Aira awoke to silend the taste of earth, her cheek pressed against unfamiliar soil that smelled of autumnal decay. The wrongness hit her instantly—seds ago, she'd been standing in the final chamber of a dungeon, her warhammer still warm in her grip, her foes vanishing like smoke before her eyes.

  The afterglow of the st message the System showed to her was still burning brightly when she closed her eyes.

  ========== Initiating inter-world transfer... ==========

  She tried to call for help, but only a guttural growl escaped her throat.

  "Inter-what?" she thought, her mind a whirlwind of fusion. "Transfer? What's happening?"

  Never in her years of being a wielder of the are had she heard anything like that. Not from her tutors, not from her partners. Not even from her enemies. She didn't even sider that there could be other worlds besides hers.

  She tried talking again. Anrowl, deeper this time.

  Panic cwed up her throat as she struggled to push herself from the ground. Her limbs betrayed her, moving with an agonizing sluggishhat made her heart hammer against her ribs. Her body felt wrong—alien and unresponsive, as though she were trapped in yers of invisible bindings, every movement a battle against her own flesh.

  Her firembled as she reached for her throat.

  "Where am I? What's happeo my voice?"

  The forest pressed in around her, aggressively unfamiliar. Trees towered overhead, their bark ridged in patterns that her memory didn't reize, their leaves shaped in strange geometries. When the wind shifted, it carried sts that made her nostrils fre—sweet uohat should alongside the earthy decay, sharp hat her enforcer's instinct couldn't categorize despite years of training and a.

  This forest spoke a nguage her senses couldn't transte.

  Aira closed her eyes and reached inward, seeking the familiar warmth that had been her stant panion since childhood. The crushing absence smmed into her sciousness—a gaping void where her magic should pulse and flow. She grasped desperately for it, like a drowning person reag for a rope that wasn't there, fingers closing around nothing but emptiness. The hollow spaside her echoed with absence, a phantom limb of power that screamed in its silence.

  Panic swept through her again, sharper this time. It wasn't only her voice. It was so much more.

  She tried to recollect the st steps she'd made in that damned dungeon. Aira was so sure and happy she'd finally reach that 100th level. It was a bizarre run that started slow and ended with a fight for which Aira was unprepared. If anything, she should have dripped that quest much earlier.

  Who even said she had to cross that threshold to the Legendary levels in that dungeon? If anyone asked, Aira wouldn't be able to pinpoint that moment and mark the person who gave her that initial impulse. It was so many years ago, when she was still a young apprentice, just expl her first skill.

  Still, this lifelong adventure was an integral part of her being now. It was what made her wake up in the m and gh all the motions.

  She just knew she had to reach the 100th level in that dungeon by defeating the final boss.

  The only problem: there was no boss there. And now she was… lost? Transferred to a different… world?

  "No, no, no..."

  She needed information. o uand. With trembling fingers, Aira reached for her status menu. Her friends often made fun of her and said that she o use gestures to access the System. "It's all in your mind!" they always told her.

  "Status," she ahe word emerging as another unintelligible growl.

  Nothing happened.

  "Skills," she tried. "Equipment. Quests. Anything!"

  Only animal sounds emerged from her throat, but the System remained silent, its familiar glowing interface absent. For the first time in her life, Aira couldn't access her powers, couldn't see her stats, couldn't feel the f hum of mana in her veins. Even that unnoticeable buzz of filled mana reserves wasn't there anymore. Only the absolute emptiness reminded her of something that was there just moments before.

  A memory fshed through her mind—the cavern, dimly lit by phosphorest moss, the rhythmic drip of water eg off stone walls. The cultists. The door…

  That was the most uling experience of Aira's life. It was unheard of for the System to act sely. Not being able to provide any information. How was that even possible?

  These glowiers that appeared in her visiohe foundation of her day-to-day life and even her survival. Without them, it was inprehensible how one could be a full-fledged practitioner of the are powers. She wouldn't know where to go and what to do if she hadn't had her quest system and other helpful hints. Like when to meditate to improve mana reserves aore health or whient to choose for an all-in attack.

  The numbers mattered. The quests mattered. The levels… "That damned huh level…" They were not just markers of her progress but the very fabric of her existen this world.

  All of these elements were crucial not only for her career but even for her survival. And now she had nothing.

  A sudden chill returned Aira to this new world. The season was wrong as well; it smelled like an autumn forest. Above her, the opy of derees filtered the weak sunlight, casting eerie shadows all around.

  Aira looked around, trying to figure out where she appeared. Maybe the st message of the System was just a vision, halluation, or a dream? However, the pce she found herself in wasn't the location of the dungeora couldn't be in the same region. Everything was wrong, even if you didn't mind the different season. The year was definitely ing to an end in this pce, with nature slowly preparing for winter.

