The last thing Colonel Marcus Davis ever felt in his own body was fire.
Not the clean, surgical burn of a controlled detonation—the kind he had orchestrated a hundred times in Fallujah, Kandahar, and the dusty ranges of Fort Bragg. This was sloppy. Amateur. A rookie engineer who had forgotten to prime the C-4 properly during a live demo for new recruits. One moment Davis was walking the line, barking corrections in that gravel-voice that made privates piss themselves. The next, the charge misfired, the shaped charge turned into a fragmentation grenade, and white-hot shrapnel tore through his chest like divine judgment.
He remembered the exact sound—wet, meaty, final. Blood filled his lungs in seconds. He hit the dirt tasting copper and failure.
Stupid. So fucking stupid.
That was his last coherent thought in 2025. No heroic last words. No slow-motion flashbacks. Just the cold professional rage of a man who had survived Delta Force black ops, twenty-three confirmed kills in close quarters, and three tours in the sandbox… only to die because some nineteen-year-old butter-bar couldn't read a goddamn checklist.
Then darkness.
Then pain.
Not the clean pain of shrapnel. This was primitive. Animal. A sledgehammer of agony splitting his skull from the inside. Marcus Davis opened eyes that were not his own and immediately regretted it. Sunlight—harsh, late-summer sunlight—stabbed straight into his brain like a Roman gladius. The world was too bright, too loud, too wrong.
He tried to move. Small body. Thin limbs. Ribs on fire. Left temple felt caved in, sticky with something warm and thick that matted his long hair. He tasted blood—his own, or someone else's. The air reeked of woodsmoke, horse sweat, shit, and fresh death.
Assess. Always assess first.
Training took over before panic could. Heart rate: elevated but steady. Vision: blurry but clearing. Limbs: responsive, though every twitch sent lances of pain through his side. Age of body: fourteen, maybe fifteen. Male. Scrawny but wiry—years of running from Roman patrols, not gym PT.
Voices crashed over him in a guttural tongue that should have been incomprehensible. Germanic. Old High something. Yet every word landed perfectly in his mind, as if he had spoken it since birth. The transmigration gift, or whatever cosmic joke had just played him.
"Seigmer! Boy! The gods spit you back out—wake up before I slap the life back into you!"
A massive, calloused hand cracked across his cheek. The sting cleared the last fog. Davis sat up too fast; the world lurched. A woman—no, a mother—threw herself at him, blonde braids whipping like ropes, tears cutting tracks through the dirt and blood on her face. She smelled of sour milk, woodsmoke, and terror.
"My son… Wodan spared you… the horse nearly took your skull…"
Seigmer. Son of Reik Hans. Suebi tribe. 380 AD.
The knowledge flooded in like a classified briefing he had never attended but somehow memorized perfectly. Every book he had ever read—Gibbon's Decline and Fall, every Osprey military history, every engineering manual from FM 5-250 to modern breaching tactics—collided with the boy's fragmented memories. Roman legions massing on the Rhine. Christianity now the official religion under Theodosius. Suebi still free, still fierce, still doomed to be ground under the boot of an empire that thought it would last forever.
Davis's new hands—small, scarred, callused from spear and axe—flexed. He felt the power coiled behind his eyes like a muscle he had never known existed. A supernatural muscle.
He stared at a fist-sized river stone half-buried in the mud beside his knee. Move.
Nothing.
Move, you piece of shit.
The stone twitched. Rolled. Stopped.
Telekinesis. Confirmed. Not concussion hallucination. Not dying dream. The realization hit colder and cleaner than any mission brief. He had died a colonel in the United States Army. He had woken up a barbarian boy with the entire 21st century crammed inside his skull… and a cheat code straight out of a comic book.
He tested it again. A broken arrow shaft ten feet away lifted an inch, spun lazily, and dropped. No one noticed. Good. Information is ammunition. He would keep this card face-down until he needed it to kill someone.
The big warrior who had slapped him—broad as a doorway, beard braided with iron rings, a black boar painted on his round shield—grinned with relief. Blood still dripped from a fresh gash across his forearm.
"Reik Hans will offer the finest bull tonight. The Roman bastard's horse kicked you square—thought you were dead for sure. We took the rider's head. His balls too, just to send a message."
Davis's voice came out hoarse, cracked, but carrying the flat authority of a man who had commanded men twice his age. "How many Romans? Which vexillatio? Direction of retreat? Armor? Mounted or foot?"
