Chapter 1; the crossing
His head hurt like hell. She had been hurting for at least five hours when she began to speak incoherently in the middle of the meeting room. The last thing he heard was screams, and himself falling to the ground. But it didn't hurt him, despite the huge gap he had in his head, the last thing he saw was several blurry faces as they took him out on a stretcher, to the ambulance where he would end up dying two minutes before arriving at the hospital. .
This is how Edmund Millard, CEO of the Wyvern conglomerate, died. He was fifty-seven years old, and had run a holding company that spanned the food, electronics, construction, chemical and media industries for fifteen years. A dedicated and ambitious man, he had assumed leadership of the company in the midst of the sub-prime financial crisis, and under his management the conglomerate had survived and now several of its subsidiaries were part of the Fortune 500 list. And although it could not be compared With big technology companies, he always presumed that the combined companies exceeded the GDP of countries like Portugal or Greece. However, seventy hours of work a week, a sedentary lifestyle, and having to deal with three teenage children along with a wife who was undergoing chemotherapy treatment. Not to mention the economic problems that arose as a result of Ukraine and Gaza, they had caused him a stroke, which had killed him in less than a day.
And now he found himself walking in the middle of absolute darkness. Until suddenly everything around him turned white. And without realizing it, he crossed a door that took him to an upstairs office, larger than Saint Paul's Cathedral, more sumptuous than Solomon's palace. There on the horizon, he saw an ebony desk, and behind it, sitting in a chair, was an older man, with gray hair, dark skin and dressed in white.
"Welcome, Mr. Millard, I was waiting for you," the man said with a deep smile as he invited him in.
Millard stared at him.
"God?" he asked without thinking.
"No," said the man with a smile, "I'm one of his assistants."
Millard calmly approached and sat where the man indicated. Then he took out a file with a photograph of him on the cover, and began to read it.
"Let's see, Mr. Millar... fifty-seven years old, graduate from Stanford and PhD from Harvard... self-made man, remarried to Paola Covas, sixteen years younger than you... three children. Two children from a previous marriage, and the last one with his current wife...Yes...let's see...executive director of Wyvern from December 1, 2008 to December 9, 2023. Day on which he died due to a stroke, caused by a unhealthy lifestyle, overwork and stress due to family causes"
"Excuse me," Millard said with some fear in his voice, "but are you judging me?"
"Of course," said the man with a sad smile, "and unfortunately, you have several stains on your record...we don't take that into account about being an adulterer, because despite having left his first wife, we don't doubt that He really loves his current one, you just have to look at the bills and that he has been sleeping in the hospital for five months. However, you are the cause of many deaths."
"Dead?" Millar asked terrified, "I haven't killed anyone."
The man nodded.
"Not directly," the man responded, looking at other papers, "however, he is indirectly responsible for at least eight suicides, because in 2009, in a cutback plan, he laid off nearly five thousand workers, many of whom lost everything." , several of whom today are destitute"
"That was necessary!" Millard defended himself "We were on the brink of bankruptcy! "If I hadn't done it, fifty thousand families would have lost everything," he said, banging the table. "I have also created ten thousand jobs... doesn't that count?"
"Yes," he replied, "but I think a fortune of four hundred million dollars is enough of a reward."
Millard felt a tightness in his chest.
"What is going to happen to me?" he asked without avoiding the chills.
"It depends on you," the man replied. "You are not all good, but you are not all bad either…normally I would not offer you this…but we believe that you could do a lot of good…in a certain place."
"What place?" Millard asked. "Africa or any of those places?"
The man smiled at him with some enigma.
"More or less…" he said with a small chuckle. "Do you know a song of ice and fire?"
"Yes… my son Arnold has all the books," he said, thinking about when he had dressed up as Jon Snow for two weeks.
"Well…well, you see, you are going to have to save the world from that book of the apocalypse."
Millard was surprised.
"Something like an Isekai?" He asked, alluding to the manga books his little Alice read.
"In a way, that's right," he replied. "He'll be there for twenty-five years, and if everything goes well, we'll give him a second chance."
"What if I refuse?" Millard asked with some suspicion.
"You will spend that same amount of time in purgatory with a bonus of one hundred years," he said with a smile so cheerful, it made Millard swallow.
"Okay… I'll do my best" he said with a nervous smile.
"great"
"But who am I going to be? Jon Snow? Tywin Lannister? "Eddard Stark?" he asked curiously.
But the man gave a somewhat mischievous chuckle.
"It's a surprise"
That gave Millard a very bad feeling, but it was more expensive for him to back out.
And then the man snapped his fingers, and a blinding light enveloped the entire place. So when Millard regained consciousness he was in the dark. It was a very strange sensation, because he was hearing some snoring.
When he opened his eyes he did so heavily. His mouth tasted like hell, and he could barely see anything. It was hard for him to get out of bed, his legs hurt. Then when he moved his tongue inside his mouth she noticed that he barely had any teeth. He looked everywhere and was in what looked like the room of a great medieval lord. Millard put a hand to his head, and found himself bald. He touched his face, and it was covered in wrinkles, and when he touched his chin he noticed sagging skin hanging down.
Next to him in bed was a girl sleeping who couldn't have been more than fifteen years old.
"But what the hell," she said out of disgust, "she had never slept with someone so young in her life" and he began to feel bad.
He stood up carefully, covering himself with a nightgown. When suddenly there was a knock on the door, and Millard opened it. There was a man of around fifty years old, tall and robust, but certainly with weasel-like features.
"Father, a raven has arrived from Lord Tully," said the man.
"What does the crow say?" Millard asked, somewhat confused.
"King Aerys has executed Lord Rickard Stark and his son Brandon. The North and the Valley have risen up against the crown… he has ordered his standard bearers to be mobilized" the man said with concern.
"Well," he said calmly, "we will meet shortly to discuss our position," he said, slamming the door shut.
Then he leaned against one of the stone walls. He needed air. When he suddenly heard the girl wake up with some heaviness. But she was obviously not happy with the sight in front of her. Even so, she remained respectful, for fear of possible reprisals, in case she displeased the lord.
"Girl," Millard said, sounding as imposing as he could, "do you know who I am? you know?"
The girl looked scared.
"Yes, Lord Frey," she murmured, scared.
"Leave my chambers before I order you to be flogged!" he bellowed angrily.
The girl ran out of the rooms, barely covered with some clothes. And Millard sat on the bed, analyzing all the facts. It was at the beginning of Robert's rebellion, thus a civil war. On the other hand, he was a disgusting old man with an increasingly weak body.
But then shock gave way to anger, and he raised his fist to the sky. Maybe purgatory would have been less embarrassing than this.
"It's not funny!" he cried with a high-pitched cry.
If it wasn't bad enough having to save the world in the middle of the game of thrones, dodging dragons, strange priestesses, pirates, psychopaths and the undead, in addition to a winter of apocalyptic proportions, it could be worse.
He had to save the world as Walder Frey.