The smoke reached him before the alarm did.
Kenta Mori paused at the sink, the bitterness in the air catching in his throat. A heartbeat later, the smoke alarm screamed—sharp, panicked, relentless.
He turned and opened the door.
The hallway was already drowning.
Black smoke rolled thickly along the ceiling, swallowing the emergency lights one by one. Heat followed close behind, pressing against his face like a solid wall.
"…Already?"
He ran anyway.
Kenta slammed into the stairwell door and grabbed the handle.
Pain exploded through his palm.
He cried out and recoiled as blistering heat scorched his skin. The metal glowed faintly red.
Above him, someone screamed.
A deep crack echoed through the building. Glass shattered. The lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the corridor, broken only by the orange pulse of flames climbing upward.
Smoke flooded his lungs as he staggered back, coughing violently. Every breath burned. His vision blurred, tears streaming uselessly down his face.
Thirty years old.
Single.
Unremarkable.
Kenta worked in municipal planning—evacuation routes, infrastructure redundancy, disaster response protocols approved too late or not at all. He understood systems. He understood collapse.
And he understood exactly what was happening.
The stairwell was compromised.
The exits were gone.
Help would not reach him in time.
The system had already failed.
A beam overhead groaned, then collapsed. Flaming debris crashed down the hallway behind him, sealing off his last escape. Heat surged forward like a living wall.
Kenta's legs gave out.
He slid down against the wall, chest heaving. His phone lay shattered near the stairs, screen dark.
No signal.
No help.
The fire crept closer, patient and inevitable.
"…So this is how it ends," he muttered hoarsely.
Fear never came.
Regret did.
He had spent his life watching things fail—not through catastrophe, but through hesitation. Through leaders too afraid to decide.
He had ideas. Plans. Solutions that would have worked.
If I had authority…
If I had another chance—
The ceiling gave way.
Flames surged forward, swallowing the hallway in blinding heat. Pain erased everything else as fire wrapped around his body
Kenta squeezed his eyes shut.
"If I had another life," he whispered as the heat tore everything away, "I wouldn't let it collapse."
The fire answered.
Cold struck him like a blow.
Rain hammered into his face as Kenta gasped, body convulsing as air tore back into his lungs. He rolled instinctively, choking as mud and rainwater filled his mouth.
The noise came next.
Steel striking steel.
Men screaming.
Horses shrieking.
He forced his eyes open.
A gray sky churned low overhead, rain pouring in relentless sheets. The ground beneath him was a churned wasteland of mud and blood, trampled flat by boots and hooves. Broken yari lay scattered like fallen branches. Bodies littered the field—some still twitching, others already still.
Banners snapped violently in the wind.
This wasn't confusion.
This was war.
"What—"
"Hold the line!"
"Yari forward!"
"Takeda cavalry—brace!"
Takeda?
His heart slammed painfully against his ribs.
Less than fifty paces away, two lines of men collided. Spears thrust and withdrew in brutal rhythm. Swords flashed at close range. An arrow struck a man in the throat and dropped him without a sound.
This was real.
A soldier was hurled backward, crashing into Kenta and knocking him flat.
"Get up!" the man shouted, terror raw. "Get up, my lord!"
Lord?
A blade came down toward his head.
Kenta's body moved before his mind caught up.
His hands closed around something heavy.
A sword.
Steel rang as he barely caught the strike. The impact rattled his arms, pain shooting through his shoulders. The attacker recoiled in shock before a Takeda spearman drove a yari cleanly through his side.
Kenta stared at the sword in his hands.
Blood ran down its edge, warm against his fingers.
"My lord!" someone shouted nearby. "We're being pushed back!"
The world tilted.
Memories flooded in—sharp, unwelcome, undeniable.
A child born to a distant Takeda branch.
No inheritance.
No protection.
A name given out of obligation, not pride.
Sent away to the frontier.
A broken watchtower.
A starving hamlet of one hundred and forty-three people.
A place meant to fail quietly.
Rain plastered hair across his face.
Red hair.
Mid-length.
"…So I'm that Takeda," he breathed.
The world slowed.
Raindrops froze in midair. The screams dulled into distant echoes as translucent panels unfolded before his eyes—clean, precise, impossible.
[Domain System — Online]
Host Identified
Name: Takeda Shōryū
Status: Minor Lord (Unrecognized Branch)
Clan: Takeda (Peripheral)
Population: 143
Settlement: 1 (Hamlet)
Loyalty: 22%
Food Reserves: 9 Days
Domain Stability: Critical
Another panel followed.
[Host Attributes]
STR: 6
DEX: 7
INT: 12
CHA: 8
WIS: 11
A voice spoke—calm, measured, and impossibly close.
"Host, your domain is approaching collapse."
Shōryū stiffened.
"…You can speak."
"Affirmative. I am bound exclusively to the Host. All system interaction is private."
A third window appeared, edged in warning red.
[Mission — Tier V: Emergency]
Preserve the Host Domain
Objectives:
• Withdraw surviving forces
• Prevent morale collapse
• Maintain formation discipline
Conditional Reward:
• Loyalty Increase
• Authority Stabilization
• Retainer Summoning Authorization
Summoning Rank: Gold
Selection: System-Determined
Failure Penalty:
Domain Stability Decreases
Shōryū's breath caught.
Gold rank.
Something that should never belong to a cast-off lord with barely a hundred starving peasants.
"Host, victory is not required," the system continued evenly.
"Survival with cohesion is sufficient."
Time snapped back into motion.
The enemy surged again, rain and blood turning the field into a killing ground. This was not a decisive battle—only one of countless skirmishes before the storm that would soon engulf the nation.
Before Okehazama.
Before history turned.
Takeda Shōryū straightened.
Rain streamed down his face as he studied the battlefield—not with panic, but with calculation. Spacing. Terrain. Where the line bent but had not yet broken.
He raised his sword.
"Close ranks!" he shouted. "Yari forward—three at a time! Don't break!"
The men nearest him hesitated.
Then they obeyed.
A soft chime sounded in his ear—only his.
"Command registered. Morale stabilizing."
Shōryū exhaled slowly.
The Takeda clan was strong.
And it had cast him aside.
For now, he bore their name.
One day, he might choose another.
But first—he would keep these people alive.
As rain fell and steel rang, and a silent system watched only him, the Soaring Red Dragon—unclaimed and unwanted—took his first step.
Not toward conquest.
But toward survival.
And toward a future where even a discarded name could reshape history.