Sunny dreamt of a mountain.
It was jagged and lonesome, and it dwarfed the surrounding peaks of the chain so completely that they looked like afterthoughts. A radiant moon bathed its slopes in ghostly pale light, and on one of those slopes, the remnants of an old road stubbornly clung to the rock face. To the right, a sheer cliff rose as an impregnable wall. To the left, a silent black sea of nothingness indicated an endless fall, and the wind crashed into the mountain over and over again, screaming in what sounded like powerless rage.
The moon fell over the horizon. The sun rose from the west, streaked across the sky, and disappeared in the east. Snowflakes jumped from the ground and returned to the embrace of clouds, and Sunny realized he was seeing time move in reverse.
Hundreds of years flew by in an instant. The snow retreated, baring the old road. A chill ran through him as he noticed the human bones littering the ground, but a moment later they were gone, replaced by a slave caravan moving backward down the mountain in a clamor of chains.
Time slowed, stopped, and then resumed its usual pace.
[Aspirant! Welcome to the Nightmare Spell. Prepare for your First Trial...]
Step. Step. Another step.
A dull ache radiated through Sunny's bleeding feet as he shivered in the cold. His threadbare tunic was nearly useless against the biting wind, but it was his wrists that supplied the worst of the agony: the iron shackles had already chewed through the skin, and every time the freezing metal shifted against the raw flesh beneath, a sharp pang of pain shot up through his arms and into the base of his skull.
He looked up and down the mountain road, taking in the scene. A long chain wound up the path with dozens of hollow-eyed people shackled to it at small intervals, all of them slaves like him. Ahead, a man with broad shoulders and a bloodied back walked with a heavy, measured gait. Behind, a shifty-looking guy with quick, desperate eyes cursed quietly under his breath in a language Sunny did not know but somehow still understood. Armed horsemen in ancient-style armor passed by periodically, giving the slaves menacing looks that seemed more habitual than deliberate.
However you judged it, things were really bad.
Sunny was more bewildered than panicked, though, because these circumstances didn't match what the First Nightmares were supposed to be. Usually, freshly chosen aspirants found themselves in scenarios with a fair amount of agency: they became members of privileged or warrior castes, with access to weapons and at least a fighting chance. Starting as a powerless slave, shackled and already half-dead, was as far from ideal as the Spell could plausibly arrange.
But the Spell was as much about balance as it was about challenge. The old policeman had said it himself: it created trials, not executions. So Sunny figured that to counter this abysmal start, the Spell would reward him with something powerful. A strong Aspect, at the very least.
He concentrated, thinking the words status, myself, information, and just like the webtoons he'd read as a kid had described, shimmering runes appeared in front of his eyes. Although he didn't recognize the ancient alphabet, the meaning behind each character was somehow clear.
He found the rune cluster describing his Aspect.
And then he lost his composure.
Name: Sunless.
True Name: —
Rank: Aspirant.
Soul Core: Dormant.
Memories: —
Echoes: —
Attributes: [Fated], [Mark of Divinity], [Child of Shadows], [E̷̢͓͔͚͗̒͝r̷̨̛͔͓͚̅r̸̡͔̼̈́̊o̷̧̜͚͑̚͠r̸͔͓̈́].
Aspect: [Temple Slave].
Aspect Description:[Slave is a useless wretch with no skills or abilities worth a mention. A temple slave is just the same, except much rarer.]
He stared at the runes and tried to convince himself he was seeing things. Surely he couldn't be that unlucky.
His eyes drifted back up to the Attributes. Three of them made sense, or at least existed within the realm of things the Spell was supposed to produce. The fourth did not. Where the other Attributes had clean runes and readable descriptions, this one looked like someone had taken a chisel to a stone tablet and then tried to reassemble the fragments in the dark. The characters were there, technically, but they refused to resolve into meaning. When he focused on the word [E̷̢͓͔͚͗̒͝r̷̨̛͔͓͚̅r̸̡͔̼̈́̊o̷̧̜͚͑̚͠r̸͔͓̈́], his head began to ache in a way that felt less like pain and more like his brain was being asked to process a file format it didn't support.
He tried to summon the description. The runes flickered: [̴̢̛͔͓͚͗̒͝T̷̨̛͔͓͚̅ḧ̸̡͔̼́̊i̷̧̜͚͑̚͠s̸͔͓̈́ ̴i̷n̸f̷o̸r̸m̸a̸t̸i̸o̸n̷ ̸i̸s̸ ̷n̸o̸t̸ ̸a̸v̸a̸i̸l̸a̸b̸l̸e̴.̷]
'What the hell does that mean?'
