Chapter 1 THE DYING TOWN
“Mayor… wake up.”
Marcus Vale frowned and turned away instinctively. The voice did not stop.
A hand shook his shoulder again.
“Mayor Hale.”
Mayor?
Marcus opened his eyes immediately.
A cracked wooden ceiling greeted him. Thin strips of gray light slipped through narrow gaps overhead. Somewhere nearby, metal clanged repeatedly against metal. The air smelled of smoke, wet coal, and something burnt.
This was not his apartment.
The desk covered in blueprints was gone.
The humming air conditioner was gone.
Even the stiff office chair he had passed out in after three straight nights of overtime was gone.
Instead, he found himself lying on a narrow bed inside a freezing stone room.
Marcus sat upright too quickly. Pain exploded behind his eyes.
“Easy there,” the man beside him muttered.
The speaker looked to be in his late fifties. Thick gray coat. Fur-lined collar. One side of his beard looked slightly burnt off. His tired eyes carried the exhausted look of someone who had not slept properly in months.
Marcus stared at him blankly.
The man frowned.
“…You hit your head harder than I thought.”
Marcus barely heard him.
His attention had already dropped to his hands.
They were not his hands.
The fingers were rougher. Older scars crossed the knuckles. Black dust sat permanently inside the lines of the skin as though these hands had spent years digging through coal and machinery.
A faint white scar stretched across the palm.
Marcus slowly flexed his fingers.
“What the hell…”
Then the memories came.
Not like a flood.
More like rust breaking apart inside his skull.
Hollow Crest.
Northern Territory.
Population: barely four thousand before the winter.
Coal mines collapsing.
Food shortages.
Three districts abandoned.
Trade caravans no longer arriving from the capital.
And himself
No.
Not himself.
Edric Hale.
Youngest mayor ever assigned to Hollow Crest.
Marcus shut his eyes tightly as foreign memories pushed against his brain. Meetings. Ledgers. Furnace reports. Citizens screaming over heating shortages. Endless debt notices from the capital.
Then one final memory surfaced.
An explosion.
Blue fire swallowing an underground furnace chamber.
Someone screaming his name, and then darkness.
Marcus inhaled sharply.
“Mayor?” the older man asked carefully. “The council is waiting.”
“The council?”
The man blinked. “You… ordered the public hearing this morning. About the furnace explosion.”
Right.
More memories surfaced.
A mechanic named Lyra Venn had been arrested two nights ago after the main heating furnace exploded beneath the eastern district. Seven workers had died. Half the district lost heat during the coldest week of winter.
The council wanted her exiled beyond the walls.
Which was the same as a death sentence.
Marcus slowly stood from the bed. His legs almost gave out underneath him.
The older man immediately grabbed his arm.
“You should still be resting.”
Marcus ignored him.
“What’s your name?”
The man stared.
“…Garrick.”
Another memory clicked into place.
Garrick Stone. Former mine foreman. Current administrative aide. One of the few people in town who had not abandoned Edric yet.
Marcus rubbed his face slowly.
None of this made sense.
Yesterday, he had been a civil engineer surviving on vending machine coffee and instant noodles while trying to finish a drainage redesign project before deadline.
Now he was apparently the mayor of a dying frozen town at the edge of nowhere.
“Mayor?” Garrick asked again carefully.
Marcus looked up.
“…Take me to the hearing.”
The public square of Hollow Crest looked half dead.
Snow mixed with black soot covered the streets. Smoke rose endlessly from crooked iron chimneys. Most of the surrounding brick buildings looked one bad winter away from collapse.
Yet the square itself was packed.
Citizens crowded behind wooden barricades while armed guards struggled to maintain order.
At the center of the square stood a girl in chains.
She could not have been older than twenty.
Dark hair. Heavy mechanic’s coat stained with oil. One sleeve had been burnt black near the shoulder. Her face looked pale from exhaustion, but she stood straight despite the crowd screaming at her.
“She sabotaged the furnace!”
