…
Nothing.
The hut remained a hut.
His stomach remained hungry.
His fingers remained cracked and cold.
He blinked, hard.
"What the fuck?" he whispered.
He waited again.
Still nothing.
A laugh burst out of him, bitter and sharp. "Where is it? System. Where's my golden finger?"
Silence.
He clenched his hands into fists, nails biting skin. "Nothing," he said, as if confirming it out loud made it less humiliating.
A sour thought rose in him.
Did I get scammed?
He imagined the lazy goddess laughing.
He imagined the weirwood face staring.
He imagined the system itself, if it could be imagined- shrugging in indifference.
He swallowed anger.
"Maybe I should've chosen the familiar systems," he muttered. "But nah. This itch of adventure--"
He cut himself off with a hiss, because the words sounded childish, and childish got you killed.
He forced himself to breathe.
He forced himself to do what he always did when panic tried to climb his throat.
He broke the problem into pieces.
"Status," he said.
The word felt strange in the hut, like speaking a foreign tongue.
For a moment, he thought nothing would happen again.
Then--
DING.
A pane of information snapped into his mind with a crispness that made his scalp prickle.
[ STATUS ]
Name: Edrin
Age: 15
ATTRIBUTES —
Strength: 28
Agility: 32
Endurance: 34
Vitality: 30
Perception: 36
Cognition: 38
SKILLS — Scouting (Basic) Foraging (Basic) Survival Instinct (Trash)
Edrin stared at the numbers.
They meant nothing to the boy from Hollow.
They meant everything to the man who remembered his first life's stories.
He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
"Oh," he said, voice soft. "Safe."
He had a system.
He hadn't been scammed.
Not completely.
But the lack of immediate power made his skin itch. He wanted something obvious. Something that proved this wasn't just a fancy way of listing what he already was.
He stared at Survival Instinct (Trash) and snorted.
"That's insulting," he muttered. "I've survived fifteen years in this shithole."
Then he remembered the dreams. The ways he'd died in them. The ways he'd survived by luck as much as skill.
Maybe "Trash" was accurate.
Edrin shifted, feeling the pull of hunger in his belly. He could hear the village outside stirring, footsteps in snow, low voices, the sound of someone coughing hard enough to spit.
He should get up. He should work. Hollow did not forgive idleness.
But his mind refused to let go.
He had picked The Cycle of Devouring.
So how did it work?
He spoke to himself as if lecturing a stubborn child.
"Okay," he murmured. "It's devouring. So I have to eat something to gain something."
His stomach churned at the word eat.
Not from disgust; well, a little disgust but from the simple fact that his belly was always hungry. In Hollow, hunger was a constant companion. It did not come and go. It sat beside you like a silent friend and waited to see if you would feed it.
"So I'll check out--" he began.
And then his gut twisted hard enough to make him wince.
Edrin froze.
It wasn't the slow, gnawing hunger he was used to.
It was an urgent, humiliating pressure low in his belly.
He grimaced.
"Oh, for fuck's sake."
The memories of his first life hit him again, vivid and cruel.
Indoor toilets. Plumbing. Privacy.
Then the reality of Hollow answered.
Pit latrines. Cold air on bare skin. The risk of wolves and worse.
He pressed a hand to his stomach, irritation flaring.
"Argh," he whispered. "This stomach. I hate it since I unlocked my memories."
It was ridiculous, hating his own body for doing what bodies did. But irritation did not care about reason.
"I know this is medieval," he muttered. "But what do I do about this toilet problem? No one in those novels ever talks about it. How come? Do protagonists just… not shit?"
His mouth twisted. He could hear his own voice and it sounded insane.
But the pressure in his gut did not care about dignity.
He swung his legs off the pallet, furs sliding off him. Cold bit his bare feet. He hissed and stood, grabbing his rough tunic and pulling it on.
Outside, the air was a blade.
