---
title: "Chapter 1: The Awakening of Natasha"
slug: "ch-1"
novel: "i-am-the-sorcerer-king"
number: 1
views: 1420000
likes: 105000
wordCount: 3100
createdAt: "2018-01-15"
---

The coffee shop where Natasha regained consciousness was called "Starlight Café," according to the faded sign visible through the grimy window. Her surroundings were utterly alien—the architecture, the vehicles outside, the strange glowing rectangles everyone carried in their hands. Her last clear memory was of ancient towers and magical arrays spanning across continents.

She sat up carefully, cataloging her situation with the analytical mindset of someone accustomed to survival. A young man across from her was watching with obvious concern, the same expression humans everywhere wore when confronted with the inexplicable.

"Are you okay?" he asked in heavily accented Korean—or was it English? Natasha's understanding of modern languages was fragmentary at best. "You collapsed on the street. I brought you here."

Natasha's hands trembled. Her power was there—still accessible, still resonant within her being—but it was muted, as if filtered through heavy glass. She'd been a Sorcerer King, capable of reshaping reality through pure mana manipulation. Now she could barely sense the ambient magical energy.

"What year is this?" she asked.

"2024," the young man replied, his concern deepening. "Are you from a different country? Your accent is—"

Natasha closed her eyes. Two thousand and twenty-four. If she'd died in 1847, and somehow been reborn or transported... that was nearly two centuries. Two entire centuries had passed.

"I need to understand this world," she said aloud. "Everything. How society functions, how magic is perceived, what forces currently hold power."

The young man—whose name was Park Min-jun—became her unlikely guide. Through him, Natasha learned that magic was real but hidden, known only to a select few called "Awakened." Public society believed magic to be myth. Governments maintained this facade through careful information control.

More troubling: someone was hunting for her specifically. Within the first week, assassins appeared—skilled practitioners using magic in ways that seemed crude compared to her knowledge but effective enough against ordinary targets.

"There are organizations watching for powerful Awakened," Min-jun explained. "The government, private corporations, ancient sects hiding in plain sight. Your power level—if assessments are accurate—makes you a resource worth fighting for."

Natasha understood immediately. She was a relic, a being from an era when magic was commonplace. If her knowledge became known, every faction would want her captured, studied, or controlled.

"I need to fake my death," she decided. "Create a history for myself, integrate into society without revealing my true nature. Only then can I understand what has changed."

Using magical techniques forgotten by modern practitioners, Natasha created false identity documents, established a history as an exchange student from a remote country, and began the long process of learning how civilization had evolved in her absence.

What she discovered was simultaneously fascinating and disturbing. Magic in the modern era was systematized, commodified, controlled. The raw, untamed power of her original world had been refined into a regulated system where practitioners were licensed, ranked, and monitored.

Worse, there were glimpses of something massive moving behind the scenes—an organized force with resources spanning nations, capable of suppressing magical incidents and erasing evidence of the supernatural. A shadow government that made the old kingdoms look primitive by comparison.

And somehow, they had known she would awaken. There were records, decades old, describing her appearance. Protocols in place for her emergence. As if someone in her original timeline had predicted her rebirth and left instructions.

"We need to find whoever created these records," Natasha told Min-jun. "Because whatever force prepared for my arrival will not rest until they've located me."

The hunt was beginning, and Natasha—once a king of sorcerers—would have to navigate a world that had moved on without her, learn to use her diminished power in this new context, and answer the fundamental question: why had she been brought back, and by whom?
