"Here you have it, one of our best one-handed silver blades," Sora remarked with a forced smile on her face, offering the last weapon in her forge to the knight clanking in full armor.
The man snatched the blade from her grasp, offering a soft but rude "Thank you" before tossing a pouch of what was thought to be gold coins at her feet. Sora scooped up the payment from the floor without hesitation, and before she could raise her head to confront him, he had already exited the forge.
Sora shrugged at this act—even disdain felt like generosity these days—but her lips twitched downward as she peered inside.
Silver. Again.
She exhaled sharply at yet another scam. Not that she could do anything about it; the knight was already gone by the time she pocketed the silver coins. Moisture beaded along her cropped brown hair as she swiped a forearm across her brow, amber eyes dulled by exhaustion's relentless siege. Taking her grime-streaked apron off, she revealed a strong, defined physique hugged by a fitted workwear vest stained from the harsh conditions and the smoke escaping from the furnace behind her, the neckline dipping just enough to hint at curves hardened by labor.
"Another connoisseur of fine overpayment,"
she muttered dryly, clearly showing a sign of sarcasm before putting an end to the flames in the furnace with a bucket of water, then making her way into her small wooden home just opposite the forge. She locked the door, bringing another day of weapon sales to an end.
Another day survived. Another tomorrow guaranteed.
The thought was exhausting, but in order to make a living, she had to work hard—being the only skilled craftswoman in TitanForge, a city where twenty percent of the population consisted of warriors who constantly needed the finest metal weapons to fight their battles.
Talent, though, couldn't shield her from skeptics or lechers. The armored knight wasn't the first to indirectly—or directly—scorn her craft, nor the worst she'd endured.
Memories flickered as she slumped into her dining chair: a client years prior, his "admiration" curdling into demands she rebuffed with red-hot tongs. His snarled threats still hissed in her mind—photographic recall was a cursed gift.
But such troubles paled against the gnawing ache she carried.
"If only I were a knight," she whispered, voice frayed with longing.
Once, she'd dreamed of charging into battle, a hero sworn to shield humanity from claws and fangs. Now, that girl's ambition felt like a stranger's tale. Fate's cruelty had coiled around her dreams, leaving her stranded between anvil and ashes.
A groan escaped her as she dropped her forehead onto the wooden table. Above her, the candle's flame trembled like a captive spirit, its light warring with the shadows cast by the night's indifferent breeze.
Sora lingered at the table for what seemed like another hour, her cheek pressed against the wooden surface until her eyelids finally surrendered to the stress. Before she knew it, she drifted into a deep slumber, leaving the midnight candle to burn out, its wax pooling like molten regret.
Hours passed by quickly, almost as if time itself had broken the laws of reality. Sora jerked upright as if yanked by invisible chains, lungs heaving in ragged bursts. This was not her dining room. Cold leaves and soil clung to her palms where polished wood should have been. She scrambled to her feet, pulse roaring in her ears.
Her breaths came in ragged gasps, confusion thick. She was sure she had fallen asleep in her home, but now she was somewhere entirely different. Around her stretched an endless field of what looked like rice, swaying violently under the force of harsh winds. The breeze lashed against her face, so strong it distorted her features, and despite the sky being a starless body lit by no sun, it was unnervingly visible.
Trying to make sense of her surroundings, her gaze landed on a figure standing not too far away—a man draped in a black cloak, his entire form concealed except for the golden rod he clutched in his hand.
Maybe he could aid her! she thought, and without hesitation, she rushed toward him.
"Hey! Kind sir, please, I need your help! Do you know where this is?" she called out, hurrying toward the mysterious man, whose back remained turned to her.
Her words died as a shimmering orange, translucent square resembling a glass tablet materialized before her, floating midair.
"What is this?" Sora muttered, eyes widening as she read the text displayed on it:
[You have been chosen as a Crafter to participate in this system. Do you agree?]
"What… sorcery is this?" she hissed, recoiling. The air itself seemed to curdle, the field rippling like water struck by a pebble. The cloaked man dissolved into the warping horizon as the ground buckled beneath her.
