From the impenetrable darkness, Mark begrudgingly clawed his way back to consciousness, his mind a hazy whirlwind of confusion and disconnected thoughts. He was dimly aware of a commotion unfolding around him - panicked voices raised in urgent conversation, the stamping of anxious feet, the snorting and nickering of horses. But it all seemed oddly foreign, as if he were experiencing it through a thick veil of distortion.
Had the darkness, that strange digital limbo with its cryptic messages and existential dread, been nothing more than a figment of his concussed imagination? A final, desperate image conjured by his oxygen-starved brain as he drowned in that raging river?
But even as the thought flickered through his sluggish mind, Mark couldn't shake the pervasive sense that something was profoundly, irrevocably wrong. It wasn't just the unfamiliar voices and sounds filtering through his haze of semi-consciousness, though those were certainly jarring enough. No, this feeling ran deeper, a visceral wrongness that seemed to permeate his very being.
And then, cutting through the fog like a knife, three words registered with startling clarity:
"...Kim Pŏm-min!"
Mark's brow furrowed, his genius intellect struggling to make sense of what he'd just heard. That was Korean, the ancient dialect if he wasn't mistaken. But why in God's name would he be hearing that in the middle of rural Ohio? Had he somehow been transported to Korea in his last moments, his dying mind conjuring a vivid hallucination of the country he'd always found so historically fascinating?
But no, that made no sense. And that name... Kim Pŏm-min. It tugged at something in his memory, some half-forgotten nugget of historical trivia that danced just out of reach.
He struggled to open his eyes, desperate for some visual clue to anchor him in reality. But as his heavy lids finally fluttered open, he immediately regretted it as brilliant sunlight assaulted his retinas, sending starbursts of pain shooting through his already aching head. He squinted against the glare, his vision slowly resolving into blurry shapes and colors that refused to coalesce into anything comprehensible.
Strange, he thought muzzily.
Shouldn't he be staring up at the sterile white tiles of a hospital room ceiling? Or better yet, the pearly gates of heaven, considering the almost certain fatality of his plunge into that ravine?
Groaning, he started to bring a hand up to rub at his throbbing temples...and froze, a sudden spike of pure, unadulterated shock jolting through him like a lightning bolt.
His chest. It didn't feel right. Where he should have felt the familiar contours of his own lean, lightly muscled torso, he instead felt a body that was undeniably more slender, the bones and sinews arranged in a subtly different configuration.
What the fuck?
"Oh thank the heavens, you're awake young master!" The voice, tinged with profound relief and just a hint of desperation, drew his attention outward once more. "Are you hurt anywhere? Please, tell us if you feel any pain!"
This time, everything registered with perfect clarity, and Mark felt his stomach lurch as he finally placed the language. It was Korean, just as he'd initially thought. But not modern Korean. No, this was the Korean of centuries past, the formal, archaic tongue of the nobility during the time of the Three Kingdoms.
Perplexed, Mark forced his eyes to focus, blinking rapidly to clear the last vestiges of blurriness from his vision. And as the scene finally resolved into crisp detail, he felt his jaw go slack and a tidal wave of disbelief crashing over him.
He was outdoors, lying prone on what appeared to be a dirt road winding through a lush, mountainous landscape that looked like something straight out of a historical drama. Towering pines and sprawling maples crowded close on either side, their leaves a riot of autumnal reds and golds.
But it was the people hovering over him that made his brain stutter to a disbelieving halt.
Four men, all dressed in the unmistakable lamellar armor of ancient Korean soldiers. Chalgap, his history-loving mind supplied numbly. The armor of the Silla dynasty, which had reigned on the Korean peninsula from 57 BC to 935 AD.
Their faces, etched with profound concern and more than a little fear, were swarthy and weathered in the way of men who spent their lives outdoors. Their black hair was also pulled back severely from their foreheads, knotted into tight buns that sat under conical helmets of blackened iron.
And all four of them were staring at him with an intensity that bordered on reverence, their eyes wide and almost worshipful as they gazed down at his prone form.
"I told you he shouldn't have been racing that damned horse!" one of the soldiers hissed to his compatriot, his voice low and urgent. "If Lord Ch'un-ch'u hears of this, he'll have our heads!"
