A cold blow to the chest knocked him off his feet. The muffled crack of a gunshot reached Yuki Kato's consciousness only after the fact, as he lay staring up at Tokyo's smog-filled sky. «So this is it?» — was his last clear thought.
Consciousness returned to him with a sensation of piercing cold and overwhelming nausea. He was lying face down in the mud. His body ached, his head was splitting, and his mouth had the foul taste of vomit and... cheap wine?
«A hospital? No... too cold. And it smells like rotten leaves and manure.»
He groaned, struggling to roll onto his back. Above him stretched a black sky, dotted with unfamiliar, overly bright constellations. He was lying in a deep rut on a country road, knee-deep in an icy, muddy puddle.
Memory crashed down upon him like an avalanche. Not his memory. Another's.
Valos Tropan. Baronet. The eldest son of Baron Eldrid Tropan. A dissolute drunkard. The shame of the family. The last quarrel with his father. Fleeing the estate. A bottle... always a bottle.
Yuki clutched his head, trying to squeeze out the foreign memories. This was impossible. This was the world... the world of «En-Archia»! He had read all seven volumes. Now he was Valos. A character. And not just any character, but one who, according to the plot, was supposed to die in the very first chapter, drinking himself to death in a ditch.
«So that shot... I was killed. And this... a reincarnation? Into the body of a loser, destined for death?»
He scraped the wet hair from his face and looked in despair at the bottle in his hand. His fingers felt a roughness on the bottom. He raised the bottle to the faint starlight. There, engraved in small letters, strange symbols were visible.
"Вдпqиви в дт иоеилво леиcпиqxбы л qтпфбx ырфзп"
Something like «Look into the depths, and the veil will fall.» Wonderful. Mysterious messages on bottles. How original, he thought with bitter irony.
Suddenly, the night's silence was cut by the clear, hard sound of hooves. A tall figure on a horse slowly emerged from the darkness. The rider was clad in practical, unadorned armor. But Yuki-Valos recognized him immediately. Corvus Sanctus. The future Great Swordsman. And one whose loyalty to the house of Tropan was forged from steel and pain.
The horse stopped a few paces away. The rider slowly removed his helmet, revealing a stern, young face with sharp cheekbones and dark, piercing eyes.
— Master Valos, you have caused the Baron great concern.
Mustering all his willpower, Valos struggled to his feet, swaying. He threw the bottle away, and it shattered with a dull thud against a stone on the roadside.
— Corvus. Take me... home.
He looked directly into the knight's surprised eyes. Surprised, because for the first time in a long time, there was no insolence or self-satisfaction in Valos Tropan's voice.
Corvus paused for a moment, his eyebrows slightly raised. Then he nodded, just as impassively.
— As you command, my lord.
The journey back had only just begun. He knew the plot. He knew the enemies and the allies. He would not let this world and its history crush him.