The bell struck - low, alive. Not from wires, but from the world itself. A ringing filled his head; the sound came from within. Light flickered - green, then white. His eyes refused to obey.
A tremor gripped his chest, his throat burned, and a thought flared - then broke apart.
Where am I?
Name, home, face - gone. He remembered nothing, but pain already remembered him. The bell kept sounding: soft somewhere afar, a hammer within.
- Breathe... - a rasp. He tried. A short inhale - the air pushed back.
Everything felt wrong: a heavy chest, fingers carved from wood, heat or fear - he couldn't tell. As if he'd lived here once, but not as himself.
A torch burned by the wall. The flame twitched; the air smelled of resin and ash. Heat from a brazier brushed his cheek - too close, too real. He lifted a hand, instinctively, as if summoning an interface. That was what he used to do - in a world that answered every gesture. Here, only soot shifted beneath his touch.
- Syst - He breathed the word. - System...
Silence.
The world didn't stop; it only lost its sound. A moment stretched, waiting for a signal that would never come. Air thickened, as before an answer. Under his skin something stirred - muscle, nerve, memory - still waiting for a reply. Nothing. Dry. Foreign.
He lay still, staring at the dark beams above. His heart beat, but the world refused to respond. Waiting turned into pain. His fingers twitched - he was the only living thing. He blinked. His gaze slid sideways, toward a tremble of light on the table.
A cup stood there, dark inside, breathing faintly. He reached for it; his fingers trembled, relearning obedience. Metal burned his skin. Pain. Not a dream.
A voice came from the door, quiet, careful:
- Is the prince alive?
His heart lurched upward - as if seized from within. He looked to the door. A shadow moved under the threshold; cold crept up his spine. His body feared before he understood why. The door breathed - listening.
- Is the prince alive? - the voice repeated, dull and uncertain. Footsteps followed - wood under weight.
He wasn't alone.
The body moved faster than thought. Breath broke apart.
He had to rise - not knowing why, only knowing not to lie down when someone comes. He pushed himself up. Pain woke beneath his ribs - an animal under the bandage. He waited, then sat, like a soldier rising after a wound. His shoulders shook; sweat traced down his temple.
He braced against the bedside. The cloth beneath his palms was rough and wet. His fingers spread, and only then he knew - blood. Warm, alive, his own. It kept coming, reminding him he still existed. He stared at the stain, then raised his eyes.
The room was wide: a heavy table by the wall, a carved chest, a brazier glowing in the corner, above the bed a shield and a sword. Everything placed with purpose, as if waiting for orders. Light leaked through two narrow windows - one shuttered, the other glazed with milky glass. Iron, linen, smoke - the smell of a place recently lived in, recently decided.
He studied every object, searching for something that belonged to him. Nothing did. The room was ready for the man he was supposed to be. Even the things seemed to wait for him to speak. He didn't mean to stand - his body refused to sit. Slowly, as after a long sleep.
Pain pressed beneath his ribs, hot and dull. The bandage darkened.
He took a step, then another. The boards complained softly. The scent of blood - sharp, warm - rose and followed him. On the fifth step his knees gave.
He caught the table's edge; wood groaned, metal rang. Sound rolled through the chamber.
From behind the door came voices.
- Are you well, my prince?
He froze, gripping the table, breathing hard but silent.
No answer. A second, another.
Then the voice again, harder, edged:
- My prince... may we enter? - Footsteps shuffled - ready to break the door.
His heart hammered in his throat. The air thickened. They were waiting for a command.
- Do not enter, - he breathed. Hoarse, but even.
Silence spread across the floorboards; even the wood seemed to hold its breath.
A whisper followed:
- What's wrong with him?
And a reply, low:
- Not the same
Then - nothing. They obeyed. But the air beyond the door had changed, like men holding a spear behind their back.
He didn't know how he had come here. Maybe he'd died. Maybe he'd broken. But he had woken in a world too alive to be a dream. The old one smelled of circuits and silence. This one smelled of blood.
Someone moved beyond the wood - a step, a hinge sighing. The iron ring on the door trembled.
He didn't know who would enter, but he felt it: with that step, his life would begin for real.
Silence behind the door. Then - a step. One. The air shifted, and a man entered the room.
