The night was moonless, and a chilly drizzle pattered softly from the heavens. Raindrops fell with quiet persistence, striking earth and stone along the riverside, washing away the blood that stained the mud. A faint metallic tang hung in the air.

  At the bottom of a deep and narrow gorge, a swift current surged through the center of the ravine, its rushing roar echoing endlessly between the cliffs. On one side loomed a sheer rock face, while the other sloped steeply downward. From cracks in the stone and patches of mud, hardy shrubs and twisted trees clung to life, reaching toward the open sky. Where the slope began to ease into a gentler incline, it formed a muddy floodpin—and upon that stretch of riverbank, a grisly tragedy had unfolded.

  Several carriage bodies y overturned, their wheels half-submerged in the muck. The bodies of men and horses were scattered haphazardly across the scene, limbs bent at impossible angles. Dark blood flowed from gaping wounds, diluted by the rain before being carried off by the rushing river. The dead wore expressions frozen in fear and agony, as if their terror had been captured in the final moments of their lives.

  It was a picture of silent carnage—blood and rain, death and stillness. No sign of life remained.

  —Or so it appeared.

  Near the edge of the riverbank, one overturned carriage had been stopped from sliding into the water only by the reins snagged on a jutting rock. Inside, a girl y slumped against the vertical seat, eyes closed, unmoving.

  She looked to be around thirteen. Her pin dress of brown and white was soaked through, and her cloth shoes and short socks were caked with grime. Blood stained much of her body, and yet she still breathed. Silvery white hair spilled neatly down past her shoulders, glimmering faintly even in the dim light. Her delicate, peaceful face was stained with red—blood that had flowed from a wound hidden beneath her bangs on the right side of her forehead.

  Like everything else in this tragic scene, the girl remained eerily still, as though she were just another corpse.

  Until—A faint twitch pulled at her brow.

  No one knew how much time had passed before the silence was broken by the slightest breath beneath her nose. Then her chest began to rise and fall again, ever so faintly, each breath a little stronger than the st.

  “…Haaah…”

  Her brow furrowed tightly in pain, and her small hand slowly reached up to touch her injured forehead.

  ‘Ugh… it hurts… So cold… Was I having a nightmare? Did I fall off the bed?’

  Confused thoughts swirled in her mind like mist. As the pain in her head gradually dulled, her senses began to clear. She could think—if only a little.

  ‘Is it raining outside? Why do I hear running water? There’s no river near my house… Is someone washing the ground with a hose this early in the morning?’

  Perplexed, she slowly opened her eyes. Scarlet-red irises stared into the darkness. Her vision was murky at first, but after a few moments, her eyes adjusted enough to take in the narrow space around her.

  And then—

  She froze.

  Directly across from her, slumped against the opposite vertical seat, was the lifeless body of a woman. Jagged shards of gss from the shattered window jutted from the woman’s throat. Her canvas dress was soaked in blood, her eyes wide open in a final expression of sheer terror. Though her soul had long since fled, the look of horror in her gaze seemed to pierce straight into the girl's heart.

  “…Hhhiisss…”

  A sharp breath escaped the girl’s lips. An instinctive, primal fear of death surged through her. All other thoughts—questions, confusion, even pain—vanished, swallowed by cold dread.

  She moved before she could think, scrambling to her feet—

  Thunk!

  “Ah—ow!”

  She smacked her head against the low carriage roof with a loud thud. Hunched over and clutching her forehead, she looked around frantically, her breathing ragged.

  Trapped.

  She was trapped in a tiny space.

  With a corpse.

  The realization sent a fresh wave of panic crashing over her. Desperately, she reached out, hands groping along the walls until they found what felt like a door above her. She pushed with all her strength.

  Click—creak—

  The door gave way.

  Not wasting a second, she scrambled out of the wrecked carriage and into the cold rain.

  ‘What the hell?! What is this pce? What happened here?’

  ‘Why— why are there corpses?! Did someone drag me into a haunted house while I was sleeping or something? What kind of sick prank is this? Who even has time to pull something like this off?!’

  Still overwhelmed with confusion, the girl struggled to climb out of the wrecked carriage. But the moment she made it to the rain-soaked riverside, she froze in pce.