“Murderer!”
“Throw her outside the walls!”
Marcus stopped walking.
The shouting reminded him of online outrage mobs.
Except this time, people would actually die.
A wooden platform overlooked the square. Several men already sat there waiting for him.
The council.
The moment Marcus approached, they stood.
Most of them looked annoyed rather than concerned.
Interesting.
A fat man with gold rings resting across swollen fingers spoke first.
“Mayor Hale,” he said stiffly. “The people are waiting.”
Bren Orwick.
Owner of Hollow Crest Grain Exchange.
Another memory surfaced instantly.
Raises food prices every winter.
Marcus sat slowly in the large wooden chair overlooking the square.
The cold wind cut through his coat immediately.
Another councilor leaned closer.
Thin face and Sharp eyes, Dain Mercer.
Mine supervisor.
“The town cannot afford delays,” Dain said coldly. “The mechanic caused the furnace blast. The council recommends immediate exile.”
Marcus looked toward the chained girl again.
Lyra Venn.
Something felt wrong.
Not innocence.
Not guilt either.
Exhaustion.
The kind he recognized immediately.
The same look he used to see in overworked engineers surviving on caffeine and deadlines.
Marcus suddenly spoke.
“What proof do we have?”
The square quieted slightly.
Dain frowned. “Witnesses saw her leaving the furnace chamber.”
“And?”
“And moments later the explosion happened.”
Marcus almost laughed.
That was their evidence?
A mechanic leaving a furnace room?
Even modern companies had idiots like this.
Something breaks.
Management panics.
Blame the nearest exhausted worker.
He leaned back slowly.
“If the furnace was unstable enough to explode,” Marcus said calmly, “then maintenance failure existed long before the blast.”
Several councilors stiffened.
Good.
That hit something.
Dain’s expression hardened immediately. “Are you suggesting council negligence?”
“I’m suggesting,” Marcus replied, “that if the capital actually cared whether Hollow Crest survived winter, they would have sent aid months ago instead of debt collectors.”
Silence.
Complete silence.
Even the crowd stopped shouting.
The memories told him immediately why.
Emergency aid requests had been denied six times already.
Garrick quietly lowered his head beside him.
Marcus exhaled slowly before speaking again.
“The judgment is postponed.”
Instant uproar exploded across the square.
Bren stood immediately. “Mayor, this is reckless!”
“People are freezing already!” another councilor shouted.
“And exiling one mechanic fixes that?” Marcus snapped back.
The shouting stopped.
Marcus surprised himself a little there.
But honestly?
After years of dealing with corrupt contractors and impossible project managers back on Earth, politicians were starting to feel very familiar.
He stood from the chair.
“The hearing is dismissed until further investigation.”
Without waiting for another response, Marcus turned and walked away from the platform.
The crowd continued shouting behind him.
Some angry.
Some confused.
Some relieved.
Snow crunched beneath his boots as he walked back toward the mayor’s residence overlooking Hollow Crest.
The town looked worse the longer he stared at it.
The more he saw smoke, darkness, hungry people, broken furnaces, a collapsing economy.
And apparently the capital wanted this place to quietly die.
Back inside the residence, Marcus shut the office door behind him and leaned heavily against it.
And there was silence
For the first time since waking up, he was finally alone.
A massive map covered one wall. Red markings stretched across entire districts of Hollow Crest.
He then saw closed mines, collapsed tunnels, food shortages, unpaid worker districts.
Marcus slowly sat behind the desk.
Then he opened one ledger.
His stomach immediately sank.
The numbers were catastrophic.
“No internet,” he muttered quietly.
He opened another ledger.
“ No electricity.”
Another page.
Coal reserves remaining: eighteen days.
Marcus stared at the papers for a long moment before laughing weakly to himself.
“No coffee either.”
Outside the window, Hollow Crest’s furnace towers continued pouring black smoke into the frozen sky.
Marcus rubbed both hands over his face slowly.
“How the hell am I supposed to save this place?”