Snow lay thin over the ground, not deep enough to muffle everything, but enough to make the world look pale and sickly. The sky was a washed-out grey. The wind came off the ridges and cut through clothes like it had teeth.
Hollow sat in its shallow dip like a wound that refused to heal.
A cluster of huts made from pine logs and mud, roofs of thatch and old hides, smoke curling from crude chimneys. People moved with the slow rhythm of survival—carrying water, chopping wood, checking snares, stirring thin porridge.
No one smiled much.
Smiles wasted warmth.
Edrin stepped out of his hut and looked over the village.
It was his village, in a way. He had lived here fifteen years. He knew the faces. He knew the smells. He knew who stole and who shared, who would help and who would watch you bleed and then pick through your pockets.
But looking at it now, with his old life's memories sitting in the back of his mind like a cruel comparison, he could not help the thought that rose.
This place is literal shit.
Not just the latrine problem.
Everything.
And yet,
There was an aesthetic to it, in the way a wolf carcass had an aesthetic. Stark. Raw. Honest. The kind of "beauty" that did not care if you liked it.
He pulled his hood up and nodded to the first familiar face he passed Old Rusk, bent like a crooked nail, dragging a sack of turnips.
"Morning," Edrin said.
Rusk grunted. That was as close to a greeting as the old man ever came.
Edrin passed a woman hauling water with two buckets, her cheeks raw and red from cold. She glanced at him, expression guarded, then nodded once. Edrin nodded back.
He did not stop. He could not stop. His gut was making demands.
He walked toward the trees.
There was a familiar patch of woods near Hollow where the pines grew close and the ground dipped enough that visibility was low. People went there for privacy when they needed it. People also went there for other things, meetings, arguments, knives in the dark.
Edrin's hand hovered near the small knife at his belt out of habit.
He kept walking.
As he entered the tree line, the village noise fell away. The wind changed, muffled by branches. Snow clung to needles. The air smelled of sap and old rot and cold.
Edrin breathed out slowly, grateful for the cover.
"Hmmm-hmmm-hmmm," he hummed under his breath, a stupid little tune that came from nowhere. Maybe from his first life. Maybe from nerves. Maybe because he needed to pretend this was normal and not humiliating.
He found a spot where the trees were close and the ground was soft enough.
"This place looks right," he muttered.
He turned, crouched--
And the world stopped.
At first, he thought it was just another shadow.
Then the shadow moved.
A direwolf stood ten paces away, silent as snowfall.
It was bigger than any wolf should be, shoulders high as a pony's, fur thick and dark as storm clouds. Its eyes were pale, almost silver, and they fixed on him with a cold intelligence that made his skin crawl.
Edrin froze mid-motion, pants half-done, body caught in the worst possible posture for dignity.
For half a heartbeat, his mind refused to accept what his eyes were seeing.
Then panic hit like a hammer.
"Holy crap," he whispered, voice strangled. "I just got my memories and I'm gonna end up in this beast's stomach."
The wolf's breath steamed in slow, steady plumes.
It did not snarl.
It did not bark.
It simply watched.
Edrin's hand fumbled for his knife.
Too slow.
He thought of the lazy goddess and rage flared, hot and useless. "That fucker goddess," he hissed. "I curse--"
The direwolf lunged.
It was faster than thought.
It was a grey blur and then pain exploded at his throat, teeth punching through skin, crushing, tearing.
Edrin screamed or tried to. The sound came out wet and choked.
He fought, flailing, hands grabbing fur, nails tearing at thick hide. The wolf's weight slammed him into the snow. The world tilted. Pine needles stabbed his cheek. Cold filled his mouth with blood.
Not like this, his mind screamed. Not now. Not after--
The direwolf shook its head.
Something in his neck tore.
The pain was so sharp it became something else, something white and distant. His vision narrowed to a tunnel.
He saw the wolf's eyes close-up, pale and unblinking.
Then the world went dark.
…..
…
…