  Groaning and feeling heavy and sluggish, Aira pushed herself to a sitting position. She took a more thh at of her surroundings. You never knew what minor detail could save your life. Not that it helped her wheried to exit that damned dungeon and touched that damned door!

  "The Rune!" a sudden thought shocked her like a powerful spell.

  The door, that st object she touched in that dungeon, in… her old world? The door was absolutely ordinary, unlike some other she saw during that fateful crawl. Aira could easily expect to see it in any dungeon or even a baker's house. It was made with solid wood and had a doorknob in the middle. Letting out a sigh, Aira reached out to open it. However, when her fingers made tact, a surge of energy shot through her. The same fn energy she sensed during the ritual.

  A rune appeared in the middle of the door's surface, shining brightly. Momentarily, Aira reized it from a bit earlier. She saw it during that fight that happened instead of the enter with the dungeon's boss. Then, in those st moments in the dungeon, before Aira could react or jerk back her hand, the same symbol lighted up on her wrist, branding her.

  She touched her right wrist with her left hand and couldn't sense anything. But when she brought it closer to her face to take a look, there it was. An unfamiliar sign, a rune, ched on her skin like a tattoo or a birthmark.

  The symbol pulsed faintly against her skin, its strange light seeming to breathe with a life of its own before slowly fading into her flesh as though g her. Aira couldn't tear her eyes away, a cold dread spreading from her wrist through her entire body. "What did they do to me?" she thought, trag its alien tours. "Is this a key? Or a ?"

  Aira blihe memory of the dungeon's door faded as she looked at the same rune now permaly marking her wrist. The sound of wind through unfamiliar leaves pulled her back to her current predit. No dungeon walls surrounded her now—only wilderness stretg in all dires, indifferent to her plight.

  She gathered her resolve and anded her body to stand. Aira's muscles screamed in protest, trembling with effort that should have been effortless. The world tilted and swam before her eyes as she fought for bance, her legs threatening to buckle with each breath. Oive step forward seumbling, her arms windmilling as she barely caught herself against a tree trunk, its unfamiliar texture scraping her palms.

  Aira stood at the edge of a gde, surrounded by trees that seemed to watch her with a indifferehough they had trunks and branches like any regur tree, something about their proportio wrong—too tall and gheir falling leaves drifting with unnatural slowo the loamy earth below. Everything was familiar, yet disquietingly not. However, it wasn't like Aira visited every forest in her world. It still could be just some unfamiliar pce. For now, she couldn't say if it was otherworldly in any specific way. Just new. Different.

  And she still wasn't able to summon the System interface.

  Aira dusted off her jacket, trying tain some sense of normalcy with this muion. ing out of this strange void of the transfer, she dropped right on the forest flathering some dirt and debris with her clothes and even her hair.

  Unsciously, she touched the Rune on her wrist once again. Her body was vioted. She didn't ask for that. It wasn't part of the quest. However, this symbol on her wrist was also the only mark of the ret events. It was the only thing that ected Aira to her old world. The only thing that told her all of that was real, and she didn't imagine her old life, her race to get to the 100th level.

  Though she seemed unged on the surface, the transformatio far deeper than skin. Her movements were impossibly sluggish, her limbs wooden and uncooperative. This wasn't merely the absence of her magihaats—even a novice mage with zero levels could move more fluidly than this. Whatever had happened during the transfer had fually altered her body's capabilities, redug her to somethihan what she'd been even before her first awakening to power.

  "What am I now?" she whispered, the sound emerging as a rasp that barely carried past her lips. Even her voice had been stolen.

  Aira sed the clearing for her belongings but found nothing—no warhammer, no potions, no equipment of any kind. She vaguely remembered dropping her prized on in that final moment of shock before the transfer. Everything she'd gathered over decades of questing and adventuring was gone in an instant.

  At least she still had her clothes. Aira let out a dry chuckle, finding a sliver of grim humor in her situation. Some magic could strip you bare during the transitioween realms—she'd heard tales of naked adventurers appearing in the most inve pces after a dueleport went wrong. Small mercies.

  "There's always a ce for things to be worse. I should never fet that," she thought, trying to find at least something positive in her predit.

  She took a deep breath and did what she would always do in strange and uling situations: began her meditation routine. She focused on her serying to ground herself in the familiar sensations. The unfamiliar ndscape even helped her when she o catalog all the new sts and sounds surrounding her. However, she quickly realized that something was amiss, inplete. Her perception was dulled. As if previously, it has been heavily influenced by her magid now there was nothing there.