Hello back to everyone who read my previous fic, and to those who are new, comment, send me stones and have fun
The transition wasn't cinematic. There was no bright light, no choir of angels, and certainly no cinematic fade to black. Instead, there was the screech of grinding metal—a sound so high-pitched it felt like a physical needle piercing his eardrums—and then a sudden, violent silence.
For a heartbeat, Arthur existed in a vacuum. He felt the phantom weight of his old life: the stiffness in his lower back from his desk job, the lingering taste of the lukewarm coffee he'd been holding, and the cold bite of the winter air that had been nipping at his ears just seconds prior. Then, like a glass vase shattering in reverse, the world rushed back in.
But it was the wrong world.
He gasped, but the breath didn't feel right. His chest felt tight, constricted by a shallow, rattling fragility he didn't recognize. Instead of the asphalt of a London street, his back was pressed against thin, starchy sheets that smelled aggressively of bleach and industrial lavender.
"Deep breaths, Maya. Just try to catch it. There you go."
The voice was soft, maternal, and entirely unfamiliar. Arthur tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt like they had been weighted with lead. When he finally forced them open, the fluorescent lights of the ceiling hit him like a physical blow. He winced, a moan escaping his throat. It sounded... wrong. High. Thin. Like the reed of an instrument that had been stepped on.
"That's it, sweetheart. You're back with us."
He turned his head slowly. Every movement felt like he was dragging his limbs through thick molasses. A woman sat in a plastic chair beside the bed. She looked exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes that no amount of concealer could hide, clutching a damp paper towel in her trembling hands.
Arthur tried to speak. Where am I? Who are you?
What actually came out was a soft, ragged wheeze. He looked down at his hands—or what he thought were his hands. They were pale, almost translucent, with blue veins mapping a delicate path toward wrists so thin he felt he could snap them with a firm grip. These weren't the calloused, sturdy hands of a thirty-year-old man. These were the hands of a girl who had spent a long time being very, very ill.
Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in his gut. He tried to sit up, his heart hammering against his ribs—a frantic, uneven rhythm that set off a rhythmic beep-beep-beep from a monitor behind him.
"Whoa, easy!" The woman stood up, her hands hovering over him, afraid to touch him but desperate to help. "Don't move too fast, Maya. Your heart can't take the stress right now."
Maya?
Arthur's mind raced, his rational side trying to categorize the data while his instincts screamed in terror. He looked around the room. It was a standard hospital suite, but the technology looked... off. Not futuristic, exactly, but polished. A logo on a discarded clipboard caught his eye: Metro-General Hospital.
He'd heard that name before. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a memory of a movie screen and popcorn flickered.
"Mirror," he croaked, the word tearing at his throat.
"Maya, you need to rest—"
"Mirror. Please." He looked at the woman, his eyes wide and pleading. He was never good at hiding what he felt; his face was a raw map of his confusion and desperation.
The woman hesitated, then reached into a floral-print purse and pulled out a small compact. She opened it and held it up with a shaky hand.
The face staring back at him was young—maybe sixteen or seventeen. Her skin was the color of parchment, her eyes sunken and shadowed, but the structure was there: a small, straight nose and a narrow chin. It was a face that belonged on a college campus, not a deathbed. It was a face that was definitely, definitively, not his.
He wasn't Arthur anymore. He was a 'she'. And judging by the insistent whining of the heart monitor and the oxygen tubes snaking into her nose, she wasn't doing very well.
"What's the date?" he managed to ask, his voice trembling as he stared at the stranger in the glass.
"It's the twelfth," the woman said, her brow furrowing. "May twelfth."
"Year?"
The woman let out a wet, nervous laugh. "Honey, did you hit your head when you collapsed? It's 2011. You've been out for two days. The doctors... they said the heart failure was progressing, but you're a fighter. You always have been."
New York. Metro-General.
The pieces clicked into place with the heavy thud of a falling guillotine. He wasn't just in a different body; he was in a different reality. One where billionaires built suits of armor and gods fell from the sky. And if it was May 2011, he was standing on the precipice of a decade of absolute chaos.
