Liara woke up with a sudden sucking breath, her eyes snapping open as her fingers reaching blindly and wrapping around the chitin blade still beside her. The curve nestled against her arm. Her whole body was coiled, half curled in a defensive crouch under the awkward lean of her shelter. She lay there for a moment, her breathing heavy as she noticed the blue box hovering lazily in front of her eyes. The message didn’t announce itself with fanfare. It was just there, floating several inches above the packed earth.

  She sat up slowly, her back groaning in protest. Her free hand insctinctively brushed against her ribs, still sore but less bruised than they should’ve been. The message pulsed faintly. Waiting. Demanding her attention.

  “Right,” she muttered, voice scratchy with sleep and lack of water. “This is normal. Talking to glowing rectangles is normal now.”

  She reached out, a finger trying to push the box away. Instead, the miessage dissolved into a more detailed display. Her finger yanking back at the change. What replaced the previous message resembled a minimalist profile of herself.

  There were no helpful popups or tutorials this time. Just the list. The System, apparently, expected her to figure it out herself. She leaned back against the bark behind her, a hand brushing against her temple. “I was sure these things were supposed to come with tutorials. Ugh!”

  “Vitality…okay. That’s obvious. Not dying when something hits me…maybe…maybe also disease?” Her muscles still ached from yesterday’s fight. She remembered the way her ribs had groaned when she tried to breathe, the burning in her legs from fleeing. She tapped Vitality.

  A quiet warmth ran through her limbs, not healing exactly, but her aches seemed duller. Even just the tiniest relief was welcomed as her shoulders loosened. Even the pressure behind her eyes eased a little. She stared at the screen again. She could smell the faint scent of earth.

  “Agility…that’s probably how fast I can run. Or dodge. Or climb.” She hesitated, then moved on. “Affinity…” Her thoughts went to the the green glow around her fingers. “Magic related? I guess. It felt right when the vines moved. Like pulling on a thread that was already there.” She didn’t choose it yet. Her eyes drifting to the next stat.

  “Potential.” She squinted. “That’s…how much I can do? Capacitance. Like how much magic I can use? Reserve? That’d explain why I felt so drained after using it twice yesterday..”

  Then her gaze fell on instinct, and something about the word made her uneasy. “Gut feeling? Danger sense? How is something like this even…numbers.Reaction time maybe?” She remembered the predator’s gaze, the jungle shifting around her, that moment of hesitation that nearly got her killed.

  “I’m…not skipping that,” she murmured, tapping instinct.

  The moment the point sunk in, she felt something crawl int he back of her mind. Not in thought, but below thought. Like a door had opened in her awareness. The sound of insects in the underbrush became sharper. The weight of her blade more present. Her own heartbeat echoed in her ears. Atleast, that’s what she told herself.

  The last stat lingered at the bottom. Dexterity.

  “Hands. Precision. Tools maybe? How well I use a weapon.” She remembered the moment she fumbled tying the vines around her shelter, the way the lash had slipped through. A weak point in her defenses. She pressed the point in.

  There was no dramatic reaction. No surge of power, no vision of mastery, but her hands felt…steadier? Her fingers less swollen. Maybe a little smarter in how they moved.

  Then, just as quietly as it had come, the screen faded. No cheer. No fanfare. Just the same endless jungle stretching beyond her shelter. A smear of violet clouds above the canopy told her morning had passed without her knowing. She exhaled through her nose.

  “Alright, System.” she muttered. “You’ve got my attention.”

  No reply, of course.

  The jungle was softer in the morning, quieter maybe, though nto silent. The chitter of insects pulsed beneath the canopy like a living current, and the air still hung thick with that ever present perfume of wet moss, and something faintly sweet.

  Liara pushed herself upright with a grunt, stretching her arms above heer head until her back gave a satisfying pop. Her muscles still ached, but less than yesterday. Upping her stats had helped more than she’d realized. She took slow, deliberate breaths, counting them. One. Two. Three. An old trick that had helped her calm in the mountains of exams she’d taken/ Strange how much harder it was now.

  Her shelter had held. Technically.

