11:30 AM. On the dot.
Kael glanced at his watch, then smoothed an imaginary crease on his trousers. Thirty minutes until the client meeting. Plenty of time.
The bus wasn't crowded, a handful of tired faces scattered across worn seats. He scanned the interior out of habit: no elderly passengers, no pregnant women. No one needed his seat.
Good.
He settled back and reopened the book resting on his lap. The cover showed a towering factory silhouette against a smoky sky. The Men Who Built America: Industrial Titans of the Gilded Age.
His eyes moved swiftly across the final chapter, absorbing the rise and fall of steel empires, railway monopolies, factory kingdoms built on calculation and ruthless efficiency.
When he closed the book, a faint smile crossed his lips.
"From nothing to empire," he murmured. "All it took was the right system."
The book snapped shut. He slipped it into his bag, straightened his collar, and returned his attention to the window.
This was Kael's life. Orderly. Punctual. Risk-averse.
At twenty-two, he already lived independently in the city. Every month, he wired part of his salary back to his parents in the countryside. His apartment was modest, his wardrobe simple, his savings account slowly growing. He didn't chase thrills. He didn't look for trouble.
He believed in one principle: treat others the way you want to be treated.
It wasn't heroic. It was practical.
His gaze drifted across the passengers again, office workers slumped in their seats, a student with earbuds in, an old man staring blankly at nothing. Each one carried their own weight, their own silent burdens.
Kael wondered, briefly, what kind of day they were heading toward.
Then... something shifted.
The bus slowed. Too fast. Too abrupt.
Heads turned.
The air thickened, heavy and wrong, like the moment before a thunderstorm breaks.
Kael's hand instinctively moved toward the emergency button.
A man stood near the front door, gripping a duffel bag with white-knuckled fingers. His face was pale, eyes distant, but not angry. Not hateful.
Peaceful.
Their eyes met.
Kael's heart lurched.
Too late.
White light swallowed the world.
Heat... searing, absolute, ripped through the air. The sound came after: a deafening roar that crushed thought, obliterated sense. Kael's body lifted, weightless for one impossible second, before something massive slammed into his chest.
The book slipped from his bag, pages fluttering like dying wings.
In the final fractured instant of consciousness, one thought flickered through his mind.
Hadn't I... lived my life the right way?
Then...
Darkness.
***
The scent of wet grass reached his nose.
Kael's eyes snapped open. Blue sky stretched above him, so bright it hurt. He blinked, vision swimming.
His chest rose and fell in panicked gasps. Arms and legs sprawled out like a broken doll. He couldn't remember lying down. Couldn't remember anything after the light, the pressure, the…
The explosion.
His hands shot to his chest, fingers scrambling across fabric, searching for wounds, blood, anything. But there was nothing. No torn cloth. No blood. Just the frantic thump of his heartbeat beneath his palms.
His breathing steadied slightly. In. Out. In. Out.
Turning his head slowly, he surveyed his surroundings. The blue above resolved into a real sky. In the distance, a vast shimmering lake reflected the sunlight. Beyond it, a small village huddled at the edge of a dense forest.
Architecture he didn't recognize. Trees with unfamiliar bark. Everything looked… wrong. Old. Like something from a history textbook or a fantasy novel he'd never actually finished reading.
Not the city. No concrete. No power lines. No traffic sounds.
Just grass. Forest. Water. Sky.
He had to get up. Had to find someone, anyone who could explain this.
The moment his feet touched the ground, something felt fundamentally off.
It wasn't the grass or the soil. It was the sensation beneath his soles... a constant, subtle drift. Not settling. Not shifting with the wind.
Moving.
Kael's heart began to pound harder.
He stood motionless, testing the sensation. Yes. There. A perpetual forward motion, so smooth he'd almost missed it. The earth beneath him was gliding, not shaking, not trembling, but sailing at a constant speed.
Like standing on the deck of a ship.
He looked up at the sky.
The clouds overhead weren't drifting randomly. They were moving in one direction while the ground beneath his feet progressed in another. Slowly but unmistakably, the clouds were being left behind.
"No." The word escaped before he could stop it. "No, that's not…"
He stumbled backward, his body protesting the impossible motion beneath him. His inner ear screamed wrongness, twenty-two years of balance instincts conflicting with what his feet were telling him.
The clouds drifted past, slow and steady, moving away from him.
Backward.
His breath came in short, sharp bursts. The world tilted. Vertigo clawed at his mind.
This wasn't an earthquake. This wasn't ground settling. This was something far more impossible.
Yet the sensation under his feet was undeniable, constant, real. As real as the cool air against his skin. The earth itself was moving through the sky.
Not grounded. Not anchored.
Floating.
As the realization crystallized, his chest tightened.
Mom. Dad.
They were waiting for him. Expecting his call tonight. Expecting the money transfer next week.
They would never know what happened. Never know he didn't choose to leave.
Kael's jaw clenched. He shoved the thought down, burying it beneath the need to understand where he was. Grief was a luxury he couldn't afford right now.
Not until he knew if there was a way back.
He forced himself to stand taller, legs trembling. He took a shaky breath and surveyed his surroundings more carefully. The forest stretched in all directions. The lake remained distant. The village was still visible but far.
If he was on a floating island, it was vast.
And completely isolated from anything he'd ever known.
Then...
A presence pressed against the edges of his mind. Not painful, but unmistakably alien. Like something vast turning its attention toward him. Something that existed in the air, in the ground, everywhere around him.
A flat, emotionless voice echoed inside his skull.
[Initializing Factory System…]
In front of him, a transparent blue panel materialized out of thin air. Geometric lines glowed with ethereal light, forming letters and symbols his brain somehow understood, without ever learning them.
Kael stared at the panel.
Then at his hands.
Then back at the panel.
For a long moment, silence.
Then: "...You've got to be kidding me."
Because if the floating island was real, if the system was real... then everything he thought he knew about the world was a lie.
And he was going to have to learn an entirely new reality from scratch.
From scratch.
Alone.
On an island that moved through the sky.
Kael's eyes hardened as he stared at the glowing panel. His reflection stared back at him, distorted in the blue light.
Then he exhaled, long and slow.
"Fine," he whispered, a cold calm settling over him like armor. "If this is my new reality…"
His fists clenched.
"…I'm going to own it."