Chapter 1: Cold
Pain.
Cold.
It seeps into her bones before thought, before memory, before breath—inside her chest, beneath her skin, threading through her limbs.
She wakes to darkness.
Not complete darkness. A faint glow flickers ahead, distant and weak, like a dying star.
Her eyes struggle to focus.
Where...?
Her lips part, but only a dry rasp escapes. Her throat burns. She tries to move.
Nothing.
Her fingers don’t respond. Her body feels heavy. Foreign.
Then—A voice. Mechanical.
“System syncing... initializing... Please wait.”
Panic cuts through the numbness.
What?
Snow blankets everything around her. The alley is narrow, its walls looming on either side. Beneath her, the ground is wet and freezing.
No source for the voice.
No... this isn’t—
Move. She forces her body to respond. The first attempt fails. The second sends blinding pain through her skull. White explodes across her vision, and a gasp tears from her throat—but she moves.
Barely. She crawls. Her limbs scrape against ice. Her skin burns from the cold.
Crawl.
Stop.
Breathe.
Crawl.
She doesn’t know how long it takes before she reaches the faint light at the mouth of the alley and collapses against the wall, trembling.
When her vision steadies, she looks down.
And freezes.
This isn’t her body.
Still female, but painfully thin. Bones press beneath gray, dirty skin. Ragged clothing hangs from her frame. Her bare feet are blistered, torn, bleeding.
She stares at them.
She can barely distinguish their pain from everything else.
Whose body is this?
Fragments flicker through her mind.
Faces.
Voices.
Betrayal.
Darkness—
Nothing.
She looks up.
Across the street, unfamiliar buildings rise through the falling snow. A carriage rolls past, horses’ hooves striking stone as warm light spills briefly from its windows.
Her gaze follows it.
Iron streetlamps. Horses. Carriages. Old buildings.
It looks like a Victorian film.
Have I... gone back in time?
“Welcome, host.”
Her body stiffens.
The voice is inside her head.
“I am your system guide for this realm.”
System?
“Welcome to Survival Realm 468.”
Her fingers curl weakly into the snow.
Survival... Realm?
“You have 730 days to live.”
For a moment, she can only stare into the falling snow.
“Why...?”
“Survival failed in your previous life.”
Her heart stops.
Fragments slam into her mind.
A room. The unbearable weight of everything she couldn’t endure. Her own death. She had killed herself.
“No...”
“You were meant to learn. Endure. Survive. You chose termination.”
Her chest constricts.
“This realm will correct that failure.”
Silence.
Then—
“First objective: Survive the night.”
Fear finally breaks through the confusion.
She looks at the empty street.
Endless snow.
A dying body.
No one coming.
“If you fail to survive 730 days in Survival Realm 468, you will be sent to Hell Realm.”
Hell.
Her fingers curl, but she can’t feel them anymore.
“No. Not like this—”
“Warning.”
Her vision darkens at the edges.
“Vital signs critically unstable.”
The streetlights blur.
The cold begins to disappear.
“Estimated time to death:”
A beat.
“Six minutes.”
I could see myself getting really into this story!