  The lean to sagged just a bit too far to the left, and one of the vines she’d used to bind the main support had come loose, leaving the rear panel half collapsed. A few of the broad waxy leaves had curled and browned overnight. Likely from whatever damp clung to the base of the tree.

  She knelt beside it, fingers brushing the vine lashings.

  “Too much tension. Should’ve doubled the anchor point.” Her voice sounded steadier now, edges with thought rather than fear. Trying to ignore how she was settling into the habit of talking to herself.

  She stood, brushing off the dirt from her knees, and scanend the area. Her supplies were still there, such as they were. THe shirt-bag she’d fashioned last night lay slumped nearby, partially flattened under a rock she’d placed to keep it from blowing away. Inside were the glowing mushrooms, now dimmed, and a handful of fibrous vines she’d harvested on the trek back. She picked one up and twisted it experimentally. Strong, flexible. Slightly tacky.

  A list began forming in her mind.

  “Shelter Repair.

  Material testing.

  Water”

  “Try not to die.”

  Her eyes landed on the ruined caparace of the Chitinback, still heaped near the base of the tree. It reeked now, sharp and sour. Flies that she didn’t recognize buzzed lazily around the corpse. Her stomach growled, betraying her ambivalence. There was meat still on it. Sort of.

  Her stomach growled as she’d look over it. She crouched beside the creature, pinching her nose. “You are not my first breakfast choice.”

  Her attention turned to the shell instead. Using the tail blade as a crude knife, she carefully carved off a portion of the smoother outer plating, testing hwo easily it split. It was light. A little flexible, too. She could maybe use it for a water scoop or even some kind of armor. If she had some way to bind it to a frame that is.

  A ding sounded, more like a click of thought than an actual sound, and a small glowing box flickered into her view.

  She blinked at it. “So that’s a thing now.”

  She tried not to smile, but it was a small comfort. Confirmation that progress was progress, no matter how gross. She set the shell aside and turned to her lean to. Using a sharpened stick to dig new holes and secure the supports deeper in the earth. The vines were difficult to work with. Oo stretchy in some places, too brittle in others, somehow also refusing to break at some points. But as she wrapped them tighter, threading them in figure eights through the joints of the two angled branches, they began to hold firm.

  She hummed softly, wondering how her progress was looking and a small chime sounded quietly.

  She huffed a breath. “Well thank you, spreadsheet god.”

  The improvements were small, but tangible. The shelter stood straighter now, and the angled branches gave it a more stable base. The leaves she laid across the top overlapped better, thanks to her slightly steadier fingers. Maybe a certain attribute point was pulling its weight.

  By the time she was done, the sun had climbed higher in the sky, or atleast what passed for sunlight here. The sky wasn’t quite blue. More of a shifting, purplish gray filtered through thick clouds, casting strange shadows over the clearing. The jungle hissed softly around her. She sipped water from her hands at the pond’s edge and ignored the reflection staring back at her.

  “You are still here,” she whispered. “That counts for something.”

  She stood back up, cracked her knuckles, and looked toward the forest.

  “Guess time to continue on.”

  She moved carefully through the underbrush,t he tail blade tucked loosely against her shoulder and her shirt bag tied around her hip like a crude satchel. The clearing faded behind her, swallowed up by the trees. Sun light, strange sun light, streamed faintly through gaps in the canopy aove, casting shifting shadows that made it difficult to tell the time of day. Her breath stayed low in her throat. Controlled. Measured.

  She wasn’t hunting. Not yet. Just gathering, scouting, checking the surroundings. The jungle breathed around her. Not even just metaphorically, it actually breathed. The trees exhaled faint mist. The ferns seemed to sway without breeze. Even the moss beneath her boots gave a strange, faintly damp pulse.

  A low chirping warble echoed from the north. She stilled. Not a predator’s call.

  “Hopefully.” She hummed. Her head turned, brushing past a tree with a bark that peeled like soft paper. Something caught her eye.

  A scrap of fabric.

  She froze.

  It was snagged ona high branch, perhaps seven feet up. Too far high up for it to land by accident. Dark green cloth, torn in a ragged rip.