The Spell didn't error. That was the thing. It was ancient and incomprehensible and sometimes cruel, but it was never broken. Every Attribute it bestowed came with a description, because the description was part of the bestowing. Saying the information was "not available" was like a doctor handing you an X-ray of static and telling you the bones were in there somewhere.
Sunny read it three more times. The corrupted runes didn't change. They didn't clarify themselves or resolve into something legible the way ambiguous text sometimes did once you relaxed your focus. They just sat there in his status, wedged between [Child of Shadows] and his Aspect like a wound in the interface.
He didn't know what to do with it. He couldn't study what he couldn't read, couldn't plan around a variable he couldn't define, and the Spell wasn't offering any further explanation. So he filed it away in the same mental category where he kept every other thing about his situation that was unfair and incomprehensible and probably going to get him killed, and he moved on to the more immediate problem.
'No useless Aspects my ass!'
The thought hit him so hard it disrupted the rhythm of his steps. He stumbled, and the chain yanked taut beneath his weight, which immediately prompted the shifty guy behind him to scream.
"Whore's bastard! Watch where you're going!"
Sunny dismissed the runes and scrambled to regain his balance, but not before inadvertently pulling the chain a second time.
"You little shit! I'm going to kill you!"
The broad-shouldered man ahead of him chuckled without turning his head.
"Why bother? The weakling will be dead by sunrise anyway. The mountain will kill him." He paused for a few steps, then added: "It'll kill you and me, too. Just a bit later. I really don't know what the Imperials are thinking, forcing us into this cold."
The shifty slave gasped. "Speak for yourself, fool! I'm planning to survive!"
A third voice joined the conversation from somewhere further behind. This one was gentle and intelligent.
"This mountain pass is usually much warmer this time of year. We just had really bad luck. Also, I would advise you against harming this boy."
"Why is that?"
Sunny turned his head slightly, listening.
"Haven't you seen the markings on his skin? He is not like us, who fell into slavery due to debts, crimes, or misfortune. He was born a slave. A temple slave, to be precise. Not long ago, the Imperials destroyed the last temple of the Shadow God. I suspect that is how the boy ended up here."
The broad-shouldered man cast a look back. "So what? Why should we be afraid of a half-forgotten weakling god? He couldn't even save his own temples."
"The Empire is protected by the mighty War God. Of course they're not afraid to burn down a few temples. But we here are not protected by anything or anyone. Do you really want to risk angering a god?"
The broad-shouldered man grunted and said nothing more.
Their conversation was interrupted by a young soldier riding a beautiful white horse. Clad in a simple leather cuirass and armed with a spear and short sword, he looked dignified and noble, and Sunny found this irritating because the asshole was genuinely pretty. If this had been a historical drama, the soldier would have been the male lead without question.
"What is going on here?" There was no particular menace in his voice, even something resembling concern.
When everyone hesitated, the gentle-voiced slave answered: "It's nothing, sir. The young one stumbled. He's fine."
The soldier studied Sunny for a moment, his expression unreadable, then moved on. Sunny watched him go with well-concealed malice.
'I don't know how, but I will watch you die first.'
Then he turned his head and glanced in the direction of the other soldier, the one falling behind with his head lowered.
'And you, second.'
For a few minutes after that exchange, Sunny was in a dark mood. But he pulled himself out of it and inhaled deeply, trying to enjoy the air. Air like this was hard to come by in the real world: micro dust and other pollutants made it rough and unpleasant, and the general stench of the outskirts only made it worse. In the better parts of the city, sophisticated filtration systems worked diligently, but filtered air always tasted sterile and stagnant. Only the very rich had access to truly pleasant breathing.
And here he was, enjoying an unlimited supply of pristine, delicious air like a second-generation chaebol.
'Truly, being chosen by the Spell has its benefits.'
If only there were no dreadful cold, his feet did not ache, and his wrists and back were not in agony.
The slave caravan dragged itself slowly up the mountain. More and more slaves were stumbling, periodically falling to the ground. A couple of times, those who could no longer walk were taken off the chain and unceremoniously thrown off the road, down into the abyss that loomed to the left. Sunny watched them fall with a bit of compassion.
'Poor fellows. Rest in peace, you pitiful souls.'