The door opened without a knock. Not abruptly, but with the quiet certainty of someone who never asks permission.
A man stepped inside. Chainmail darkened his shoulders; his face was tired, his eyes alert. He moved slowly - not wounded, but as one who'd come from a battle where years, not soldiers, are lost.
There was something familiar about him - not his face, not his gait, but the weight he carried.
The warrior stopped at the threshold. The chainmail gave a soft metallic whisper as he changed stance. He looked at the seated man - pale, a bandage under his ribs.
The air smelled of blood - fresh and warm. Drops darkened the edge of the table, sliding down like time itself leaking away. The wound still held.
The man exhaled briefly, the tension in his shoulders loosening just a fraction. Alive. For an instant, relief flashed in his eyes - too personal, too human. He hid it at once behind a soldier's restraint.
He waited. The pause stretched. The prince said nothing - for too long.
Then, in the man's eyes, a flicker: something was wrong.
He stepped closer. A board creaked underfoot, and the prince flinched - barely, but enough. He didn't recognize him.
The gaze darted to the wall, the door, back again. The warrior's lips moved, but no words came. He took a breath - steadying his voice.
- My Prince Alexander... alive
He inclined his head slightly - not in a bow, but in acknowledgment of rank. A controlled gesture, careful not to startle a wounded man.
- They said you would not rise. Yet you stand
- Then you will live
He studied the prince's face, waiting. Alexander looked back with confusion, as if those words belonged to someone else.
The name struck him like a blow. He clutched at his temples; pain flared sharp and bright. His other hand gripped the table, nails scraping the wood. The man moved forward to catch him - but Alexander raised a hand, stopping him. A short, instinctive motion.
- Who are you? - His voice cracked, harsh and dry.
The man straightened.
- I... am Stanislav, commander of the Grand Prince Yaroslav's host. Your father's man
Alexander frowned. The pain pulsed harder, pressing against his skull. He looked at the man before him - and already knew, somehow, that this was one who would stand between him and death.
How did he know?
Stanislav. Commander of the prince's druzhina. Not a lesser officer - his right hand. The memory wasn't his, yet it was.
The words sounded heavy, foreign. From another age, another grammar. As though a different century leaned over him. He gripped the table to hold his breath steady; something inside shifted, as if another life were testing the fit of his body.
The room listened to his breathing. A log cracked softly in the brazier.
Stanislav rolled his shoulders, as if to shake off not worry, but a ghost's touch. The prince was alive. Not a phantom. Not a replacement. Simply a man thrown from the saddle. It happened.
He tightened his hand on the sword hilt - not from fear, but from habit. The voice he spoke with was calm, measured.
- The battle was hard. The head does not always remember the world right away. Give the body time. The memory will return
He took a step closer, eyes fixed on Alexander's face, searching for even a spark of recognition.
- Do you hear me, my Prince? Do you remember anything?
His finger brushed the guard - a small gesture, betraying tension. The voice still carried duty, only duty. But beneath it beat a quieter dread: what if this never passes?
Alexander met his gaze. He saw the doubt there. For a commander, doubt was danger. Worse if others saw it. If they realized the man before them was not who he should be - the world would crumble.
- I hear... and remember, - Alexander said, forcing the words through clenched breath.
- Your father's name? - Stanislav asked softly, too carefully.
Alexander didn't answer right away. His lips moved, but the sound came later, slow, like through fog.
- Yaroslav
The air seemed to stop moving. For a moment, even the room listened. The word was right - too right. Like a password his tongue spoke before his mind could understand it.
He blinked. Something inside him recalculated itself.
- Yaroslav... the Wise?
The word Wise fell softly, but it hit like a stone dropped into still water.
Stanislav nodded first - reflex, the name of a prince. Then froze. His gaze sharpened; that title had not yet been spoken by anyone.
He exhaled slowly, tasting the meaning.
- Your father... yes. Grand Prince Yaroslav
He did not repeat the Wise. Not from doubt, but because no one yet dared say it aloud.
Alexander tried to speak again, but the syllable stuck in his throat. Breath caught, and pain rose from the dark, reminding him: this was not his body.
For an instant everything tilted. Flashes: a pen above a decree, the metallic chime of an elevator, the white glare of a monitor. An office. A minister. Decisions that shaped a nation. All near, and impossibly far.