Mark just stared, his mind working overtime to try and make sense of the utterly nonsensical. This couldn't be real. It had to be a dream, or a hallucination, or...or...
But no explanation presented itself, no matter how desperately he wracked his brain. By all rights, he should be dead at the bottom of that ravine, his broken body being swept away by the raging current. Not lying in the middle of what appeared to be ancient Korea, being gawked at by a quartet of historical reenactors.
"I...I'm sorry, but who are you?" he finally managed to croak out, the words leaving his lips in flawless ancient Korean. He almost startled at the sound of his own voice - it was higher pitched than he was used to, the lilt and cadence of his speech patterns subtly different.
But his question seemed to be the exact wrong thing to say. The soldiers' eyes went wide with abject terror, their faces paling so rapidly it was almost comical.
"Young master Kim Pŏm-min, please do not joke about such things!" the lead soldier pleaded, his voice trembling. "We are your dedicated escorts, sworn to your protection!"
Kim Pŏm-min.
The name slammed into Mark like a physical blow, his mind screeching to a halt as the pieces suddenly fell into place with a sickening click.
Kim Pŏm-min, the second son of Kim Ch'un-ch'u, who would later become King Taejong Muyeol. Born in 626 AD, ascended to the throne in 661 AD as King Munmu, the 30th king of Silla. A pivotal figure in the unification of the Three Kingdoms under Silla's rule.
A major historical figure, and one that Mark knew intimately from his years of fascinated study. He'd always been captivated by the tales of King Munmu's reign - the wars he'd waged, the alliances he'd forged, the transformative impact he'd had on the course of Korean history.
And now, if these guards were to be believed...he was Kim Pŏm-min. The future King Munmu himself.
No.
No fucking way.
This was impossible, a logical absurdity of the highest order. He was Mark Edwards, a wasted genius and mechanic from small-town Ohio. Not some ancient Korean prince destined to unite a fractured peninsula.
But even as his rational mind rebelled against the very concept, he couldn't deny the evidence of his own senses. The unfamiliar aches and sensations of a body that was not his own. The archaic Korean flowing from his lips as naturally as breathing. The sheer, unassailable reality of his surroundings, too vivid and detailed to be anything but genuine.
And then there was that final message, seared into his brain in the instant before darkness had claimed him.
"Welcome to the Bellum Universale, Mark Edwards."
The Universal War.
Those cryptic Latin words took on a sudden, terrible significance in light of his current circumstances.
Had that strange digital void, that glowing screen with its ominous message, been some sort of...transition? A gateway between one life and the next?
It was insane. Impossible. But as he stared up at the ring of anxious faces above him, Mark was forced to confront the unthinkable truth.
Somehow, through some twist of cosmic fuckery he couldn't even begin to comprehend, he'd been transplanted into the body of an ancient Korean prince.
Jesus Christ.
"Young master, you must punish us!" the soldiers cried in unison, breaking him out of his spiraling thoughts. In a single fluid motion, all four men prostrated themselves before him, pressing their foreheads to the dirt in a show of abject submission. "Lord Ch'un-ch'u will not allow this incident to go unanswered!"
"Oh...Uhm...I don't think that will be necessary," Mark managed to stammer out, his mind reeling as he grappled with how to handle this utterly surreal situation. Honesty, he decided, was probably the best policy here. At least until he could get his bearings and figure out what the fuck was going on.
"The truth is," he continued carefully, choosing his words with deliberate precision, "I seem to have no recollection of my past, or anything else for that matter, in the wake of this... incident."
It wasn't a lie, technically speaking. He had no memory of Kim Pŏm-min's life. No inkling of the political machinations and courtly intrigues that had no doubt defined the young prince's existence.
Just a wealth of historical knowledge and an outsider's understanding of the tumultuous Three Kingdoms era. Oh, and an existential crisis of epic proportions, but who was counting?
"Before I render any judgment," he said slowly, fighting to keep his voice steady, "could you please enlighten me as to what exactly happened here?"
His question provoked a round of exasperated groans and muttered curses from the soldiers, their faces twisting with chagrin.
