Ezram and Montelia, the kingdoms of the lower humans, or at least that was what the game called them.
This world was home to all kinds of creatures, elves, kaleeds, dwarfs, sea nymphs, vampires, wolf-kin, and dragons, and the only reason it hadn't collapsed into complete chaos was because the dragons had taken it upon themselves to keep the peace between everyone, though that didn't stop the occasional conflict, or the more persistent tensions that existed within humanity itself.
Humans in this world came in two distinct types, the lesser and the higher, and Ezram and Montelia were home to the former while Albion claimed the latter. It wasn't quite as straightforward as it sounded, because the reason Albion held that title was that most humans born there possessed naturally higher magical potential than those from other kingdoms, and the Albionites insisted this was because they descended from some ancient god, a claim that was conveniently impossible to disprove. Whether it was true or not, the practical result was real enough, since Albion's citizens started their journey in the world of ascension with a clear advantage over everyone else.
Of course, a head start meant nothing without the work to back it up, and plenty of people from Ezram and Montelia had surpassed their supposedly superior neighbors through sheer effort and skill alone, but the idea of inherent superiority had taken root regardless, and the discrimination it produced was most visible in one place in particular, which was the Arcane Legacy.
The academy was owned and run by the dragons, and every race in the world competed fiercely for a place in it, because it wasn't just the finest center of learning available, it was where the next generation of heroes was made, and heroes, as it turned out, were genuinely necessary.
Gods existed in this world, but they weren't the focused, attentive kind, since they ruled multiple worlds at once, and like any being with too much power and too much time on their hands, they occasionally grew bored and decided to play games, dangerous games that pitted the heroes of different worlds against each other to determine which realm survived and which didn't. The Arcane Legacy existed to produce champions capable of winning those contests, just as it had in the past, and just as it would again.
The sound of dying embers was the first thing that reached Anna's awareness as her eyes opened to a sky full of stars.
"Huh?" she murmured, confused, and then she tried to move, and reality came back all at once.
Pain, total and consuming, radiating from everywhere in her body at the same time.
"Kyaa!" The cry came out before she could stop it.
"Could you possibly avoid attracting ether beasts?" said a voice nearby, completely calm and unbothered.
She turned her head, which sent a fresh wave of agony through her, and found a young man sitting close by, eating what looked like roasted rabbit with the kind of focus usually reserved for things that actually mattered. The sight was almost strange in how ordinary it was.
"You," she started, and then the memories hit her all at once, the confrontation, the fight, the moment everything went wrong. She closed her eyes for a second and then remembered something important.
Her spatial ring. The healing potions inside it.
Her eyes went straight to her hand and found it empty, and then she spotted the ring on his finger, the same man who had put her in this condition in the first place.
"My ring, give it back," she said through her teeth, each word a struggle.
"Hm?" He tilted his head. "It seems you still don't understand your situation," he said, stroking his chin.
Anna's vision was starting to go red at the edges, whether from pain or fury she couldn't tell. "I don't know what you did to me, but if you don't give me back my ring right now, I will melt your bones."
Her eyes blazed blue.
He looked at her then, really looked, and that feeling came back.
Dread, deep and immediate.
"Stop breathing."
He said it the way someone might comment on the weather, but Anna's body responded as if it were an absolute command, one that couldn't be argued with or refused.
"KYAAAAAAAAAAA!"
The scream that came out of her was something she'd never heard herself make before, because the pain that followed was unlike anything she'd experienced, worse than broken bones, worse than magical backlash, worse than anything she could've put a name to. Her body wasn't just resisting her, it was actively shutting down the instinct to breathe, overriding everything that kept her alive, and the contradiction of it tore at her mind while her body convulsed trying to make sense of an impossible instruction.
The pain kept building, and her consciousness started to come apart at the edges as she shook and writhed and fought against something she couldn't push back against. Tears ran down her face, and every few seconds she managed to stop breathing for a moment before the agony from her broken bones pulled a gasp out of her anyway.
"That should do it," he said.
He gathered his roasted rabbit with care, tucking the sticks neatly at his side, wearing clothes he'd clearly taken from her ring, probably intended for someone named Auston, and then climbed up into the nearest tree with considerable effort and settled himself on a branch as if this were the most reasonable thing to do.
From up there he watched her rolling and crying and screaming, and there was no satisfaction in his expression, no pleasure, just a calm indifference that was somehow worse than cruelty would've been.
"Hm," he said quietly, gazing up at the moon through the leaves, "the north pole it is."
He closed his eyes and went to sleep.
"HELP! PLEASE! UGH! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Her cries carried through the forest with no one to hear them except the man in the tree who had already stopped listening, and the creatures of the night who had learned long ago to stay well away from sounds like that.