I opened my eyes.
The first thing I saw was white. It stretched in every direction, all the way to the horizon, with not a single landmark in sight. A vast, snowy wasteland. The snow was dense and sparkling, as if made of the tiniest glass crystals. A light mist hung over the ground, and the sky-smooth and pale gray-seemed too low, as if it were pressing down from above.
The cold penetrated to my bones, but after the pain I had endured, it felt almost familiar.
I propped myself up on my elbows, and that was when I noticed them.
Words were floating in the air, right in front of me.
They weren't engraved or projected-rather, they existed on their own. The translucent symbols glowed softly with a cold, bluish light. They wavered slightly, as if swaying in an invisible breeze.
Panic washed over me.
Instinctively, I jerked backward, my heart pounding. Thoughts raced through my mind: hallucinations? The aftereffects of pain? Death? I closed my eyes, then opened them again.
The inscriptions hadn't disappeared.
I forced myself to breathe slowly and looked closely.
The symbols began to form coherent lines-not because they had changed, but because I had begun to understand them.
Bond established.
Name: Oscar
Soul status: Unstable
Mana core: 14/100
Epithets:
Lost in the snowy wastelands
I was stunned.
I glanced down and noticed another line, highlighted slightly more brightly than the rest:
Essence: Sleeping.
I frowned.
"Essence…?" I whispered aloud, and the sound of my own voice seemed foreign against the backdrop of the endless silence.
The thought came to me on its own:
What if… I remove this?
Not as a command. Not as an order. Just a fleeting desire-for that line to disappear.
And it disappeared.
The inscription scattered into tiny sparks of light and dissolved into the air, as if it had never existed. The remaining lines trembled and also slowly faded away.
I froze, feeling a chill run down my spine-no longer from the snow.
So… it reacts to thoughts.
I looked myself over.
I was wearing the same lightweight black military expedition suit I'd had on when I entered the Spire. The fabric was thick and designed for mobility, with protective panels and plenty of pockets. There were no signs of damage or blood-as if everything that had happened hadn't happened to my body, but to something deeper.
The army backpack was still slung over my back.
I unfastened it with trembling fingers and quickly checked the contents. Everything was there: a small supply of rations, water canteens, a survival knife, an axe, a compact flashlight, and a basic tool kit. Nothing extra. Nothing new.
That was somewhat reassuring.
I slowly got to my feet. The snow crunched hollowly and dryly beneath my soles. The wasteland around me was utterly silent. No wind, no sounds, no movement. Just me-and an endless, cold world.
I took a deep breath.
I am alive.
I have a body.
A name.
Mana.
And… rules that I don't yet understand.
I found myself on the other side.
And something told me: this place is only the beginning.
I stood there for a long time, staring into the endless whiteness, as if it might point me in the right direction. But the wasteland was silent. No tracks, no landmarks, not even a hint of where to go.
In the end, I did the only thing that made sense.
I chose a direction at random.
I simply turned around, pointed my finger in a direction that was no different from the others, and walked forward.
The snow beneath my feet was dense and surprisingly even. Step by step, without haste. At first, I counted my steps, then the minutes, but I lost track very quickly. Time flowed strangely here: there was no sun, the sky remained unchanged, and shadows were almost nonexistent.
An hour passed. Maybe two.
The landscape remained almost unchanged-the same snowy plain, the same cold silence. Sometimes the surface began to rise slightly or, conversely, slope gently downward, but there were no sharp changes in elevation.
Only occasionally did something new appear.
In the distance, like mirages, trees loomed into view.
Huge. Unnaturally huge.
Their trunks rose dozens of meters into the air, dark and twisted, as if frozen in the midst of slow growth. Their branches were lost somewhere high in the fog, and instead of foliage, ice crystals or thin, glass-like growths hung from them. I didn't go near them-they appeared and disappeared, as if this world only occasionally remembered that there should be vegetation here at all.
I kept walking.
The hours dragged on, one after another. I should have been exhausted. I should have felt my legs going numb, my breathing becoming labored, the cold gradually wearing me down.
But none of that happened.
I caught myself thinking a strange thought: my breathing remained steady, my steps confident. My heart beat calmly. No aching muscles, no shivering from the cold. Just a slight, background fatigue-the kind you feel after a long walk, but not after hours of trudging through the snow.
It was… wrong.
I stopped and listened to myself.
My body felt different. It felt as though it were functioning more efficiently, more smoothly, without any wasted effort. It was as if every breath was being used to its fullest, and every muscle was moving exactly as it should, without expending any unnecessary energy.
I remembered the inscription.
Mana Core: 14 / 100.
I didn't know what that meant in practice, but I could sense it: there was a reserve inside me. Not a physical one-something deeper. Like a quiet, steady source of warmth somewhere beneath my breastbone, keeping fatigue from getting the better of me.
I smirked.
If this is a world where the body obeys different rules, then perhaps the path ahead isn't measured in kilometers either.
I set off again.
Just forward.
As the snowy wasteland absorbed my footsteps,
and giant trees watched from afar,
as if waiting for the moment when I would finally reach
something truly important.
I walked.
To be honest, I had lost track of time. Hours? Or just a few long hours? Here, the word had almost lost its meaning. I caught myself trying to figure out whether time flowed here the same way it did back on Earth, or if it obeyed different laws. The question arose again and again-and each time remained unanswered.
The sky began to change.
Not abruptly, not suddenly-rather, it began to fade. Whatever was taking the place of the sun here did not sink toward the horizon or paint the clouds in their usual hues. The light simply faded slowly, as if someone were dimming it from within. The whiteness of the snow grew colder, deeper; the shadows grew longer, though I never saw the source of those shadows.
Evening was falling. If you could even call it evening.
Ahead, against the backdrop of the endless wasteland, a grove came into view.
Small by the standards of this world, but impressive nonetheless. Huge trees, covered in snow, stood closer together, forming a dark silhouette against the pale sky. Their outlines were clearer than those of the giants I had seen from afar before. These did not vanish or tremble like mirages. They were here. Real.
Along the way, I noticed another oddity.
In all that time, I hadn't seen a single sign of life.
No tracks in the snow.
No sounds.
No birds, no animals, not even insects.
There was hardly any wind-just a rare, barely perceptible movement of air, carrying nothing alive. The world seemed… frozen. Or cleansed.
I reached the grove and stopped at its edge.
The trees here were truly gigantic. Their trunks, as thick as small buildings, soared so high that they disappeared into the twilight. The bark was dark, almost black, and in places covered with deep cracks filled with ice. Snow lay on the branches in heavy layers, but none of it fell, as if gravity were selective here.
A dim light reigned among the trees.
The snow beneath our feet was untouched-smooth, pristine, without a single footprint. It seemed as though no one had ever set foot here. The air inside the grove was colder, denser, as if saturated with frozen anticipation.
I listened.
Silence.
Not the lifeless silence of the forest, where movement and breathing are always lurking beneath the surface. This was a different kind of silence-absolute. There was neither threat nor comfort in it. Just emptiness.
Not a single living creature.
And yet…
the grove didn't seem dead.
Or rather, dormant.
I took a step inside, and the snow crunched softly under my foot, breaking the silence. The sound seemed too loud, almost out of place, as if this world weren't used to having anyone in it.
I tightened the straps of my backpack and pressed on between the snow-covered giants.
If there was anything important ahead,
it began right here.