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Thunder cracked through his dreams, a deep, rolling echo that followed him into the waking world. When his eyes opened, the world had changed around him.

He was alone.

There were no grand palaces, no silk sheets, no servants rushing at his call. The marble courtyards and golden banners of the Celestial Empire were gone — replaced by the damp scent of earth, the press of trees, the quiet whisper of wind through rustling trees. This was not where he had laid his head.

For a long moment, he didn’t move. Then, with a quiet exhale, he rose. Dew clung to his coat, and he shook it off in a small shower that glittered faintly in the light. The sound that rumbled from his chest wasn’t quite a growl, but not a sigh either — something between disbelief and mild irritation at how poorly his morning was beginning.

Broad shoulders squared, he surveyed the strange terrain with a steady, measured calm. His eyes — deep bronze, sharp as tempered metal — swept across the landscape, noting the smallest things: the curve of the horizon, the faint trace of water in the distance, the unfamiliar scent of the flora. He studied it all with the same precision he once used to read the lines of a battlefield.

It wasn’t uncertainty that held him still, but a distinct understanding that knowledge was as vital as strength any day of the week. Only when he caught movement between the trees did he shift, muscles tightening beneath his coat of dust and ink.

喂，那边的你, (Hey, you over there.) The command wasn’t barked so much as spoken with the quiet confidence of someone used to being obeyed.

Then, after a brief pause, he repeated himself in the common tongue, his accent thick and weighted, the consonants softened and the vowels drawn like honey over stone.

You— there, he said, the words careful, deliberate, as if testing the shape of them in his mouth. Explain… area. He spoke in broken common.

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