He looked back at the woman—his mother, he assumed—and felt a wave of profound, misplaced guilt. He was an interloper in her grief. He was a dead man in a dying girl's body. He gripped the thin hospital blanket, his knuckles turning white.
"I'm okay," he lied, but his voice cracked, and the tears that welled in his eyes were entirely real. "I'm... I'm still here."
He had to be rational. He was in the MCU. He was a girl named Maya. And if his memory of the timeline served him, the world was about to start ending on a very regular basis.
The monitor behind him gave a sharp, discordant chime, and a nurse hurried into the room, checking the IV drip.
"Vital signs are stabilizing," the nurse muttered, though she didn't look convinced. "But we need to keep her under observation. The stress of the seizure might have caused further valve damage."
Arthur—no, Maya—closed her eyes. The injustice of it burned in her chest. To be snatched from life only to be shoved into a failing vessel in a world destined for war? It wasn't right. But as the sedative the nurse injected began to cloud her mind, a spark of his old self remained. He was a man of logic, a man who believed in doing what was right. If he was here, there had to be a reason.
The sedative wore off not with a sudden jolt, but like a tide slowly retreating over jagged rocks. It left her stranded in the dark, hyper-aware of every ache, every point of pressure where her frail bones met the thin mattress. The room was dim now, bathed in the artificial, bruised-purple glow of city lights filtering through the half-closed blinds. The night shift had taken over. The corridor outside was quiet, punctuated only by the squeak of rubber-soled shoes and the distant, muted chime of an elevator.
Maya—Arthur still struggled to map that name onto his consciousness, but his rational mind demanded adaptation—stared up at the acoustic ceiling tiles. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven hitches. The oxygen cannula in her nose was dry and irritating. She tried to swallow, her throat feeling like it was lined with crushed glass.
She needed water. She needed a plan. She needed to figure out how to survive a universe where alien armadas and mad titans were just over the horizon, while trapped in a body that was currently losing a battle against its own mitral valve.
Before she could attempt the monumental task of reaching for the plastic call button clipped to her pillow, the air above her bed... shimmered.
It wasn't a trick of the dim lighting. The space approximately two feet from her face warped, like heat radiating off fresh asphalt. Maya blinked, squeezing her eyes shut, assuming the heart failure was finally depriving her brain of oxygen. But when she opened them again, the distortion was still there.
Slowly, the shimmer coalesced into light. It wasn't the harsh, neon-blue glare of a sci-fi hologram. It was a warm, ethereal gold, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic heartbeat of its own. Thin lines of light etched themselves into the air, weaving together in intricate, ancient Celtic knotwork to form a floating, semi-transparent border.
Then, the text appeared. It didn't type out letter by letter; it bled into the air like ink dropped into clear water, forming crisp, elegant characters.
[Host accepted. Avalon Protocol initializing.]
Maya held her breath, the heart monitor beside her bed betraying her spike in pulse with an urgent, rapid beep-beep-beep. She waited for a nurse to rush in, but the corridor remained still. The screen was for her eyes only.
Another line of golden ink bloomed beneath the first.
[May your blade be sharp and your honor unquestioned.]
A System.
Arthur had read enough web novels during his commutes on the London Underground to recognize the trope. But this wasn't a generic game interface. There were no pixelated fonts or chirping sound effects. The glowing construct felt heavy, thrumming with a palpable, ancient energy that made the hairs on Maya's arms stand on end. The scent of ozone and something older—like rain on ancient stone and burning sage—momentarily overpowered the hospital's sterile bleach smell.
"Avalon," she whispered, her voice a dry rasp. The irony wasn't lost on her. An Englishman named Arthur, reborn in a dying girl's body in New York, handed a system named after the mythical realm of King Arthur. If there was a cosmic entity orchestrating this, they had a twisted sense of humor.
With a trembling, translucent hand, she reached out. Her fingers passed right through the golden knotwork. It wasn't physical light; it was projected directly into her mind, anchoring itself to her consciousness.
