The Seventh Prince

The Seventh Prince of Valdoren had been born with everything a man could ever ask for. Royal blood, wealth, servants, influence, and a place within the Imperial Family were all handed to him at birth. Yet he managed to turn every blessing into another reason for people to despise him.

He was a drunkard, gambler, womanizer, playboy, brawler, and scoundrel . He wasted royal gold on alcohol, gambling, women, and extravagant parties, ignored his duties and tutors, picked fights whenever his temper or drunkenness got the better of him, and treated his position as though the Empire existed to serve him.

For years, the Imperial Court tolerated him. Then, three days ago, he destroyed something far more valuable than his reputation.

A powerful foreign empire had sent a diplomatic delegation to Valdoren to negotiate a marriage alliance. The foreign diplomat's daughter was to be betrothed to the Second Prince , an arrangement that would have secured powerful foreign backing and strengthened his position within the Imperial Court.

Drunk at the royal banquet, the Seventh Prince became infatuated with the diplomat's daughter. When she rejected his advances, his pride could not tolerate it. What began as drunken harassment became an argument, and when the delegation intervened, the prince started a violent brawl with the very people Valdoren had been trying to win as allies.

The marriage arrangement was cancelled. The delegation departed in outrage. A valuable alliance was lost.

The Imperial Council finally decided that enough was enough. The Seventh Prince was stripped of his succession rights and ordered to leave the capital under the guise of an Imperial appointment to the Northern Duchy. In truth, it was exile. That night, the disgraced prince drank himself to death.

But someone else woke up in his body.

A soul from another world had transmigrated into the dead prince. Before the Protagonist could understand what had happened, fragments of the prince's memories flooded his mind: faces, names, childhood memories, women, gambling tables, banquets, arguments, and the diplomat's daughter. The memories came violently, leaving him disoriented and barely able to distinguish his own thoughts from those of the dead prince. When he finally stood before the Imperial Throne, the court saw only a pale prince staring into empty space and occasionally clutching his head. They assumed he was still drunk.



Nobody knew the original Seventh Prince was dead. Nobody knew another soul now inhabited his body.



The Emperor and Empress remained uninvolved. The Protagonist had six older brothers and two sisters. Six princes stood ahead of him in succession, making him politically insignificant. Yet the Second Prince had lost a valuable alliance because of him and now secretly wanted his younger brother dead. If the Seventh Prince ever returned and became useful to a rival faction, he could become a political threat.

The Empire had every reason to execute the Seventh Prince. He had disgraced the Imperial Family, destroyed a valuable diplomatic alliance, and become a potential political liability. Yet the Emperor stopped short of ordering his execution. Whatever his failures, he was still royal blood. Exile was the final mercy granted to him.

The Northern Province lay roughly three months from the Empire by ordinary travel. Once a powerful frontier stronghold, it had slowly fallen into ruin under harsh winters, recurring beast attacks, and increasingly organized bandit clans. Trade routes had collapsed, settlements had been abandoned, and the Imperial presence had dwindled to almost nothing. At its center stood Greywatch , a battered fortress surrounded by the remains of a once-thriving frontier settlement.

The Empire gave its newest "envoy" almost nothing:

• Gold worth roughly three months of survival.

• Rations discarded from the royal granaries.

• 100 poorly equipped soldiers.

• 12 weak earth mages.

• 10 weak water mages.

• Several disgraced nobles and knights.

• A handful of discarded army personnel.

• Damaged equipment and inadequate winter supplies.

• Ser Aldric Vayne, a disgraced veteran commander.

The Imperial Court had no intention of making the journey back. Under the guise of convenience, a teleportation array was prepared to send the Protagonist and his entourage directly to a remote forest roughly one day's journey from Greywatch .


The location was deliberately isolated. No major road led back toward the Empire, no Imperial escort accompanied them, and the teleportation array was dismantled immediately after the transfer. No return coordinates were provided.



Officially, the teleportation was a final convenience granted to an Imperial envoy. In reality, it ensured that the Seventh Prince would have no easy way back.

The Protagonist has inherited the body, reputation, enemies, and exile of the most despised prince in Valdoren.

Behind him stands an Empire that wants him forgotten.
Ahead waits the frozen North.

No System awaits him. No quests, no status window, no convenient cheat. In the North, the Protagonist has only his modern mind and whatever he can build with it.