Silence fell across the camp like a blade. Warriors paused mid-drink from horns. Women tending wounds looked up. A fourteen-year-old did not speak like this. Not with that tone. Not with those questions.
The big man—Gundar, the boy's memories supplied—blinked. "Twenty, maybe twenty-five. Auxiliary cavalry out of Mogontiacum. We hit their foraging party. They ran like rabbits when we swarmed. Left three dead, including the one whose horse nearly killed you. We lost six. Two more will die by nightfall." He jerked a thumb toward the tree line where bodies lay in a ragged line.
Davis forced himself to stand. The world tilted, but he locked his knees the way he had done after three days without sleep in the Hindu Kush. He walked—limped—toward the corpses.
Blood soaked the grass. Real blood. Not the sanitized red of training dummies. A Roman trooper lay on his back, throat opened ear-to-ear, lorica segmentata ripped open like a tin can. Intestines spilled in gray loops. Flies already buzzed. Another Suebi warrior—barely older than this body—had an arrow through the eye, the shaft still quivering when the wind blew. A third body missing its head. The head itself sat on a spear ten paces away, eyes wide in permanent surprise, helmet crest still bright red.
Professional assessment: Roman auxiliaries—probably Batavian or Treveri—light cavalry meant for scouting and punishment raids. Not a full legionary cohort. Not yet. But they would report back. And Rome did not forgive "barbarian" insolence.
Davis crouched despite the screaming ribs. He picked up the dead Roman's spatha. The balance was good—better than the tribe's pattern-welded garbage. He tested the edge with a thumb. Sharp enough to shave. His mind already catalogued improvements: better tempering, fuller grooves for blood, perhaps a cross-guard mod using the tribe's limited iron.
Future knowledge advantage: metallurgy from the 19th century onward. Chemistry. Logistics. Fortification. Explosives—black powder is possible if I can source sulfur and saltpeter. Telekinesis for remote detonation…
He stood again, turning to the gathered warriors. Twenty faces, scarred, bearded, eyes bright with that feral Germanic hunger. His father—Reik Hans—had not yet arrived, still directing the rear guard. Good. Buy time to establish dominance.
"Listen," Davis said. The voice was young, but the cadence belonged to a man who had briefed four-star generals. "That was not a victory. That was a skirmish we survived by luck and numbers. The Romans will return. Larger force. Better equipped. They have engineers who can bridge rivers in a day. We have… this." He gestured at the camp—leather tents, wagons with wicker sides, horses picketed on long ropes. "We fight like wolves. They fight like machines. Today we bled them. Tomorrow they will bleed us dry unless we change."
Gundar frowned. "You speak like a Roman yourself, boy. Head wound addled your wits?"
Davis met his eyes without blinking. "My wits are clearer than they have ever been. The gods—or whatever rules this cursed world—gave me a second life. I will not waste it dying for glory like a fool. We prepare. We fortify. We make them fear the name Seigmer before they ever hear it again."
He felt the pressure behind his eyes surge. Without thinking, he flicked his gaze toward the severed Roman head on the spear. Invisible force slammed into it. The head exploded in a wet spray of bone and brain matter, showering the nearest warriors.
Gasps. Weapons half-drawn. Eyes wide with sudden holy terror.
Davis kept his face stone. Inside, triumph and cold calculation warred.
Telekinesis confirmed lethal at ten meters. Control still sloppy—used too much force. Note: practice in secret. Scale up slowly. Never reveal unless it wins a battle or saves my life.
He wiped imaginary blood from his hands and looked at the stunned faces.
"That was a warning," he lied smoothly. "Wodan speaks through me now. The Romans think we are animals to be hunted. I will teach them we are the hunters. Tonight we burn the dead properly. Tomorrow we move camp to higher ground and start digging. Any man who calls it woman's work can fight me for the honor."
No one moved. No one laughed.
In the distance, a horn sounded—Reik Hans returning with the main warband. Hooves thundered. Spears glittered under the bloody sunset.
Davis—Seigmer—felt the old colonel's smile stretch across a boy's face.
Mission parameters updated.
Objective: Survive. Consolidate. Escalate.
Enemy: The Roman Empire.
Asset: Total historical, tactical, and engineering knowledge of the next 1,645 years… plus the ability to move shit with my mind.
He whispered it under his breath, tasting iron and destiny.
"This war has a new name now."
And it will be fought in mine.