Chapter Two
A Sky That Does Not Reset
The first village Elara reached was half ash, half memory.
Smoke lingered in stubborn ribbons, clinging to the remnants of timber frames. Roofs had collapsed inward like exhausted lungs, beams jutting out at impossible angles. The well at the center of the square had cracked clean through; its rope curled black and brittle. A single chicken wandered cautiously between charred timbers, feathers gray with soot, clucking softly to no one.
No music played.
No clock ticked politely in the corner of her vision.
The sky loomed overhead — vast, iron-heavy, indifferent. It did not dim with the approach of evening, nor brighten with the birth of a new day. It simply remained.
A sky that did not reset.
Elara stepped carefully through the wreckage. Her boots crunched over cinders and shards of pottery. The smell here was layered — smoke, yes, but beneath it something sour, human, and ragged. Something that did not belong in tidy mechanics.
A sound scraped against the silence.
Breathing.
Too thin. Too careful.
She turned.
A child watched her from behind a broken cart wheel.
He could not have been more than seven. Dirt streaked his cheeks in pale rivers where tears had once carved paths. Ribs pressed sharply beneath skin that hung too loose. His eyes were not curious. They were measuring.
In Stardew Valley, hunger was a polite green bar, dipping and filling as needed.
Here, hunger was bone and silence. It was the way his hands trembled, not from fear, but from emptiness.
Elara felt her chest tighten.
She crouched slowly, keeping her movements deliberate, visible.
"I won't hurt you," she said.
The words sounded small in open air.
She blinked.
The shimmer appeared.
Inventory.
The grid hovered, obscene and clean over ruin.
Bread × 112.
Her fingers closed around it.
A warm loaf materialized in her hands, perfectly browned, steam curling as though it had just left an oven that no longer existed.
The boy flinched violently, scrambling backward until his shoulders struck the cart's splintered frame.
She froze.
"It's all right," she said softly. "It's just food."
He stared at it as if it might bite him. Perhaps it was unnatural. Perhaps she was.
She tore the loaf in half, placing one piece gently on the ground before easing back.
He waited.
The wind shifted.
Hunger won.
He lunged forward, snatching the bread and retreating in the same motion. He devoured it with frantic, graceless urgency — not chewing, but forcing it down as if afraid it might vanish.
Elara swallowed.
It didn't.
Her inventory still read:
Bread × 112.
The number had not changed.
Others began to emerge.
A woman with a cloth tied around her head. An old man limping heavily, one sleeve pinned empty at his side. Two girls clinging to each other so tightly their knuckles were white beneath grime.
They gathered not in trust, but desperation.
Elara stood slowly.
She opened her inventory again.
Bread. Dried mushrooms. Cheese wheels wrapped in wax. She handed them out one by one, each item solid and warm in her palms. The grid did not diminish.
Murmurs spread through the square.
A baby cried weakly from behind a collapsed doorway.
Elara moved toward the sound without thinking.
Inside, a woman lay slumped against a stone hearth, skin flushed unnaturally bright against the gray world. Fever glazed her eyes. The baby at her breast whimpered, too weak to cry.
In her old life, healing had been instantaneous — a sip, a glow, a restored bar.
Here, the woman's breathing rattled.
Elara hesitated only a moment, then selected a Life Elixir.
The bottle appeared — glass faceted like a gem, liquid inside swirling with impossible light.
The woman recoiled as Elara knelt beside her.
"It will help," Elara murmured, though she had never tested that promise outside of pixels.
She lifted the woman's head and tipped the elixir carefully to her lips.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then—
Color surged back into gray flesh like dawn breaking over frost. The flush of fever drained. The rattling breath smoothed. The woman gasped sharply and clutched Elara's wrist with sudden strength.
The baby cried — louder now, alive.
The air shifted.
Behind her, a strangled sound.
Elara turned.
They had gathered in the doorway.
Watching.
Not with gratitude.
With awe.
And fear.
"You're a witch," someone breathed.
The word settled over the room like ash.
Elara almost laughed.
In her old world, she had been bored. Gold accumulated faster than she could spend it. Threats vanished, resets erased mistakes.
Here, she stood in a burned-out cottage holding a miracle.
And the villagers looked at her as though she were both holy and dangerous.
Her inventory shimmered faintly at the edge of her sight.
Life Elixir × 36.
Unchanged. Unlimited.
Outside, the wind shifted, carrying distant echoes — hooves, perhaps. Or thunder.
Elara felt the weight of every gaze upon her.
In a world ruled by scarcity, abundance was not kindness.
It was power.
And power, she realized slowly, did not make you safe.
It made you a target.