V found himself in a world buried in snow.
The world was snowy and cold. Endless white snow stretched beneath a sky the color of ash not quite day, not quite night. No sun or moon could be seen, only a pale radiance hanging overhead. The snowfields rolled out in all directions like frozen dunes, the buzzing of cold air adding more life to the snowy world.
There were no trees, no rocks, no mountains. Just snow, stitched with the lines of old footsteps being swallowed back into the white expanse.
Then, there was movement stark and jarring against the motionless white snow. A trail of dragged footprints marred the untouched surface, deep and desperate. V's body was being hauled by his legs.
As V groaned, feeling the numbness and pain all over his body
[Seeker! Land of Shinzira welcomes you for your FIRST TRIAL OF SHINZIRA!]
[PREPARE... SEEKER!]
"Huh?... Curse you! You pile of shit..." The first thing he did was to curse that voice after coming back to his senses, and immediately he started counting.
"...One, two, three, four, five… ah, am I alive? What is this pain and this cold? It's—... six... seven, eig— ahhhha! Curse it! Curse it all!" Groaning with pain, he cursed whatever was causing him agony
After cursing that unknown force, V slowly mustered what little courage he had and opened his eyes. The first thing he was greeted with was fresh, burning pain all over his body. So the next thing he did was to examine the main source of his agony it came from his back, elbows, his shoulders, and a few more spots.
"What... what the hell is this?"
Before him was that same snowy white world and that same ash colored sky. The only difference was that he saw the ash-colored sky first, then the snowy white world.
"Ha... ha... ha... ha..." He laughed bitterly, feeling the pain in his stomach. Of course, he didn't laugh out loud. It wasn't because he didn't want to, but because he couldn't. Even taking a breath sent a new wave of agony, so how could he laugh?
"Where... where the hell am I? What kind of show is this?"
V mustered little strength with effort and pain, lifting his head up. He turned his head around left, right, and front. In front of him, two men were dragging him. One was grunting with little effort as their boots crunched steadily through the snow. Their breath came out in clouds like smoke, wandering in the world.
Four other men walked, followed by silence, evenly spaced in a diamond-like formation two ahead of the dragging pair and two behind. The snow wasn't soft; it was hardened by wind and time, biting V's skin like shards of glass as a low wind drifted across the field with a biting chill.
His back scraped along the frozen ground. His dark hair left a broken path, weaving behind him like red ink spilled across a white canvas.
V looked ahead, past the two men dragging him. Ahead of them, two men with broad shoulders and swords hanging on their hips were leading the way with measured steps. Behind him, two men with rough faces, also armed with spears, were following the lead. Their attire was ancient, not resembling the current world at least V could make sense of that with his blurry mind.
Before V could make more sense of all this, one of the rough-faced men from behind noticed V
"Oi, stop dragging him!"
At his words, those two men just dropped V's legs as heavy footsteps came closer, boots making that crunching sound on the frozen snow. The guy grabbed V by his arm and yanked him up. V's shoulder felt like it was going to tear apart.
"Walk now! I saw you looking around stop the act, or we can just kill you here!" the rough-faced man said, still gripping V's arm tightly.
V still couldn't get a hang on this situation, even now after all this. It wasn't like he was an idiot or stupid guy. True, this situation wasn't like anything he'd heard of or knew. Usually, for the first trial of Shinzira, the Rays give a Butler as a supporting companion with a fair environment, but this—this was too different from anything he had heard about the trials. Starting with an injured body without any weapon, without even a Butler—it was something he couldn't make sense of.
After taking a long breath, he started walking without questioning them or without knowing where he was heading.
However, V was pretty sure that to counter this abstract start, there would be something—something that could match its level, and the Rays would reward him with something good, or even better than this abstract start.
With a great "Branch ? " with a nervous sigh, he straightened his hand forward and opened his palm, starting to imagine a piece of "Egg shell." Just as he'd heard about, a second later a purple egg shell appeared in his palm.
"Let's see... what does this egg shell say?"