Reality fractured before her eyes. The rice stalks bent into spirals, the sky collapsed inward like it was pulled by a force. Sora staggered, knees hitting the dirt as her vision splintered into static and blur.
The world dissolved in shards of light and darkness, but Sora's gaze remained locked onto the disintegrating tablet. Its orange glow dimmed, the symbols that had translated into words bleeding into nothingness. Her voice slipped out thinly:
"Yes…"
Sora's words hung as her body went weightless, her hair lashing her face as the world around her reduced to nothingness, now an aftermath of geometric nightmares.
Sora jolted awake a second time, this time to the cream of her own bed frame, the musty scent of home clogging her lungs. Her bedroom. Familiar, yet wrong—this wasn't where she had last been.
She sat upright, the sheets tangled at her hips, chest heaving in heavy, ragged gasps as if she'd outrun death itself. Sweat pooled from her body, leaving the sheets damp.
She was naked.
She froze as she realized, fingers clutching at her bare skin where her clothes should've been. No memory of stripping. No proof or logic explaining this predicament. Had she sleepwalked? Thrown her garments into the flames in some fevered trance?
Or could it have been that someone—or something—carried her there? The question hissed in her mind, unanswered.
But relief flooded her anyway, as much as the sweat flooded the sheets. The dry rice field. The cloaked specter. The collapsing sky—all was nothing more than a dream. She collapsed back onto the pillow, laughter fraying into a cold shudder. Home. Safe, at last.
That was all that mattered.
And yet, the dream still lingered in the very essence of her mind.
The shimmering orange translucent tablet burned in her mind's eye—so vivid, so sharp it bled into the waking world, making it feel more real than reality itself. Its message pulsed with a searing and undeniable serenity:
[You have been chosen as a ChaosCrafter...]
Yes. That was the memory clawing its way through her mind. That was it, right?
No. It couldn't have been.
A cold dread settled in her chest, a sign of correction hissing through her like a blade as realization struck her like a bolt of red lightning. The dream's message had been different—wildly different.
She screamed, terror clawing at her throat—raw and primal—as she jerked backward, tumbling off the bed and landing on the floorboards with a loud thud, her bare skin meeting the cold wood—right where her discarded clothing lay.
Pain spiked, but it was drowned by the fear thrashing in her chest. Now the translucent tablet was before her—in the waking world—and no matter how she crawled back, trying to get away, it stayed, attached like it was a part of her.
"Stay away from me," she warned, grabbing anything she could find and hurling it across the room toward the square, but it did nothing.
At first, she believed it was still a dream, a figment of her subconscious. But it was barely a dream—no matter how much she struck herself on the face, the tablet remained. Now she was forced to the wall, knees drawn to her chest as she shielded herself from what she thought was a threat—but it never moved.
She slowly raised her head from the confines of her thigh and arm, slowly glancing at the strange object that floated midair before her. She took in a few deep breaths, then stood up—and the tablet followed her movement.
This time, she took the time to carefully read what was engraved on the tablet.
"A Crafter…?" The word slithered out, tasting alien on her tongue. What madness had her subconscious conjured? Knighthood was her abandoned fantasy, not some spectral riddle.
A shiver trailed her spine just from the thought of what this could be. But she had no choice but to find out.
She delicately pressed her fingertip to the tablet's surface, and in a breath, the words dissolved like sand in a wave, rearranging into cryptic symbols that swarmed the screen. Though their meaning slithered just beyond her grasp, fragments of understanding pierced the chaos—a paradox of clarity amid the storm, as if the text whispered secrets in a language both alien and intimately hers.
—Status—
• Crafter: Sora
• Level: 1
• Class: ???
• Title: ???
• Main Quest: Craft weapons to earn Craftpoints…
• Special Points: 0
• LifePoints: 100
• Strength: 200+
• Agility: 50+
• Speed: 90+
• Durability: 100+
Sora scanned the text, her mind tangled in a labyrinth of symbols that defied logic, yet prickled with half-formed meaning. A sharp rap at the door shattered the spell—she jolted, suddenly aware of her disheveled state.
The shimmering tablet dissolved, retreating back to wherever it had emerged.