Who was he now?
The man who once commanded by data - or this one, of flesh, pain, and blood, born into another century?
His pulse faltered; pain under his ribs throbbed like an electric current. To show weakness here was dangerous. The body knew better. Tighten. Hold. Breathe evenly.
He closed his eyes for a moment, drew air, then opened them. The pupils hardened to metal.
- My father - where is he?
Stanislav didn't answer - not because he didn't know, but because the question itself was wrong. A prince shouldn't need to ask. He should already know.
- In Kiev, - Alexander pressed, too quickly. - Or Vyshegorod?
The space between them grew tight. Not silence - tension, thick and listening.
Something flickered in Stanislav's eyes.
He had served Yaroslav, the Grand Prince who held Rus' together. Now before him sat the heir - who remembered neither court nor blood nor father.
For a heartbeat, fear crossed the warrior's face - too personal, too human. What if this one cannot bear it?
He hid the crack beneath discipline.
- My Prince... you held his hand
Alexander blinked.
- His hand? When? - The words came raw, disbelieving. - He's alive...
Stanislav saw the look - confusion, fear rising from ignorance - and turned colder. The way men do when they hear what they dread.
- You stood beside him when he passed. His word - to us. His sons - to you
His tone stayed flat, but beneath it lived the exhaustion of a man who had already buried greatness.
Alexander said nothing. The words reached him slowly, from a distance. Simple words - but they belonged to another tongue.
Something inside him stirred. Not thought, but memory's shadow.
He was there - feeling the weight of his father's hand cooling in his own. Others stood beside him - brothers, silent, trembling.
Shoulder to shoulder, witnesses to an ending. No need for speech to know: if one blood drew steel against another, the realm would break.
And Yaroslav's voice - quiet but unyielding - speaking to them all:
- Do not spill blood among yourselves
The lamp trembled. Air tightened in his chest.
Alexander covered his eyes with his palm. The alien memory pressed harder than pain. A life he hadn't lived was fitting itself over his own.
- I... remember almost nothing, - he whispered. - I don't understand why - why only this
Stanislav watched, unblinking. He saw the tremor, the fight within the man - not against him, but himself. And that the prince admitted weakness aloud convinced him: this was wound, not madness.
He nodded - slowly. Too slowly for it to be mere gesture.
Outside, a crow cried - harsh and alone.
Alexander flinched, his eyes catching on the pale windowpane, searching for something in the dim light that might still make sense. He drew breath, anchoring himself again in the world.
- Then... my brothers? - His voice was quiet but direct. - Or was it only me they came for?
Stanislav's teeth clenched. His shoulders straightened, cheekbones tightening into edges.
He would have preferred that question later - when the prince could stand without trembling, when his memory no longer fell into dark gaps. But it had been asked, and it demanded an answer.
The commander inhaled, taking on the weight he was bound to carry without a tremor.
- They fell. Not together. Not at once. All of them. One by one
Alexander didn't understand at first.
He heard the words, but their meaning wouldn't pass through. The mind still pushed them away, as if they belonged to someone else. Yet the body already knew. It jerked - as if something under the skin recognized the names before he did.
How? They had been stronger. Older. Their hosts could hold a city without its prince. Even Stanislav himself had once served Iziaslav. How could this have happened?
- How…? - His voice broke to a rasp. The question choked halfway out, trapped behind thought too heavy for the throat.
Stanislav lowered his gaze. His face turned to stone - the face of a man who had just felt his dead again.
- Prince Iziaslav rode into the forest and never returned. I caught the dogs on his trail, but too late. - The voice did not shake, but one word darkened: - Too late
He exhaled almost soundlessly, as if confessing a guilt one does not speak aloud.
- I did not see the others myself. I only heard from those who survived. Prince Sviatoslav was betrayed. Prince Vsevolod's train was taken and burned. Prince Vyacheslav - never found. All within ten days
He fell silent. The room seemed to shrink.
Alexander didn't move. His stare fixed, like iron when the forging stops. Each word sank inside him like a splinter, too deep to draw breath.
The flame in the lamp cracked softly, as if afraid to disturb the dead.
- In every tale - blood and silence, - Stanislav said at last. - And too many left whom no one can still ask
Alexander's mind still rejected it. His body already knew.
