It had been a long, exhausting journey.
"Four damn years... Four years just to reach the other side of the world. I hope you're worth it, Dornheim."
I closed my eyes. And the wind threw me back into that damp darkness, where time stood still, and life had almost lost its meaning.
I remember sitting on the floor, leaning against the rough logs, listening to her footsteps fade away. In that moment, I wanted to bury all my grievances and anger at the injustice of this world, but there was no escaping the truth—I felt nothing but emptiness.
For the first few months, I barely got out of the bunk.
I wanted to become part of that cabin, to grow like mold in its corners, to crumble into dust along with the rotting floorboards. I lay there staring at the ceiling, spending hours studying a spider weaving its web between the rafters. Its life was simple and clear: wait, catch, eat. My life, however, had turned into a frozen frame.
I stopped keeping track of time. Day bled into night; the sun would pierce through the cracks in the roof, trace slanted lines across my arms, and disappear. I didn't wash. My skin turned gray from the dust and soot of the dead hearth.
Food was the only thing that forced me to move. But even that became a torture. I only ate when hunger began twisting my stomach into a tight knot, making me nauseous. In the corner of the cabin stood a sack of dried meat and some kind of grain—the remains of Tira's supplies. I would crawl over to it, shove dry, tough chunks into my mouth, barely chewing, and immediately return to my stupor.
Sometimes mice scurried into the cabin. I watched them with zero interest, until one day, I caught one with my bare hand.
I just watched it twitch, and then I crushed it.
Silence reigned in my head. The physics formulas that had once been my only way of communicating with reality fell silent. What did the coefficient of friction matter if you weren't going to take a single step? What did the mass of an object matter if you yourself felt like weightless ash?
Ephraim and Zeno had given everything for me. And that knowledge weighed heavily on me. I felt like a traitor. They had bet everything on a "shield," and instead, they got a broken toy.
The turning point came when the first frost hit.
The cabin was drafty. The wind whistled through the cracks, sweeping tiny snowdrifts right up to my feet. One morning, I woke up and couldn't open my eyes—my eyelashes were frozen solid from the frost. The cold seeped under the furs, biting into my very bones. My body, still clinging to life against my will, began to shake violently.
And then, Zeno's voice surfaced in my mind. Short and dry.
"Statistical anomaly. The subject's viability is approaching zero."
A primitive hallucination.
But I suddenly pictured clearly how my body would be found a year from now—a dried-up skeleton in a pile of rags. And everything Ephraim had died for, everything Zeno created will have been for nothing."
"No… No!" I rasped.
Tears spilled down my cheeks unchecked. I slammed my fists against the cot, cursing, thrashing, swearing to myself that I would get up right now. That I would take at least one step. But every single time, my body refused to obey.
It wasn't until a week later, when the severe frosts set in, that I somehow managed to find the strength within myself to stand.
My legs buckled, and my head spun so wildly that the ceiling and the floor swapped places. I collapsed to my knees, slamming my elbow hard.
I crawled to the threshold and pushed the door. It was blocked by snow on the outside. I threw my entire body against it, using the weight of my prosthesis as a battering ram. On the third attempt, the door gave way, and I tumbled out into a snowdrift.
Ice crystals filled my mouth and coated my face. I lay in the snow and laughed—a hoarse, ragged laugh. There was no lower to fall.
I got up.
The first weeks of my "return" were agonizing. I forced myself to walk to the stream every morning and break the ice to wash. The water burned, snapping me out of my stupor. I started hunting. At first, it was just simple snares for hares, but eventually, I had to pick up a knife.
The main problem remained the prosthesis.
The electronics had either burned out or completely discharged. It was twisting my shoulder joint, hindering my walking, and snagging on branches.
One evening, sitting by the fire, I pulled Ephraim's tool kit out of my bag, the one he had given me once "just in case."
I took a steel hacksaw and a few long bolts I'd found in the ruins of the cabin. Using my knife as a chisel, I began prying open the composite panels on the elbow of the prosthesis.
Biting down on a piece of leather to keep from screaming, I manually jammed the joint, bending it at a ninety-degree angle. I hammered the bolts straight into the gears, locking the mechanism dead in place.
Then I wrapped it in layers of thick ox hide, so the metal wouldn't clank in the wind or burn my skin in the frost. Using straps, I redistributed the weight so the load fell on my back and hips.
Right before I finally left the forest.
A wolf stumbled upon me. It crouched low to the ground, preparing to pounce.
[COLLISION CALCULATION]
Distance: 5 meters.
Leap speed: ~10 m/s.
Reaction time: ...delayed.
The wolf lunged. Like in slow motion, I watched its paws leave the dirt. I took a step forward and thrust out the locked iron arm.
The strike caught the beast right in the sternum. A dry crack of bone rang out. The weight of the titanium, multiplied by the momentum of the wolf's own leap, worked better than any sword. The beast was thrown backward; it collapsed into the snow, its paws twitching.
The recoil from using the skill hit instantly, twisting my insides and causing a sharp headache.
"Well, that's that," I whispered under my breath.
I gathered my things, shouldered my bag, and set off. I had a general direction—North.
I passed through tiny villages where people crossed themselves at the sight of me and slammed their shutters, whispering behind my back: "The White Ghost," "The Possessed," "The Iron Demon."
A couple of times, bandits tried to ambush me. But just as quickly as they attacked, they backed off.
I learned to sleep with one eye open. I learned to spot magical traps by the barely perceptible ripples in the air, simply because any energy distorts the density of its environment.
I crossed rivers, scaled mountain ridges, starved, froze, and got back up again. Over time, my resentment toward Tira faded into understanding.
I stopped in the village of Mori. The journey to Dornheim was only just beginning.
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