to a picture of an upright wolf with a bare, chiseled chest.

“Winter,” Mark breathed. 

Perma frost and icy winds were year-round phenomena in Barbarian Lands, but winter worsened them.

“Wargs,” he mouthed, tracing the drawing’s lines with his finger. He saw them in Atlas’s memories. 

That’s them from my dream. They’re real, Mark swallowed as he recounted the life-like dream. 

He had seen the wargs in his dreams. Intelligent wolf-like creatures that stood upright and carried weapons. They were terrifyingly strong, resilient to extreme weather, and as intelligent as men.

They’re coming, aren’t they? Those faces from my dream, I’m going to meet them… 

Mark’s pupils dilated as a vision from his dream magnified in his mind. It was Henric, his head impaled on a post.

Not a dream—a vision. I’ve got to do something. I-I can’t. I can’t sit around. We have to be ready for winter.

His eyes drifted toward several notebooks piled on the desk, and he began working through them. Noting anything that sounded useful, Mark bent the edge of the pages and drew crosses beside points of interest.

His frantic pace slowed when he reached the storehouse ledger. They were short on everything—firewood, smoked meat, wheat, berries, and just about everything else listed. There wasn’t much he could do about the wheat since it came from the empire, but quite a few items were resourced locally.

Damn it, this Atlas guy totally checked out. He knew his end was near, but come on, man—a really shitty position to leave a bunch of people that were relying on you.

Months of preparations had been lost, and now they would need to work overtime to gather the supplies needed for winter.

The army flashed before his eyes again, marching through the charred remains of fallen settlements.

Would the walls be enough? It wasn’t a question he knew the answer to, but he knew they didn’t have the manpower to arm them properly.

His glimpse into Atlas’s memories had revealed the disdain imperials held for the barbarian population, including the ferals. But Mark saw an opportunity. This was the resource hidden beneath their nose that the stubborn imperials could not grasp due to their belief in their own superiority. 

Ferals hung around imperial outposts for safety and sometimes even traded. But that’s where their relationship ended. And some even believed engaging in these acts was to tarnish one’s hands.

To Mark, the solution was as plain as day. He had seen enough of Atlas’s memories to know that the other imperials would be hostile to the plans he was cooking, but he saw no other way. They needed each other if they were to survive the winter. There was simply no way this handful of stragglers would hold out against the visions he had seen.

Inviting the ferals into the fort would probably lead to mutiny, but if we could extend it…

Mark flicked back through the notebooks. There it is. He had found a series of journey entries, noting the erection of cabins and a second wall. Okay, so we’ve got the skills. He tapped the end of the quill against the notebook's edge as he read.

This was within his means and hopefully wouldn’t cause too much friction. 

“There’s no time to waste,” Mark said, jumping up from his chair and making for the exit.

Outside, Henric showed two boys who looked barely fifteen how to chop firewood properly.

“Henric,” Mark yelled as he crossed the fort’s central courtyard. 

“Imperator?” 

“New orders.”

“Hey, what did I say about swinging with the weight of the axe?” Henric snapped as one of the boys awkwardly brought the axe down against the timber, sending it bouncing off the frozen wood. “Sorry, please continue, Imperator.”

“I want the walls extended.”

“The walls? What for?”

“Come,” Mark said, marching for the palisade. He pointed across the clearing from atop the wallwalk as Henric reached his side.  “I want it extended there, there, and there.”

“Sorry, sir, but why? We’re already undermanned as it is. Increasing the length of wall we have to defend is only going to stretch our meager numbers.”

“We’re not prepared for winter, Henric. Changes are needed.”

“I believe I’ve brought this to your attention many times, Imperator. What’s stirred such a change of heart?”

“Just listen to me, Henric. As your Imperator, my word is law.” Mark thought. Now wasn’t the time to risk talking about visions and dreams. And he knew how Atlas felt about the ferals. No explanation would make sense. For now, he just needed people to follow orders.

“Yes, of course, Imperator,” Henric saluted, and the color drained from his tone.

For now, let them think I’m mad. 

Mark understood enough to know that when he explained his plan, it would cause an uproar. Better to get the walls built first. Once that was completed, he could deal with the fallout of inviting the ferals to shelter behind them. 

There’s no other way.

Mark stared out across the primitive huts. His plan was a gamble. There was a real chance the fort would rebel against him. But it was also their only hope of survival.