The soup bowl was empty by the time Alden set the spoon down. The broth had steadied his mind, warmth filling his body right now. Hilda hovered nearby, pretending to fuss with the table while keeping him in the corner of her eye.

  He ran a hand through his medium length hair, remembering that it was a rare orange colour, the same as the rest of his newfound family. He stayed seated a little longer, contemplating about this world, then pushed the bench back. “Is uh… my father back?”

  “Baron Edaroc still hasn’t returned from the mines,” Hilda said, “but he should be back by evening.”

  “Alright,” Alden said, standing carefully. “I’ll go and meet Caelen and Lira, then.”

  “You should try to rest more...” Hilda began, then shook her head and let out a small sigh. “You’ll do what you want anyway. Fine—see your brother and sister, but don’t wear yourself out. If your head starts to pound, sit down. If you get hungry, tell me. I’ll have more broth ready in a jiffy.” She squeezed his shoulder once and slipped back into the kitchen.

  He watched the maids moving around the hearth for a moment—the calm rhythm of work, the scrape of a pot, the soft thud of a ladle against the rim—then turned toward the stairs.

  He seemed to have a layout of the manor house stored in his memory. Besides the kitchen and the main hall, the ground floor held a smaller dining room where the baron's family ate; a weapon storage room where the guard captain kept swords, shields, and the warbows; a grain storage room next to the kitchen with sacks of wheat and other dry stores; as well as a smaller room where cured and smoked meat hung from the rafters. Above them on the first floor were the Baron’s personal chambers and several guest rooms where visitors like his uncle stayed. He and his siblings had their personal rooms on the second floor.

  The timber steps creaked softly under his weight as he climbed. Halfway up he nearly collided with a thin, tall boy who was coming down with a stack of worn books in his arms. The boy had cropped hair, colored orange just like Alden, but much shorter. The teenage boy's face clicked into place in his mind a heartbeat before the name did. Caelen. His 15 year old brother.

  Books slid from the pile, thumping onto the steps and fanning across the staircase.

  “Alden! How are you—” Caelen stopped mid-breath, eyes wide. “Nobody told me you’re up!”

  “Maybe because your nose was buried in books,” Alden quipped with a grin.

  Caelen gave a short, surprised laugh, before he dropped the rest of the pile and hugged him. The embrace was quick and tight. Alden braced his back against the rail to keep them both steady and returned it, patting his newly gained brother's back.

  “You look awful...” Caelen said as he pulled back, his voice roughened by relief.

  “Thanks. I’ve been practicing,” Alden laughed. The corner of his mouth lifted. “Although the headache’s lighter now.”

  Caelen studied him for a moment, his eyes glistening. “You’ve been half-dead for weeks... No one knew if you’d wake up again...” he added in a whisper.

  “Apparently, I like to surprise people.” Wanting to change the subject, Alden glanced at the scattered books. “Anyway, what are you smuggling, librarian?”

  “I'm not smuggling!” Caelen retorted at once, a flush creeping into his cheeks. “I’m, uh... putting these back in father's room. Yes! That's what I was doing!"

  Alden tilted his head. "Oh, really...?"

  Caelan held his gaze for a few moments, before he glanced down. "Ah, fine... I can never fool you anyway. I just wanted to read more about the monsters, you know...? Father still keeps the best books locked in the restricted shelf, but Vusato doesn’t mind if I—” He cut himself off, then smiled crookedly. “It doesn’t matter.” He crouched and began gathering the books, stacking them with care, his thumb smoothing a cracked spine. “Anyway, how do you feel? Truly.”

  Alden bent down to help him. “Hungry again, though I just ate. Memory’s also a little foggy, but otherwise, I’m fine." Soon, they had picked up the last book, before they both stood up, and Alden added his collection to the small pile in his brother's hands. “I want to get some more rest after I see Lira. We'll talk more later.”

  Caelen nodded. “I have to return these to the shelves anyway. I’ll come by in the evening.” He held the stack carefully, gave Alden another look—half worry, half relief—and headed toward the baron's chamber on the first floor.

  Alden kept climbing. The second-floor landing opened onto a short corridor with three doors and a small window at the end. He stopped outside Lira’s room and knocked.