As soon as her intent to understand the interface crystallized, the text shifted, scrolling upward to reveal a new pane of information.
[Status Screen] Host: Maya [Surname Pending Integration]
Condition: Critical (Congenital Heart Defect - Stage IV)
[Base Stats] Average Human Baseline: 10 Peak Human Baseline: 30 Super Soldier Baseline: 50
Vigor: 3 (Warning: Host resilience is critically compromised. Immediate intervention required.)
Might: 2 (Striking power and physical strength severely atrophied.)
Agility: 4 (Reflexes hindered by poor circulation and muscle fatigue.)
Aether: 12 (Magic reserves above average; host soul anomaly detected. Soul-body desynchronization providing minor magical capacitance.)
Renown: 0 (Unknown and untested.)
Maya stared at the numbers, her analytical mind working through the shock. The system was remarkably clear about its scaling. A '10' was a healthy adult. Captain America, the benchmark for a Super Soldier, sat at a cool '50'.
She was a '3' in Vigor.
She looked down at her arms, the thin blue veins stark against the pale skin. Three out of ten. She wasn't just below average; she was hovering over the abyss. If Vigor represented health and stamina, a score of zero likely meant cardiac arrest. The '12' in Aether was interesting—the system had noticed the transmigration, the "soul anomaly" of Arthur's mind in Maya's body. But Aether wasn't going to keep her blood pumping right now.
Before she could fully process the gravity of her physical deficit, the golden interface flashed. A dull, metallic sound echoed in her mind, like a sword being drawn from a leather scabbard. A new notification overlaid the stats.
[Daily Routine Issued.] A dull blade costs lives; a dull mind loses kingdoms. Complete the following to maintain the Avalon Protocol's blessing.
[The Daily Checklist]
1. Physical Conditioning: Complete 2 hours of intensive physical training. (Reward: +10 Vigor EXP)
2. Armaments Maintenance: Spend 30 minutes cleaning, sharpening, or repairing armor and weaponry. (Reward: +5% Durability to equipped items)
3. The Knight's Errant: Perform one act of "Common Chivalry." (Reward: +5 Renown EXP)
[Warning: Failing to complete the Daily Routine for three consecutive days inflicts the 'Tarnished Honor' debuff, reducing all primary stats by 10% until a penance quest is completed.]
Maya read the warning twice. Then, she let her head fall back against the pillow, a dry, humorless chuckle escaping her cracked lips. The laugh triggered a cough, which quickly devolved into a rattling, painful spasm that sent a fresh wave of fire through her chest. She curled inward, clutching her hospital gown, waiting for the monitor's frantic alarms to settle.
When she finally caught her breath, she glared at the ethereal golden text hovering above her.
"You've got to be kidding me," she wheezed into the quiet room.
Two hours of intensive physical training. She couldn't even walk to the bathroom without a nurse holding her arm and wheeling her oxygen tank behind her. If she tried to do a push-up, her fragile wrists would likely snap, assuming her heart didn't give out the moment she hit the floor.
Cleaning armor? She was wearing a paper-thin, open-backed gown that smelled like industrial detergent.
And an act of common chivalry? Who was she going to save in a cardiac ward at two in the morning?
But the penalty... that was the real terror. A 10% reduction to all primary stats. If her Vigor was a 3, a 10% drop might seem mathematically small, but in biological terms, it could be the difference between her mitral valve holding together or tearing completely. The system was a lifeline, an ancient magic offering her a way to stand among gods and monsters, but its entry requirements were designed for a squire, not a terminal patient.
She had to think. Arthur's mind was built on logic and problem-solving. There was no such thing as an unwinnable scenario, only a puzzle missing its key piece. Magic, especially ancient, sentient magic forged by a wizard like Merlin, was rarely a blunt instrument. It relied on intent, on the spirit of the law rather than just the letter.
"Intent," she murmured, her eyes tracing the glowing Celtic knots.
If the Avalon Protocol was truly sentient, it knew her physical state. It wouldn't assign an impossible task without a workaround, or else binding to her was a pointless endeavor. She looked closely at the wording of the Daily Checklist.