"You were bored with the slow pace of our journey, young master," the lead soldier explained, his tone long-suffering. "You insisted on racing your steed along this mountain road, despite our warnings. But in attempting a sharp turn at high speed, you were thrown from the saddle. The fault is ours for not dissuading you more forcefully. We beg you, mete out whatever punishment you deem fit!"
Oh God. The real Kim Pŏm-min, the true owner of this body, must have perished in that riding accident. There was no other explanation. The prince's reckless stunt had gotten him killed, his soul vacating his broken body in the same instant Mark's consciousness had come careening in to take its place.
Jesus Christ. He'd somehow stolen the destiny of a future king. Hijacked the timeline of a figure who was meant to change the course of history.
What the actual, ever-loving fuck.
As he lay there, struggling to wrap his head around the sheer magnitude of his situation, Mark felt a sudden, overwhelming wave of panic crash over him. This was too much, too insane, too utterly beyond the scope of anything he could possibly hope to handle.
He was a mechanic, for God's sake. A small-town guy with a knack for fixing things, not navigating the treacherous waters of 7th-century Korean court politics. He didn't know the first thing about being a prince, let alone a king. How was he supposed to step into the shoes of a historical figure whose life and legacy had been the stuff of legend?
It was madness. Sheer, unadulterated madness.
But even as the panic threatened to engulf him, he felt a small, stubborn spark of something else flicker to life in his chest. Curiosity. The same driving force that had always compelled him to take things apart, to dig deeper, to understand the inner workings of the world around him.
He didn't know why this had happened to him, or what force had seen fit to pluck him from his life and drop him into the body of a long-dead prince. But there had to be a reason. Some larger purpose at work, some grand design that he couldn't yet see.
And by God, he was going to figure it out.
Following this, he resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands, acutely aware of the soldiers' expectant gazes boring into him. He needed to salvage this situation, and fast. The last thing he wanted was to get off on the wrong foot with the men who were apparently sworn to protect him.
"There will be no punishment," he declared, mustering as much princely authority as he could. "The fault was mine, and mine alone."
The soldiers gaped at him, clearly taken aback by this sudden show of humility from their normally headstrong young master. Mark could practically see the wheels turning in their heads, the confusion and disbelief warring with a tentative sort of hope.
"We should return to the palace," he said, forcing a note of calm into his voice. "I will need to...to explain myself to Lord Ch'un-ch'u."
The mere thought of facing Kim Pŏm-min's father, the man who would one day become the great King Taejong Muyeol, was enough to make Mark's stomach churn with dread. But he had no choice. If he was going to have any hope of navigating this insane situation, he needed to start gathering information, even if that meant groveling before a man who probably already thought him an idiot.
***
The journey back to the capital city of Gyeongju passed in a blur of anxious silence and mental turmoil. Mark's mind raced as he tried to recall every scrap of information he'd ever learned about the young Kim Pŏm-min and his formidable father. But the harder he tried to focus, the more the details seemed to slip through his grasp, his normally razor-sharp intellect dulled by the sheer overwhelming unreality of his situation.
Far too soon, the towering walls of the city came into view, the imposing stone edifice of Lord Ch'un-ch'u's sprawling compound looming at its heart. Mark felt his throat constrict as they passed through the gates, his palms slick with sweat as he dismounted and followed the soldiers into the main hall.
This was it. The moment of truth.
He barely had time to compose himself before the massive, ornately carved doors at the end of the hall swung open, revealing the stern, imposing figure of Lord Ch'un-ch'u himself.
The nobleman was tall and broad-shouldered, his bearing that of a seasoned warrior. His face, lined with the cares of leadership and the passage of years, was set in an expression of grim displeasure, his dark eyes zeroing in on Mark with laser-like intensity.
"Pŏm-min," he rumbled, his deep voice echoing through the cavernous space. "I trust you have a fitting explanation for your latest act of foolishness?"
Mark swallowed hard, his mouth gone dry as dust. This was it, the pivotal moment that could make or break his tenuous grasp on this new and terrifying reality.
He had to tread carefully, had to find some way to appease the man who now held his fate in his hands.
But as he stared into those flinty, unforgiving eyes, Mark knew one thing with bone-deep certainty.
He was well and truly fucked.