The storm raged over the city. Lightning streaked across the sky, briefly illuminating the towering spires of the university. Inside a cluttered office filled with books and maps, Professor Adrián Vélez pored over his notes with the feverish focus of a man devoted to knowledge. Since childhood, history had been his passion, his refuge. He knew the dynasties, the wars, the strategies that shaped the fate of empires. Yet at that moment, all his vast knowledge could not save him.
A sudden pain in his chest made him stagger. His vision blurred, and the books seemed to spin around him. A heart attack—swift and merciless. He knew, with the certainty of a historian observing the fall of a king, that this was his end. But fate, at times, has other plans.
He awoke with a gasp, feeling the strangely pure air fill his lungs. The pain was gone. But something was wrong. He did not recognize the stone ceiling above him or the massive bed draped in heavy linen curtains. As he tried to sit up, a sharp pain in his temple made him groan. Memories that were not his flooded his mind: a castle, a stern father, a kingdom in turmoil. And a name that was not his own echoed with absolute clarity.
—Lord Aldric de Hautterre.
It was his name now. And this was his new life.
His heart pounded in his chest.
—I'm in the Middle Ages… —he murmured, suppressing his disbelief—. And I'm… seventeen years old. He could tell by the architecture, by the rough fabric that covered his body. But he was not a peasant, nor a mere soldier. He had been born into nobility, with a name that carried weight and a position of privilege. With his knowledge of the future, he could change his fate, rise higher than any man of his time could dream.
But he also knew that power is never given. It is taken.
With a smile that did not belong to the young Aldric but to the old Professor Adrián Vélez, he sat up, his mind set on one thing: conquering his own destiny.