  The latch lifted, and a maid stepped out. She wore a simple linen dress like the others, with a clean, but heavily patched apron, her hair tied back neatly. Her expression turned from surprise to delight. “My lord. You’re awake!”

  “I certainly am. Is Lira sleeping?”

  “No, she woke a little while ago,” the maid said, already angling the door wider. “Go on in. She’ll be happy to see you.”

  “Thank you,” Alden said, as the maid stepped aside for him.

  Inside, the windows were half closed. It wasn't that cold, with it only being early autumn, but a faint chill was moving from the seams of the shutters into the room. His 12-year-old sister Lira was lying propped up on pillows, her long pale-orange hair braided neatly, while her hands rested on the blanket. Her eyes brightened at once when she saw him, before her mouth hung open in surprise. Her skin held a pallor that wasn’t from the changing season, and her fingers were cool when he held them.

  Lira didn’t wait for formalities. She pushed herself forward and hugged him, her small arms tight around his neck. Her breath trembled, but she held on with all the force her frail body could muster.

  “Alden! You scared me...” she whispered, calling him by his name like she always did. “I thought you’d die too. After mother died…” The words fell apart at that. Tears blurred her eyes as she pressed her face to his shoulder.

  He wrapped his arms around her, already feeling protective of her, even though in a way, he hadn't even seen her before today. “Don’t worry. I’m here now,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  She stayed there until the sobbing eased. When she leaned back, she blinked hard and wiped her eyes with her sleeves. “You better not!” she said, trying for a glare but landing closer to a weary smile. “Father is always too busy, and Caelen just reads all day. You’re the only one who looks after me. Don’t leave me… or I’ll never forgive you!”

  Alden's chest tightened. The body’s memory supplied the weight of those words. “I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”

  Her hand trembled in his, but she managed another faint smile. He sat on the edge of the bed a little longer, and she told him small, ordinary things about the last few days while he was unconscious—who came to sit with her and told her stories, which maid brought honeyed water when she had a sore throat yesterday, how the yard sounded different at night when everyone was quiet. She even told him how Hilda wanted her to eat greens but she could never do it since she hated the very sight of them. However, she completely left out talking about any fear of him not waking up again, perhaps hoping that not saying it would keep it from happening.

  In return, Alden told her Hilda had fed him some broth after he woke up and threatened him with more if he didn’t behave and got some good rest. That drew a weak laugh that still sounded like a giggle for a moment.

  A thought tugged at him about her so-called wasting disease which a medicus had diagnosed her with. He kept one of her hands in his and tried to think about her illness. The pale skin, the shallow breaths, the constant fatigue, the way she leaned on the pillows to conserve effort. Something in him felt certain that he should recognize it, but his muddled memory just couldn't put a name to it. He only knew it was not the wasting disease others feared.

  “You should rest a little more,” he said at last. “I’ll talk with you more in the evening.”

  “You’d better,” she murmured, already easing back against the pillows.

  He squeezed her fingers once and rose. Outside, the maid straightened from where she had been waiting quietly by the doorframe. He thanked her for taking care of Lira and walked down the corridor to his own room.

  His bed looked tidy once again, probably because someone had made it again while he was out of the room. He laid down and felt the straw push against his back through the coarse linen sheet, lumpy and scratchy in a way that used to mean nothing to the original boy who slept here. He missed his cheap, second hand mattress in London all the same.

  He lay back, telling himself he would only close his eyes for a moment. Sleep took him before he even realized it.

  ***

  When he woke up again, the light had changed. It slanted across the wall in a way that announced the day had begun to fold. He sat up slowly and rubbed his face. For a moment, his mind reached for the familiar hum of the city traffic and his phone screen; his glass window and concrete walls. Then the timber beams and the quiet smell of wood and smoke brought him back to the present again.

  This was not London. He wasn't the engineer William anymore. He was Alden Rinarius now, the 19 year-old heir to the barony of Sarnok. He was in a medieval village in a completely different world, and he would probably never get to see Earth again...

  For a moment, he felt a sudden pang of homesickness, yearning for the life he had lost in London. But it only took a short while before it passed. What did he even have there to miss?