All in all, he was in surprisingly good spirits. It was strange to feel anything close to cheerful amidst this disaster of a Nightmare, but Sunny had time to prepare for the eventuality. When the symptoms of the Spell first appeared, he hadn't handled it well. Dying before you turn seventeen wasn't something a person could easily cope with. But in the end, it had only taken him several days to come to terms with it. After visiting his parents' makeshift resting place (which was, in truth, just two lines carved into an old tree, because he was too poor to afford even the cheapest slot in a remembrance facility) and adding a third line for himself, Sunny had become relaxed and carefree.
After all, he no longer had to worry about earning money, finding food, protecting himself, or planning for the future. Once the worst that could happen had already happened, what else was there to fear?
So becoming a slave and slowly freezing to death was not that much of a shock.
Besides, he knew that the cold would not kill him, because he had already seen what fate was awaiting the caravan further up the mountain. The picture of piled bones littering the ground was still fresh in his mind. Most likely a pack of monsters was going to do the caravan in, and by the look of it, the attack would take place in a matter of hours rather than days.
So he still had a chance.
He decided to take another look at his status and summoned the runes again. The last time, he'd been too outraged by the Aspect to study the Attributes properly. While not as important as one's Aspect, the Attributes were often the deciding factor between life and death, because they represented natural traits and affinities, sometimes even providing passive abilities or effects.
[Fated] Attribute Description:"The strings of fate wrap tightly around you. Unlikely events, both good and bad, are drawn by your presence. There are those who are blessed, and there are those who are cursed... but rarely both."
[Mark of Divinity] Attribute Description:"You bear a faint scent of divinity, as though someone briefly touched by it once, a long time ago."
[Child of Shadows] Attribute Description:"Shadows recognize you as one of their own."
He quickly recognized the first one, [Fated], as the main culprit behind his predicament. At first glance, it seemed to indicate he was destined for some specific fate, such as dying miserably and vanishing without a trace. But the description revealed that being fated actually just meant improbable things had a higher chance of occurring when he was around.
'I guess this is how I managed to receive one of the super rare useless Aspects, and a weird variant of it at that!'
If [Fated] was his innate Attribute, the other two must have come from the Temple Slave Aspect itself. [Mark of Divinity] was more or less straightforward: it was supposed to allow passage into certain sacred places inside the Dream Realm and enhance several types of sorcery. Since there were no sacred places in sight and his Aspect had nothing to do with sorcery, it was useless too. [Child of Shadows] was a stranger one. He'd never heard of it and had no idea what it was supposed to do, at least not until the sun hid behind the mountain and the sky began to darken.
To his surprise, Sunny found himself able to see perfectly in the darkness, as though it were still as bright as day.
'Huh. Okay. That's something, at least.'
The night was approaching, and with it came a drop in temperature so severe that it felt like the mountain itself was trying to squeeze the life out of every warm-blooded thing on its slopes. Sunny's teeth chattered so hard he was worried they might crack. The other slaves were in worse shape. Several had stopped walking entirely and were being dragged along by the chain, their feet leaving dark tracks in the snow that Sunny didn't want to examine too closely.
He looked ahead, up the winding road toward the distant silhouette of the summit, and tried to calculate how much time they had left.
Not much. The bones he'd seen in his vision of the past had been scattered across a broad stone platform further up the slope. That was where whatever killed the original caravan had struck. The platform was maybe two hours away at the pace they were keeping, which meant the attack was close enough that planning for it was no longer theoretical.
The problem, of course, was that Sunny didn't have anything resembling a plan. He was a seventeen-year-old from the outskirts with no combat training, no weapons, and no useful Aspect. The sum total of his advantages consisted of night vision, sore wrists, and an Attribute that had so far done nothing except make his situation spectacularly unlikely.
He thought about the broad-shouldered man ahead of him. Strong, but already weakened by the march. He thought about the shifty slave behind him. Unpredictable, cowardly, but not stupid. He thought about the scholarly one further back. Observant and careful, possibly the most useful of all of them if things went sideways.
He thought about Hero on his white horse, with his fine leather cuirass and his short sword and his concerned expression that somehow managed to be both reassuring and infuriating.
'I'm going to have to be very clever about this.'
The wind howled against the cliff face, and Sunny pulled his threadbare tunic tighter around his shoulders, which accomplished almost nothing. The chain clinked rhythmically as the caravan moved, a sound so constant that it had started to blend into the background of his awareness, becoming something like a heartbeat for the whole wretched procession.
He kept walking.
There was nothing else to do.
Ahead and above them, invisible in the darkness to everyone except Sunny, the stone platform was waiting.