His fingers dug into the table's edge, holding on. His temples hammered harder than his heart. Four names struck inside him like blows on an anvil: Iziaslav. Sviatoslav. Vsevolod. Vyacheslav. The pauses between were worse than the strikes.
- No... they were older... stronger... - The words cut his throat on the way out.
How could he lose those he hadn't even remembered yet? He tried to summon their faces, and felt only pain - as if memory itself tore, trying to return and not daring to.
His shoulders shuddered under their own weight. The world swayed. Inside him, something wailed without sound.
- This... - he couldn't finish.
He still tried to hold himself upright. His whole life had been built on endurance - on standing, on rising when others fell. But this wasn't wound or exhaustion. It was the weight of the dead, and his muscles failed for the first time.
His legs gave way. He slid from the chair.
For an instant everything stopped - not pain, but blankness.
As if the world itself gave him one short breath without blood or names.
But that breath was borrowed, and borrowed air never lasts.
Stanislav moved fast - as in battle. He caught the prince beneath the arms before he struck the floor, one hand on his back, the other on his shoulder, holding him like a soldier still needed alive.
- Breathe, - he said. Calmly, not loud. A command meant to be obeyed. - While you breathe - you live. That's enough for now
Alexander inhaled. Air seared his chest. The body no longer resisted - it accepted. Whoever had lived here before stepped back, yielding space.
Stanislav set him on the bed with deliberate strength. The edge of the robe darkened - blood again.
The commander stepped away, looked at his hand. Red. He clenched his fingers; blood welled between the joints. He wiped it on his cloak; the stain spread, refused to leave.
Alexander breathed hard. The wound had opened wider, yet his face stayed still. Pain passed around him, not through him, like a memory lived by another.
He tried to speak. His lips moved; the throat gave only a rasp. His shoulders trembled - strength leaving again.
Stanislav leaned closer, cutting the weakness short with voice alone.
- What matters is this - you're alive
He held the prince's gaze until the words settled.
- We're here. But we won't let you hide, either. Rest now. Morning will come - and with it, blood
He straightened, stepped back, and left. The door closed heavily, like a stone settling into its place.
Muffled voices started beyond the wall - short, restrained. Alexander couldn't make out the words. The noise blurred into a low underground hum. Then even that collapsed into stillness.
Not silence - attention.
The guards remained at the door. Steady breathing, unmoving shadows - so close he could feel them. Men who would let no one enter. And, if need be, not let him leave.
He sat motionless, listening to his own breath. The pulse thudded in his temples. He looked down at his hands - they trembled, then steadied. Slowly, the sense of his own body returned.
He clenched his fists until the bones ached. The body obeyed. His gaze slid to the door, then to the shield on the wall. The shield looked back - not with eyes, but with weight. It said nothing, yet its presence spoke plain: hold, and strike.
From deep within - where memory had not yet dared to wake - rose a question. Not thought, but instinct.
- Whose flesh are you?
The answer surfaced of its own accord, wordless and certain:
- You are the prince of Rus'. The one who remains
He closed his eyes. The world around him was nightmare - blood, death, absences where names should be. Yet every scent, every shadow, even Stanislav's voice told him one thing: he was here. And the world was his.
No hospitals. No systems. No safe, familiar life. If this was a dream, it was too heavy to wake from.
He exhaled, slow and heavy. Waiting for judgment - and realizing he'd awakened inside it.
Raising his eyes, he saw the dark wooden cross on the wall, and beneath it, the icon of the Savior. The gold was dimmed by soot; Christ's face was stern, human - the face of one who doesn't console, only watches and endures.
No explanation. God doesn't carry men across centuries. He doesn't tear the world open for one soul - least of all his.
In that other life, faith had been a background gesture - a sign before sleep, not a structure holding up the sky. He had never argued with God, but he had never followed either.
So why him? Why this?
- For what? - he whispered. Not really a question - more an admission that there was no choice left.
No answer came. Only the unsteady light of the lamp.
And the kind of silence in which God counts every life longer than men ever pray for it.
Then even that silence changed - tightened.
A creak beyond the door. Not a step yet - expectation.
He didn't move. Only looked at the strip of shadow beneath the threshold.
It didn't move either.
He understood: someone stood there, waiting for him to die.
And if he didn't - they would help.