The first thing James felt was the cold.
Not the absence-of-warmth kind of cold, but the deep, marrow-freezing chill of mud-slick death. It wrapped around him like a second skin. His lungs seized on the first breath—air thick with cordite, smoke, and blood.
He opened his eyes to chaos.
The sky above was a flat grey ceiling, occasionally lit by the flash of artillery shells. Screams pierced the wind. Somewhere, a machine gun chattered like a metal demon.
Where the hell—?
He staggered upright, disoriented. Around him, soldiers in British khaki uniforms scrambled through a trench half-collapsed by shellfire. Mud caked everything—faces, rifles, souls. The stench of rot and human fear clung to the earth like a curse.
And then the whistle blew.
"Over the top! Go, go, go!"
James didn't think. Muscle memory—or perhaps something deeper—took over. He grabbed a Lee-Enfield rifle from a fallen soldier, vaulted the trench wall with inhuman speed, and landed in No Man's Land with perfect precision. Bullets whizzed past him like angry wasps. He could feel each one, track their paths with uncanny clarity. His instincts screamed, but his body felt unstoppable.
To his left, a soldier was pinned down behind a shattered log, returning fire with a sidearm. James's enhanced sight picked out the face instantly—battered, bloodied, stubborn.
Arthur Shelby.
His brother.
No time for shock. No time for emotion.
A burst of German gunfire stitched the ground near Arthur, forcing him flat. James surged forward. One bullet grazed his shoulder—it tore the uniform but barely slowed him. Another came for his chest, but his shield—wait, no, rifle—angled in the way at the last second.
He dove beside Arthur and knocked the revolver from his hand. "You're wasting bullets."
Arthur looked up, stunned. "Who the f**k are you?!"
"Someone who's going to keep you alive. Stay low."
Arthur didn't get a chance to argue. James vaulted over the cover, grabbed a German soldier rushing their flank, and drove his helmeted head into the enemy's skull with enough force to break steel. Two more came—he dispatched them with fluid, brutal grace.
Every move was precise, calculated, efficient.
Arthur stared.
"What the bloody hell are you made of?"
"Guts and God's good humor," James said, breathing hard but calm. "Name's James."
Arthur stood, firing again, back-to-back with him now. "Arthur Shelby. Birmingham."
James grinned as he caught a falling grenade, flung it back, and ducked just in time.
"I know."
They survived that day, against odds that would have crushed lesser men. James became a phantom in the trenches—word of his strength spread like legend. He could run faster than the medics, climb higher than the sappers, and fight longer than any man in the battalion.
But he never sought glory. He stayed close to Arthur.
They were paired by the captain, naturally—"two wild dogs of war." They drank together, bled together, carried each other from battlefields that looked like the gates of hell. In the quiet between barrages, they smoked and laughed and talked about home.
Arthur painted Birmingham in rough-edged poetry—brass and smoke, whiskey and women. His voice softened when he spoke of his little brother, Tommy. A genius. A madman. A future king of nothing—or everything.
And James listened, quietly aching.
He wanted to tell Arthur. About their father. About who he really was.
But how could he? The truth wasn't simple. Not in this world of mud and lead.
So he kept it close. James Shelby. A ghost among ghosts. A protector in the shadows.
Arthur once looked at him, in the black of night after a skirmish, and said:
"You're not like us. You don't sleep. You don't crack. Not really. What are you, James?"
James looked to the stars, their light filtered through smoke and blood.
"Someone who lost his war, and found a new one."
Arthur nodded, not understanding, but respecting the silence.
Months passed. The war roared on. And through every hellish night, James knew it was only the beginning. The storm to come was in Birmingham. In the streets. In the family he hadn't met.
He was a Shelby.
And when the war ended... he would come home.