Kivas sat on the edge of her makeshift shelter, arms wrapped around her knees, the flickering purple flame still hovering before her.
The screen didn't fade, didn't change, didn't react no matter how long she stared at it.
"Ten HP and ten MP," she muttered, squinting at the numbers. "That's… neat, I guess."
She pressed her finger against the number beside her health, expecting it to pulse, maybe give a tooltip, or wiggle with some magical flourish. Nothing happened. It was like poking glass.
Kivas frowned.
"Then why," she said, reaching up to tap the side of her head gingerly, "have I been bleeding like a sacrificial goat for the past hour, yet these numbers didn't reflect that?"
Her fingertips came back damp and red. The bleeding had slowed, but her injury was real—and those stats hadn't budged a single digit.
"I've played enough RPGs before that stupid war happens, enough to know when something doesn't add up." Kivas pouted. "Well, either I'm in a world that doesn't obey common sense, or the common sense are just really bad at explaining themselves."
She let the screen hover and turned her attention toward the Attributes section. Strength, Intelligence, Piety… nothing too shocking.
Though, the fact that it was referred as Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, instead of simply Intelligence in the Well of the Soul did spark some interesting implication.
But then she scrolled her eyes lower.
"Detect. Disarm Trap. Evade Trap." She read them out slowly. "That's quite the focus on trap-related stuff, as if it's a broad and general thing."
The forest around her remained quiet, like it too was pondering the question.
"Is this world a death maze or something? Are they throwing landmines under every tree stump?"
The glow of the status window flickered lazily in her periphery. It refused to vanish without order. It refused to explain itself. It just... was.
Then came the part that really caught her eye.
Skills.
Her lips twisted slightly as she read them again.
◈ Divine Soulmate Imbuer Lv1 – You possess the power to imbue a Genesis Core onto your fated soulmate.
◈ Fate Weaver Lv1 – You possess the power to weave fate.
Kivas reached out and pointed at the first.
"Okay. Let's break this down slowly. Divine. That's… me, apparently. Soulmate? Kinda weird. Imbuer?" She rubbed her itchy and painful temple. "So I have the power to imbue something called a Genesis Core into my fated soulmate? What?"
She didn't even know what a Genesis Core was.
"And why just stop at my soulmate? What happens if I try it on someone else? Will they explode? Implode? Get friendzoned by the gods?"
Her eyes lingered on the entire title again: Divine Soulmate Imbuer.
"Did this have something to do with my wish?" she asked the empty air, head wrapped in pain as she tried to remember the event with the three World Forgers. "Back then… when I told them… what I really wanted..."
Her voice faltered.
The wind answered with silence. Leaves twitched. No birds. No bugs. No noise. Just her breathing and the strange distant rustle of trees rearranging themselves in the mist.
She turned her attention to the other skill.
Fate Weaver.
"Sounds busted," she smiled, albeit, still confused. "Like, really busted. If that's real, then I'm basically a walking causality nuke~
"There's also levels on these skills, as if they can get even stronger."
But even if it was her magnum opus, as it certainly sounded like… she had no idea how to use it. No interface. No menu. No activation key. She tried whispering the name. She tried thinking really hard about fate. Nothing happened.
She leaned back against the trunk of the tree that her makeshift shelter was placed onto, groaning.
"I still don't know anything, unfortunately," she muttered, defeated. "I don't know what a Fateling is, I don't know what these numbers accurately represent, and I definitely don't know why the hell this place is so… empty.
"That part is creeping me out more than anything."
She pulled her knees tighter, mocking the forest.
"Like, I'd settle for a squirrel. A bird. Hell, even a weird-looking bug! You hear me!"
But the forest offered nothing.
Not even the buzz of an insect. No chirps. No signs of animals rustling in the brush. No worms in the soil she dug through to build her shelter.
The only thing alive was the plant life, breathing and coiling faintly in the haze like it didn't understand what standing still meant.
It was too quiet.
If there was only oblivion and darkness, then it was understandable. But such an isolation in an open and colorful place like this?
Kivas stood up.
The sun—or what she thought was the sun—still hung high in the sky, casting a strange, refracted light through the thick leaves. It didn't look like any sun she remembered. Its shape pulsed at the edges, like heatwaves constantly bleeding off into nothingness.
She glanced around again, noting her own footprints and disturbed soil. Her makeshift shelter stood nearby, quiet and humble.
But something was off.
She squinted toward a patch of forest she had passed earlier—where she'd gathered vines and leaves for the roof.
The trees were different now.
She stepped forward slowly. The tree trunks had new grooves in them—patterns that didn't exist before. The branches curled in alternate directions. The moss changed colors. Even the ground held no trace of the marks she'd left while dragging wood.
"I was just here," she whispered. "This was where I picked up the leafy stuff. I remember the root with the crack in it…"
It was gone.
But somewhere close to that place, was something that looked even more out of place.
A chest.
A treasure chest-like, kind of chest.
It sat between two trees, nestled in the dirt as if it had always been there. A wooden container with metallic trim and a domed lid, almost comical in its classic treasure-chest aesthetic.
It gleamed faintly, unnaturally, as if bathed in spotlight.
Kivas felt a chill down on her spine.
"…No."
She turned around slowly, scanning the woods.
"Is this a trap? Should I be scared?"
Her eyes returned to the chest. It hadn't moved. But there was a chance that the forest around it might change soon, and so would the chest.
Despite the inherent danger and fear, she wanted that chest really bad. She wanted to open it, and uncover its secret.
"Regardless, It's time to plunder that box-shaped lumber, hehehe."
She stepped closer, the soil giving slightly under her bare feet.
Each step was cautious, measured. She kept her wings tucked tight, not trusting them to help if she needed to escape.
Then, a few meters from the chest, she knelt and examined the dirt. It was smooth. Too smooth. Like nothing had disturbed it—like the chest had grown out of the ground instead of being placed there.
Thinking that she might have gotten transported somewhere and lost her painstakingly built shelter, she decided to carefully wrap the chest with vines.
She then began dragging the chest across the ground back to her shelter.
"Holy, this thing is quite heavy!"