Complete 2 hours of intensive physical training.
It didn't specify where or how. It didn't explicitly demand she run laps around the hospital wing.
She closed her eyes, trying to focus past the ache in her chest and the rhythmic shhh-click of the ward's ventilation system. If this system was bound to her soul, to the anomaly of Arthur's mind in Maya's body, then perhaps the physical realm wasn't the only place she could act. There had to be a menu she was missing, a function she hadn't yet triggered.
She opened her eyes and focused her intent entirely on the word Avalon, willing the interface to expand, to show her the depths of the magic she had inherited. The golden light flared in response, the knotwork borders shifting and unlocking like a complex puzzle box.
The golden knotwork border of the interface snapped, the lines unspooling and rearranging themselves with the fluid precision of a master clockmaker's gears. The single screen fractured into a cascading series of smaller panels, casting a warm, honeyed glow across the sterile white sheets of her hospital bed.
Maya's eyes darted across the new headers: [Armory of the Round Table - Locked], [Squire Roster - Empty], [Oath Ledger - Blank].
Finally, her gaze snagged on a panel resting near the bottom of her vision, pulsing with a slow, insistent rhythm.
[Module Unlocked: The Mindscape Pavilion] A knight is forged in the mind before the body. The Pavilion bridges the waking world and the ancient echoes of Avalon. Enter deep meditation to project your consciousness into the training grounds. Note: Temporal dilation is active. Eight terrestrial hours equate to three standard weeks within the Pavilion.
Maya let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. There it is. The loophole. The system wasn't demanding her failing, physical heart to pump blood it didn't have; it was demanding her mind to endure the crucible.
She glanced at the digital clock mounted on the wall above the sink. 2:14 AM. If she went under now and woke up at 8:00 AM when the morning shift nurses usually arrived for breakfast and vitals, she would have weeks of training time. More than enough to complete two hours of physical conditioning and figure out how to clean armor she didn't possess.
But first, she had to actually get there.
Arthur had never been much for meditation. His attempts at mindfulness usually ended with him mentally drafting grocery lists or worrying about spreadsheet formatting. But the pain in Maya's chest was a grounding force, a sharp, physical anchor. She closed her eyes, focusing entirely on the slow, ragged drag of oxygen through the plastic cannula, using the distant, synthetic beep of the heart monitor as a metronome.
Inhale. Exhale.
She pushed away the smell of bleach. She ignored the scratch of the starchy pillowcase against her cheek. She imagined the golden light of the interface sinking into her skin, pulling her downward, past the pain, past the fragile ribs and the struggling heart.
For a long minute, nothing happened. The hospital sounds remained stubbornly present.
Then, the temperature dropped.
It wasn't the artificial chill of an air conditioner. It was a damp, heavy cold, carrying the distinct scent of wet earth, crushed pine needles, and woodsmoke. The rhythmic beeping of the monitor stretched, distorting into a low, metallic hum before fading away entirely.
Maya felt weight settle into her limbs—not the leaden, sick exhaustion of her physical body, but the grounded, solid weight of gravity.
She opened her eyes.
She was no longer staring at acoustic ceiling tiles. Above her stretched a sky the color of bruised plums, devoid of stars but glowing with an ambient, perpetual twilight. She pushed herself up, and her hands met cold, uneven cobblestones instead of a mattress.
She froze. She was pushing herself up.
Maya scrambled to her feet, moving too fast. She braced herself for the inevitable wave of dizziness, the crushing tightness in her chest, the blackout. But it never came. Her breath hitched, then settled into a deep, even rhythm.
She pressed a hand flat against her sternum. Beneath the fabric of the rough, undyed linen tunic she was now wearing, her heart beat with a steady, rhythmic thud. Strong. Normal. She looked down at her hands. They were still slender, still pale, but the translucent, sickly quality was gone. The dark bruises from IV needles had vanished from the crooks of her arms.
She was still Maya. The system hadn't reverted her to Arthur in the mindscape. It had simply rendered her new body in its idealized, healthy state.
