Ray wandered the edge of the village, barefoot on cracked dirt, the morning sun rising behind the distant noble's castle like a silent judge.
He'd spent the past few days pretending to belong — mimicking the other children, keeping quiet, hiding his confusion. But the truth was gnawing at him harder than the hunger in his gut:
What happened to this place?
Most of the adults were thin and quiet, their eyes hollow. The younger ones didn't laugh, and the older ones only muttered when they thought no one was listening.
He finally worked up the courage to approach one of the villagers — a wrinkled man stacking broken firewood beside his hut.
"Sir?" Ray asked hesitantly, voice soft but steady.
The old man looked up, squinting through sunburned eyelids. "Eh? Boy?"
Ray hesitated, then put on his best lost expression. "I… I hit my head. I don't remember much. I just woke up a few days ago. Everything's confusing."
The man blinked, surprised. "You what?"
Ray touched his temple. "I think I fainted from hunger and hit a tree. I remember my name's Ray… but the rest is fuzzy."
A long silence followed. Then, slowly, the man nodded, more to himself than to Ray. "Aye. Wouldn't be the first time. Starving makes ghosts of us all."
Ray leaned in. "Can you tell me… what happened to this village? Why is it like this?"
The old man sucked in his breath, eyes flicking toward the noble's castle far in the distance.
"We weren't always like this," he said. "Long ago, we were farmers, hunters, craftsmen. The land was kinder, and the Baron's tax was less cruel."
"What changed?"
"Monsters," the man said bitterly. "They started spilling from the south, from the Demon Rift. Not big ones at first — beasts, corrupted wolves, goblins. But it got worse. Our hunters died. Our walls crumbled. The Baron sent no help. Said it was our duty to defend the frontier."
Ray clenched his fists. "He abandoned you."
The man nodded. "And when food became scarce, the strong left for the cities. The old, the weak, and the unlucky — we stayed behind."
Ray looked around at the broken houses, the gaunt faces. A dying village, left to rot.
"But you haven't given up," Ray said quietly.
The old man met his eyes and, for the first time, smiled. "Some fires burn low… but they don't go out."
---
Ray left soon after, heading toward the nearby woods. The villagers lived in fear of monsters, but desperation had forced some to scavenge there.
He figured he had better odds there than starving to death doing nothing.
The trees loomed tall, their branches twisting like arms in prayer. Moss coated the trunks, and a chill hung in the air despite the sun.
Ray tightened the rope belt on his borrowed tunic and took a deep breath.
Alright. Time to hunt.
---
He didn't have a sword. No armor. No spells.
Just instinct… and memories from another world.
He moved carefully, scanning for signs — broken branches, claw marks, dropped feathers. His old world had no monsters, but he had watched enough survival shows, read enough manhwa, to guess the basics.
Soon, he found a patch of berries. Bitter, but not poisonous. He picked them quickly and moved on.
A rustle behind a bush made him freeze.
Slowly, he peered through the leaves — and spotted it.
A rabbit. Skinny, but alive.
Ray didn't have a bow. But he remembered something else: traps.
He gathered sticks and vines, working slowly, building a snare like he'd seen online years ago. It took time. His hands bled from thorns, and his stomach growled nonstop, but he pushed through.
Finally, he placed the trap and backed away.
He waited.
Minutes dragged.
Snap.
The vine whipped upward.
Ray rushed forward, heart racing. The rabbit struggled, caught by the leg.
He ended its suffering with a stone, breathing heavily, then fell back against the tree — not in fear, but in relief.
I did it.
His first catch.
---
That evening, smoke rose from behind one of the village huts.
Ray roasted the rabbit on a spit over a humble firepit he built with rocks and twigs. A few kids watched from a distance, wide-eyed.
He called them over and shared the berries.
No one spoke much, but when one of them offered him a worn piece of dried bread in return, he accepted it like a treasure.
The old man from before passed by and gave him a nod.
"You've got hunter's blood in you," he said. "Might be our village's luck's turning."
Ray looked at the stars above.
He didn't know if it was luck… or the start of something greater.
But one thing was clear:
If this world expected him to starve and disappear like the rest, it would have to try a hell of a lot harder.
He wasn't going to fade away.
He was going to rise.