From that purple shell, a shimmering letter appeared in the air in front of him like a hologram. He took a second to carefully read and think about his "Branch," but he found himself on the verge of cursing out loud.
"Fuck?!" This was all he could curse out. He had intended to do more than just curse—he wanted to cry out loudly.
'Fuck—fuck... this shitty piece of shell?'
---------
Name: V
Rank: Seeker
Core Root: Seedwake
Frame: —
Attributes: [ Unwritten one ], [Claim of Unwritten], [Within], [Mark of Unwritten]
Branch: [Unwritten]
Branch Description: [Unwritten branch is an oddity, if one could even call it a branch
useless, skillless. It produces nothing, grants nothing. A branch that is not written A name which is not written—that is unwritten. This branch is a useless one for with a name.]
Dumbfounded, V just stared at those letters, trying to make sense of them. Was he really seeing things? Or was he done for? Either way, he was done for!
"Am I... am I seeing things?" V finally muttered under his breath after a second of staring.
"Yes—yes, I must be seeing things, right?" He wanted to convince himself that he was maybe just seeing things. But he couldn't act senseless anymore. He didn't know where he was, didn't know about his Butler, and the most fucked up thing was his Branch one of the important parts of being Inborn.
Screw this!
"Useless damn twig of a branch!"
"So! How far is that cave we are heading to?" For the first time, they had broken this silence after V regained his consciousness. After all, V had thought some of them couldn't talk at all.
V hurriedly dismissed the egg shell and focused on the conversation. V, who didn't know anything about this situation, was really in need of information he couldn't let it pass by just for some cursing.
"Not far now " one of the men ahead grunted, his breath making white clouds in the frozen air. "Maybe a day's walk if this bastard doesn't slow us down."
V's ears perked up at this finally, some information! But a day? In this cold with his battered body?
'...a day in this frozen hell.'
The rough-faced man who had yanked him up earlier spat into the snow. "Should've just killed him back there would've saved us the trouble."
"Orders are orders," the other man replied, adjusting his grip on his spear.
"The White Ghost needs a proper—"
He turned back and stared at V for a second and continued their conversation, but he had swallowed a few words as he added
"Not some corpse we dragged through the snow for hours."
V's eyes widened a little. 'What the hell is this white ghost and what kind of trial is this supposed to be?' He tried to keep his face neutral, tried not to let the panic show, but his mind was a mess of things.
"Besides " the man added "a live one has their own ways of benefiting us." Hearing that from behind, another one of them laughed a harsh, grating sound
'What kind of sick bastards are these people? And what the fuck are they talking about?' V thought and stumbled slightly. His legs were still weak from whatever had happened to him before he woke up being dragged. The snow crunched under his bare feet when had he lost his shoes? Everything was a blur of pain and confusion
"Pick up the pace!" the rough-faced man barked, shoving V forward. "The sun's getting lower, and we don't want to be out here when it gets dark."
V wanted to ask a hundred questions, but none of that mattered now. He kept his mouth shut and focused on listening, trying to piece together this shit he'd found himself in.
The landscape ahead remained the same endless white, but now V could make out something in the distance a dark smudge against the pale horizon. The cave, probably. Was that their destination for now?
'Think, V, think! There has to be something... some way out of this mess. The Rays wouldn't just throw me into an impossible situation without some kind of—'
But his thoughts were interrupted as one of the men ahead suddenly stopped, pointing toward the dark shape growing larger as they approached.
"There it is," he said. "We should prepare to camp here!"
V squinted through the bitter wind, trying to make out details of what awaited him. But all he could see was darkness a yawning mouth in the snow-covered landscape.
Following the lead of those men, V and the others walked with a fast pace to reach that destination. With each step, V could feel growing exhaustion, thirst, and hunger, but he couldn't stop. Each time he slowed down his pace, from behind he got hit on his wounded body, which caused him more pain than he was already enduring.
"So this was that unlucky kid, huh!" From behind, a voice rang in the open space, which made V pay attention to it
"Ha... ha... haa... haaa... pitiful kid raised to be sacrificed for the White Ghost?!"
WHAT—what the hell?!