I woke up the rude way—by cracking my head against the wooden wall of a violently shaking carriage. The thud reverberated through my skull like a drumstick striking a cracked cymbal. Pain flared across my scalp, sharp and electric, leaving my vision dancing in jagged bursts. My mouth went dry, tongue stuck to the roof, and for a moment all I could do was groan, tasting copper and dust with every exhalation.
Then the memories came back. Flooded in like a dam giving way: cultists chanting, their voices rough and wet with ritual fervor; the iron-heavy scent of blood mingled with burnt wick and ozone; the knight's cruel snarl; the flash of steel; that disembodied, silky voice promising "system initialization." And then—darkness.
Panic surged like electricity through my veins. My chest rose and fell too fast, my ribs felt like foreign cages around a heart that had started pounding without permission.
I tried to sit up, but the clinking of metal stopped me cold. Chains. Thick iron shackles wrapped around my wrists and ankles, biting into flesh that wasn't mine. They weren't just restraints—they were possessive, as if they knew my fear and wanted to savor it. Every jolt of the carriage made the chains rattle, a harsh, metallic chorus that gritted against my nerves.
I looked down. The rough-spun tunic clung to this borrowed porcelain body, coarse against my skin, scratching at my neck and forearms. The fibers pricked like needles with every slight movement, tugging at nerves that still hadn't learned how to obey these new limbs. One more tilt of the head, one more blink—and I looked like a slave fresh off the auction block.
"Quit your useless struggling, witch."
The voice snapped from my left—sharp, female, dripping with disdain. It carried the same imperious weight of chewing gum stuck under a priest's shoe.
I froze. Right. I wasn't alone.
Blinking through the haze, I turned. She wasn't armored like the knight who'd knocked me out. She couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen, but her presence pressed against me like a physical weight, unyielding and deliberate. Dark robes framed her slender figure, silver thread catching faint light like lightning frozen mid-strike. Her black hair swallowed the sunlight, and her eyes—violet, burning amethyst—locked onto mine with the intensity of a predator watching its prey.
"Where… where are we?" I rasped, voice cracking like brittle parchment. "Where are we headed?"
I expected silence. Or mockery. But she answered without hesitation, clipped, cold.
"To the Church. The captain said you're to be questioned. You don't match the heretics found at the ritual site."
I felt my stomach drop. Questioned by the Church. After being called a devil. My mind filled with images of torches, whips, and confessions squeezed out like juice from rotten fruit.
I forced myself upright despite the chains, bracing against the carriage wall as it jolted. Sunlight flickered through the cracks between the wooden slats, spotlighting my pale hands and the rough tunic. Outside, riders flanked us in formation, hooves pounding the dirt with martial precision. Armor gleamed, red cloaks snapped in the wind. We weren't just prisoners. We were a display. A cursed parade. And I was the prize.
"Be quiet," the girl snapped suddenly, her tone low and cutting, like a knife sliding across skin. "Speak again and I'll burn your tongue out myself."
Dramatic much? I bit back a sarcastic reply clawing its way up my throat. Her violet eyes left no room for hesitation.
I turned away, forcing my gaze to the world outside. Sunlight flickered gold across my hands, each flash a reminder that life went on without me while I was dragged like a chained dog.
And then it hit me—the System. The voice from the ritual chamber. Where was it now? Could I summon it here?
I hesitated, then whispered, barely audible over the rattle:
"Status."
Chime.
Soft, crystalline, almost musical. A translucent screen shimmered into existence, glowing faintly in the cramped carriage like a phantom tablet hovering in air.
[Welcome, Host.]
User Status:
Name: ???
Age: 16
Class: ???
Attributes:
Strength: 8
Intelligence: 15
Agility: 7
Endurance: 18
Health: 90 / 100
Level: 5
EXP: 0 / 1500
Alignment: Random
Protocol: Scholar's Mate – Active
I stared at the numbers, blinking. "…Why do I look like a masochist on paper?" I muttered.
Most stats were abysmal. Knights' stats likely started at twenty baseline, yet my Strength, Agility, even Intelligence, were paltry. Only Endurance was unsettlingly high, like I'd been designed to survive suffering, not win fights. And Random… that was a question mark that dripped uncertainty like acid into my stomach.
"You're observant for someone with a subpar brain-to-mouth filter," the voice purred in my skull, amusement coating each syllable.
I nearly slammed my head into the carriage wall again. "You again?!"
"The Status reflects your natural abilities," the voice said smoothly. "Though…" Pause. Almost unreadable. "…Your Intelligence stat seems unusually high for someone like you."
"…Hey! Start with a name! Proper introduction! Before roasting me!" I hissed. I could feel the girl's violet eyes boring into me, reading my panic. "Who are you? Where am I? What does Random even mean?!"
No answer.
Of course not.
The screen blinked once, then vanished like mist, leaving me bruised, rattled, and chained in the carriage rattling toward an unknown fate.
Her gaze lingered, heavy and invasive, as if she could smell secrets on me. I pressed my forehead against the rough wood again, listening to the hooves outside. Every strike was a drumbeat for my own execution march.
Prisoner's parade. And I was the star attraction.
---
Outside, the sunlight fell in sharp, fractured angles. Dust swirled in the air, coating the carriage floor with grit that crept between my fingers. The vibrations of the horses' hooves pressed through my bones, a tactile reminder that I wasn't standing—wasn't walking—but being transported like cargo, like something not quite alive, something too strange to belong. My borrowed body twitched under the new sensations, nerves screaming at each jolt, muscles flinching involuntarily.
The girl's eyes never left me. I couldn't tell if her presence was protective, or another layer of danger. Her fingers flexed lightly at her side, silver thread in her robes catching stray rays of sunlight, and I could feel the implicit threat in that tiny motion: move wrong, speak wrong, blink wrong—and she would know.
And through it all, that pulsing awareness—the System—ticked in my mind. A tether of control, a whisper of capability. Could I call it? Could I manipulate it here? Could it bend reality like it had in the chamber?
I clenched my fists. My wrists burned where the chains cut into porcelain skin. Pain was sharp, grounding. It reminded me: survive. Observe. Adapt. The System might be dormant, the girl's eyes might bore into me, the Church might be coming—but I still had threads to pull, patterns to learn, potential I didn't yet understand.
And as the carriage rattled along the dirt road, sun glinting off distant armor, I realized—somehow, impossibly—I wasn't entirely helpless.