The world was a rhythmic, soul-crushing rattle.

  Elian woke to the sensation of wood splinters pressing into his cheek and the heavy, sour smell of crowded bodies. His head felt like it had been cracked open and stuffed with hot lead—the "Integration" of his memories was still settling, leaving his mind feeling raw and hypersensitive.

  Above him, a slight shift in the shadows caught his eye. Kaelen, the Umbra boy, was stirring in the rafters of the wagon. He moved with a liquid, unsettling grace, his dark eyes opening to scan the interior of the cage before he settled back into a watchful crouch.

  Elian groaned, pushing himself into a sitting position. He was in a cage on wheels, a literal piece of cargo. As his vision cleared, he looked at the two others sharing his cramped space.

  To his right sat Talin, a Dwarf who looked like he had been forged from stubbornness and iron, his thick fingers idly tracing the rusted links of his shackles. Huddled near the center was Baraq, the wolf-kin boy; his tawny ears were flat against his matted fur, trembling every time the wagon hit a stone.

  They were a pathetic sight—four "Hollows" bound for the edge of existence.

  Through the iron bars, the scenery was a testament to his misfortune. The vibrant, lavender-tinted sky of the Oakhaven heartland had long since vanished. Now, the world was a dull, bruised grey. The trees were skeletal, their bark appearing metallic and cold, and the grass was a sickly shade of lead that didn't sway so much as it creaked.

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  This is impossible, Elian thought, his "Nutuber" brain frantically trying to find a logical exit.

  In a matter of mere hours, his universe had been inverted. He had been Kaito, a man who conquered the "Shattered Tooth" with a camera and a carabiner, a legend who found paths where others saw dead ends. He had died in a flurry of white ice, only to wake up in the suffocating silks of House Valerius, and then, before he could even process the word "reincarnation," he had been stripped, branded, and sold.

  He looked at his small, grime-covered hands. They weren't the calloused hands of a twenty-one-year-old climber. They were the pale, trembling hands of a twelve-year-old "defect."

  The shock of it was a physical weight. He had spent his life on Earth bored because the world was "too known," too mapped out by satellites and GPS. Now, he was in a world that defied every law of physics he understood. Mana? Aura? Floating isles? It sounded like a high-fantasy script, yet the cold iron biting into his neck was undeniably real.

  He wasn't Kaito the legend anymore. He was Elian, the Ten-Solar slave.

  I wanted a world without a map, he mused bitterly, leaning his silver head against the vibrating wood of the wagon. I just didn't think the destination would be a slave pen.

  As he closed his eyes, a strange, rhythmic click echoed deep in his chest. It was faint, like a clock counting down to a deadline he couldn't see. He ignored it, dismissing it as just another symptom of his broken, "Hollow" body. He was too exhausted to care about the new world; he was just trying to survive the next mile of the old road.