Chapter 4 – Morning Among Shadows

Elena woke to the muted chorus of a village stirring to life.

The first thing she noticed was the light—thin and golden, spilling through cracks in the wooden shutter above her head. It painted slanted stripes across the clay walls, illuminating the faint dust motes that drifted lazily in the air. The second thing was the smell: smoke from a dying hearth, mingled with the sour trace of herbs steeped too long in water, and beneath it all, the faint, earthy musk of straw.

Her body felt heavy, as though the wound had pinned her to the mattress. When she shifted even slightly, a sharp twinge radiated from her side, forcing her to lie still. A rough cloth bandage bound her ribs tightly—stiff but secure. Someone had tended her, someone who cared enough to keep her alive.

Outside, life moved at its own rhythm. A rooster crowed, clear and insistent. Children’s voices rang faintly near what sounded like a well—high, quick bursts of laughter, cut short by their mothers’ sharper calls. Wooden wheels creaked on packed dirt as a cart rolled past, the rhythmic groan of its axle mixing with the shuffle of tired footsteps. Every sound felt amplified, as though her senses were still struggling to believe in this new world.

Elena swallowed. This wasn’t a dream. This wasn’t her office, her papers, her world of measured reports and fluorescent lights. She was here, in Saren’s body, surrounded by lives that didn’t know her name.

Her gaze wandered to the window. Through the narrow slit, she glimpsed the village—squat houses of timber and clay, thatched roofs patched with straw, their edges frayed like worn cloth. Smoke curled from chimneys, thin and gray, as families stoked their morning fires. Beyond the cluster of homes lay a patchwork of fields. From this distance she could already see the hardship in them—the soil dry and cracked, furrows shallow, stalks thin and brittle where they should have stood tall.

Her heart clenched with recognition. Years of study had taught her how to read land at a glance. This soil was exhausted, starved of nutrients. No matter how hard these people worked it, no matter how faithfully they sowed seed, the land would not give back what it once had.

And yet the villagers kept toiling. A woman bent low in one of the plots, her back bowed as she worked a wooden hoe into the stubborn earth. A boy—perhaps her son—followed behind with a pail of water, though Elena could see by the way it sloshed that it was half-empty. The sight made her throat tighten. Water here was not abundance—it was measured, rationed, carried with aching arms from the well.

The door creaked open, drawing her eyes.

A man entered—broad-shouldered, sun-weathered skin, a thin scar running along his jaw. He carried a basket of roots and wilted greens. Setting it gently beside the low table, he glanced toward her with careful eyes.

“You’re awake,” he said, his voice low but steady. “Rest, Saren. Don’t try to rise yet.”

That name again. It pressed against her chest like a weight she couldn’t shift. Elena’s lips parted, but the words—I’m not Saren—died on her tongue. These people needed Saren, not the stranger inside her skin.

Instead, she only nodded faintly, her gaze lingering on the meager basket. Roots thin as twigs, leaves bruised and wilted. Enough for a soup, perhaps—but not enough for a family. Hunger lived here. She could feel it in the silence between words, in the weariness etched into the man’s posture.

As he turned to leave, she heard faint voices outside—men speaking in hushed tones near the well. The words blurred with distance, but a few carried clearly on the morning air: “taxes… tribute… the King’s men will come soon.”

Elena’s pulse quickened. So there was a crown here, far beyond this small, struggling village. A monarchy whose shadow reached even into cracked fields and empty baskets. She filed the thought away, a seed of unease planting itself in her chest.

She closed her eyes briefly, breathing in the smoke and earth, the sweat of labor, the faint sting of hunger. Her new life was bound to this place, to these people who mistook her for someone else.

But as the village settled into its morning toil, she felt the first stirrings of something unexpected—a quiet resolve.

If she was to carry Saren’s name, then she would learn this land, its struggles, its secrets. She would not let this soil starve without a fight.

And somewhere beyond the hills, beyond the shadow of distant royalty, she sensed a larger storm gathering—one that would, sooner or later, sweep through even this forgotten village.

For now, though, she lay still, listening to the heartbeat of the world she had awoken into.

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