"Don't get too attached to the feeling, girl."
The voice echoed across the courtyard, deep and resonant, scraping like two heavy stones grinding together.
Maya whipped around, her bare feet pivoting smoothly on the damp cobblestones. She was standing in the center of an expansive, circular courtyard enclosed by towering walls of dark grey stone. Racks of medieval weaponry—broadswords, maces, iron-tipped spears—lined the perimeter, interspersed with thick wooden training dummies wrapped in battered leather.
Stepping out from the heavy shadows of a stone archway was a man who looked like he had been chiseled directly from the castle walls. He was massive, standing well over six feet, clad in a hauberk of blackened chainmail that drank the twilight. A thick woolen cloak, dyed a faded crimson, was pinned to his broad shoulders. His face was a map of old violence—a jagged scar cut through his thick, dark beard, and his nose had clearly been broken more than once. But it was his eyes that caught her off guard. They were sharp, intelligent, and a piercing, unnatural shade of icy blue.
He leaned casually against the hilt of a massive broadsword, its tip resting on the stone floor.
The system flashed in the corner of Maya's vision. [Echo Activated: Sir Percy of Scandia - The First Black Knight] [Status: Instructor]
"You look like a stiff breeze would snap you in half," Sir Percy observed, his tone devoid of malice, simply stating a tactical fact. He pushed off the sword, lifting the impossibly heavy blade with one hand as if it were a wooden walking stick, and slowly circled her.
Maya stood her ground, forcing her posture straight. Arthur's corporate instincts flared—never show intimidation during a hostile takeover. "Appearances can be deceiving," she said. Her voice in this realm was clear, stripped of the breathless wheeze that had plagued her in the hospital.
Sir Percy let out a single, barking laugh. "Can they? I see a soul older than the flesh it wears, bound to a vessel that's actively dying in the waking world. The magic of Avalon chose you, which means Merlin saw something in the threads of your fate. But right now?" He stopped a few feet in front of her, the smell of oiled steel and sweat radiating off him. "Right now, you are prey."
"Then teach me how to be the predator," Maya countered, holding his gaze. She didn't have time to be timid. "The system gave me a daily quota. Two hours of physical conditioning, armaments maintenance, and an act of chivalry. I need to clear the first two here, or I die in that hospital bed."
Percy raised a thick eyebrow, genuinely amused. "Direct. I like that. Less whining than the squires I used to train in Camelot." He planted his sword point-down into the dirt between the cobblestones and gestured to a rack of weapons on the far wall. "The rules of the Pavilion are simple. Pain here is real. Exhaustion here is real. If I break your arm, you will feel the bone snap, though your waking body will remain unharmed. Your mind will simply remember the agony."
He kicked a small, rusted iron bucket toward her. It skittered across the stones and bumped against her bare toes. Inside was a hardened block of lye soap, a coarse bristled brush, and a piece of heavily stained rag.
"Your armor is your skin, girl. Since you lack plate mail, you will maintain the tools of your survival," Percy instructed, his voice dropping into the authoritative cadence of a drill master. "You will start by scrubbing the rust off every blade on that rack. It will take you exactly thirty minutes. Then, we begin your physical conditioning."
Maya looked at the bucket, then at the rack holding at least forty heavy, rusted weapons. "Scrubbing swords counts as armaments maintenance?"
"Discipline is a weapon," Percy rumbled, crossing his massive arms over his chest. "A knight who cannot care for her steel will not survive long enough to use it. You have twenty-nine minutes left. Move."
Maya didn't argue. She picked up the bucket, the iron handle biting into her uncalloused palm, and walked toward the rack. She was in a magical mindscape with the first Black Knight of Marvel lore, and her first epic quest was doing the dishes.
Rational, she reminded herself. Stay rational. Do the work. Survive.
She reached for the first sword, a heavy arming blade pitted with orange rust, and dipped the brush into the bucket. As the coarse bristles scraped against the metal, a tiny golden notification pinged in the periphery of her vision.
[Task 2 Initiated: Armaments Maintenance. Progress: 1%]