  He had always loved his job as a mechanical engineer, but being passed over for a much-deserved promotion again and again had made him bitter about the company he worked at. His manager considered him a rival because of William's extensive knowledge of his field, and made him work for dreadfully long hours, which took away any chances of having a good work-life balance. He had even been trying to change his department or to move to a different company, but it just hadn't worked out for him.

  His personal life was also nothing to speak of. He was an only child, and had been an orphan since he was a toddler. Being in his mid-thirties when he was whisked away to this world, he had never married, so he had no real family to feel the loss of. Not even getting any time to date, he had been single for more than a year and had gotten more and more distant from his friends as he spent all his time working or studying to get that promotion. It wasn't like that had worked out for him...

  Steven was probably the only guy in his team whom he had continued being in touch with. Both of them had been working hard for a promotion under that bastard who was their manager. He snorted. At least Steven had gotten the news yesterday that he'd finally been promoted. He'd gone drinking with him and a few others last night to celebrate it, wishing he would be the next one to get that good news. And now, he was in Sarnok, with no possibility of being promoted anymore...

  He exhaled deeply. That just left the living environment to miss. He'd found that winters in Sarnok were going to be bitterly cold—much more than what he was accustomed to on Earth—while the summers were hot and humid. Even so, the less anyone spoke about London's weather, the better. So what did he have to miss anymore?

  Alden snorted, having no doubt that he would feel the absence of any modern amenities and conveniences in Sarnok which 21st century Earth had to offer in spades, but apart from that, perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing that he had been given a chance to start over again. Maybe in Sarnok he would get to find the family he had never had in that world. He was also a baron's heir in this world—a noble. Perhaps he might even be able to do some good for the people here, instead of working endlessly for a company which didn't value him and for a manager who didn't let him get promoted for years. He certainly had the knowledge for it...

  He gave a sigh as he stood up, trying to think about how he had arrived in this world—if there had been a bridge between one life and the next—but nothing came to his mind. Only blank space and a calm heartbeat. Maybe there would be an answer someday; maybe there wouldn’t. For now, he was here. That was the part he had to work with.

  He splashed his face with water from a wooden basin kept in a corner of the room, changed his linen tunic for one that didn’t smell like sickroom sweat, and decided to take a walk and see the rest of the manor. His feet knew the way without effort. He went down the stairs, across the main hall with the trestle tables, and out into the courtyard, as if memory—his or the body’s—had mapped the route in advance.

  It was already evening, and the last rays of the sun—which had already dipped below the palisade walls in the west—were making the upper timbers of the three-story manor house glow yellow. A few braziers were in the process of being lit for light and warmth in the courtyard. The air was thick with the smell of hay, manure and smoke. Not pleasant by the standard of any city he knew from Earth, and yet, not something he—or at least his body—wanted to escape.

  Ahead of him, the yard was alive with movement. Servants were hauling sacks toward the barns, shoulders set against the heavy weights. At the well, two maids worked the rope together, laughing between the efforts. A stable boy led a horse by its reins; the animal’s mane tangled and dusty from work. A few guards sat on a wooden bench, talking in low voices while polishing spearheads and sharpening their swords. In another corner of the courtyard, the guard captain Roderic sparred with two other guards using wooden swords, the thud of strikes and the short instructions carrying across the space.

  Chickens scattered as Alden crossed the yard, not sure where to go, but he knew that he wanted to see this new world more. He stopped near the center of the courtyard, facing the west, letting his eyes catch on the shapes that defined the place.

  The three-story manor house stood behind him, its heavy timbers shouldering years of smoke. Criss-crossed wheel ruts from carts and wagons marked the packed dirt courtyard. There were two tall barns to his left and a stable built further ahead near the gates, with a cattle shed and a small chicken coop located between the barns and the stable.

  His memory told him that the long two-story building to his right—with smoke coming from a chimney at its top—was where the other manor residents lived. The guards and the servants slept on the ground floor, while the maids lived on the upper floor. Finally, a wooden palisade wall—perhaps three to four meters high—ringed the grounds, not imposing by the measure of any modern London building, but enough to mark a boundary and slow down any approaching trouble.

  That's when the outer gate creaked, drawing the attention of everyone. The wooden gate swung wide to admit a small group of riders: a pair of mounted guards in front, two well dressed middle-aged men behind them, and another pair of guards bringing in the rear.