  She stepped closer, heart kicking up into her throat. THe branch was bent slightly, weight warped, the faintest crack along its length. She followed its curve, and there in the loam below, was a footbrpint.

  Small. Bare. Human.

  She dropped into a crouch, ignoring her knee barked in protest. It hadn’t been long. She was no tracker, not by any means, but she knew enough to tell that this should have washed away. She could still see the impression of individual toes. Barely sinking into the ground.

  “Hello?” she called, but softly. Too softly for anyone to hear beyond the tree line. Her gingers gripping the blade more tightly. Only the jungle answered. A low rustle. A distant thrum. Then silent again.

  She stood, brushing her fingers over the torn fabric. The edges were clean. Synthetic weave at the very least. She pulled it loose and turned it over in her hands. Carrying a faint scent of sweat.

  The quiet now felt heavy.

  Her mind flashed unbidden to the terminal. Her mother tightening her scarf. Her father’s hand on her shoulder. Ethan’s stupid half smirk as he said goodbye. That small, everyday warmth of family now gone. It was stripped and buried under leaves and moss.

  She looked down at the scrap in her hand and folded it, sliding it into her make shift bag.

  She made her way slowly back home, her eyes attentive to the surroundings and shifting from left to right as she kept going forward. Her haul dragged behind her ont he chitin shell, as her bag was filled to the brim.

  The lean to looked sturdier now in the deepening violet light, though still humble. The glow of the twin moons filtered through the thick canopy in strands of lilac and pale green, casting ever shifting shadows over the camp. Small spores drifted idly through the clearing, their bioluminescent light reflecting off the water.

  Liara sat beneath the low overhang, her knees drawn up, her makeshift blade resting across her lap. She’d added a few more broad leaves to the roof and repacked her shirt bag to keep things organized. She’d even reinforced the wall with a few flat stones from the pond’s edge. Little things add up. Things she could control.

  The shelter creaked softly in the humid air. Not much protection, but it held. That counted.

  She’d done what she could today. Rebuilt. Foraged. Reclaimed some sense of rhythm, even if it was all duct taped together with luck and panic. Her fingers still bore small cuts. Her back ached. But she hadn’t broken. She’d make it yet another day.

  The System chimed softly, a now familiar presence that she still wasn’t entirely used to.

  She stared at it in silence.

  No explanation of what functioning meant. No blueprint. Just a vague benchmark and an uncaring reminder. Still, the words meant she was doing something right. That helped. Even if it was small.

  “Guess that’s your way of saying good job,” she muttered, watching the glowing box dissolve. “Thanks for the update, Big Brother,” She muttered dryly, rubbing her eyes. “Guess that makes me the little sister trying to survive summer camp.”

  She shifted her weight, letting her gaze drift across the clearing. Her eyes caught on the green cloth she’d found earlier, now stitched awkwardly to one of the inner support beams. A small flutter of color in the dim.

  She didn’t know who it had belonged to. She might never know.

  But someone else had passed this way. Someone had run, bled, or both. She wasn’t the first. Maybe not even the most lost.

  That was terrifying.

  But it was also…grounding.

  “I hope you made it,” she said quietly. “Wherever you were headed.”

  She closed her eyes for a long moment, letting the jungle sounds seep into her thoughts. The low buzz of insects, the distant clicking of some creatures in the trees. Not friendly sounds, but not immediate threats either. Just…the sound of a world that didn’t know or care who she was.

  She could work with that.

  Her thoughts wandered to the strange glow that had poured from her hands yesterday. The vines that had risen like hands. The warmth that followed when she pushed her will into the world.

  Organic Mage.

  It still felt absurd. Like she’d woken up in the middle of someone else’s game.

  And yet. She was still here.

  She drew a shaky breath, clenched the handle of her blade just to feel something solid and whispered. “Day one survived.”

  It was the first time she’d admitted to herself that this was more than just a fluke or dream. She ignored the wetness at the edges of her eyes.

  She didn’t know how many more days she’d get. But she’d make them count.