  The carnage stretched far beyond what she had seen inside.

  There were more bodies—humans and horses alike. The coppery stench of blood clung to the air, too thick for the rain to wash away. Several more carriages y overturned along the bank. One still had a gas ntern swinging at its front, its flickering fme casting a dim, wavering light through the rain-soaked darkness. One of the wheels was still turning slowly, as if the carriage had only recently come to a stop.

  “…What… What the hell is this…”

  She stared in disbelief, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  ‘If this really is some kind of prank… isn’t it a little too much? There’s no way someone went this far just to mess with me… right?’

  Fear and confusion tightened in her chest like a vice. She bit her lip, then shook her head violently.

  “Don’t panic… just… calm down. Assess the situation first…”

  She was trying—really trying—to keep her composure, but before she could get her thoughts in order, a sharp pain stabbed through her skull.

  “Ghk—!”

  She clutched her head again, groaning. Then—

  A torrent of images, thoughts, memories that weren’t her own, surged into her mind all at once. Her consciousness reeled, her sense of self thrown into chaos.

  “Haah… Haaah…”

  Teeth clenched, she stumbled toward the nearest carriage for support. She gripped the sideboard hard, trying not to colpse. Her breathing came in ragged bursts as her mind spun—and slowly, painfully, the noise in her head began to settle. The pain dulled. The confusion receded.

  And then came understanding.

  She wasn’t the girl who had originally lived in this body.

  Or rather—her soul wasn’t.

  She had crossed over.

  “…So this isn’t some eborate prank… It’s a… transmigration?”

  Still gasping for breath, the girl finally grasped the truth of her situation.

  The soul now inhabiting this body was from a completely different world—a modern world. And this girl—this body—was named Dorothy.

  Through the fragments of memory that had just fused into her mind, she saw Dorothy’s life unfold:

  A simple vilge girl, born in a remote countryside settlement. Her father had been a hunter, but he died in a hunting accident when she was young. Her mother had vanished soon after. Dorothy and her older brother—her only remaining family—had been taken in by a kind-hearted retive: Aunt Hannah, a woman who had once been her father's cousin.

  Dorothy had grown up quietly, gracefully. Her unusual silver hair and crimson eyes marked her as different, but she was loved by the vilgers. Smart, helpful, and obedient, she often lent a hand to adults with chores and errands.

  She had even been sent to study at the chapel in town, learning to read and write—skills rare in a pce like theirs. By the time she was in her early teens, Dorothy was already one of the few literate people in her vilge. She often helped others write or read letters.

  Her brother, six years older than her, had left the vilge at sixteen. Their nd had been seized to make room for grazing livestock, so—like many other young vilgers—he went to the city to work. He was gone for three years, but just recently, he had written to say that he'd found a good job, and could finally afford a decent pce to live. He wanted to bring Dorothy to live with him in the city.

  Overjoyed, Dorothy had packed her things and said goodbye to the vilge. She boarded the first carriage bound for the city.

  —And then, it had all gone horribly wrong.

  The caravan was attacked by bandits.

  Back at the base of the ravine, still holding her aching temples, the new Dorothy processed the grim reality. Her gaze slowly turned to the steep slope nearby. Debris—bags, clothing, supplies—was still hanging off broken branches and scattered across the rocks.

  The memories made it clear: the caravan had been ambushed while crossing through the mountains. In the chaos of the chase, the carriages had veered off the road and tumbled down the slope.

  Looking around now… it didn’t seem like anyone else had survived.

  Not a soul.

  In Dorothy’s final, panicked memories, she remembered the shouts of bandits… and the roars of beasts. Screaming horses. A world turning upside down. Then—a sharp pain at her forehead. After that, nothing.

  “Haaah… Poor girl. She was finally about to start a better life in the city, and then this happens…”

  Dorothy sighed, genuinely moved by the tragedy. But then—her face froze.

  “—Wait. Girl?!”

  Suddenly realizing something horrifying, she thrust a hand downward, reaching between her legs.

  She groped around for several awkward seconds—and found nothing.

  Her face twisted.

  “…It’s gone. It’s really gone…”

  “I’m Dorothy. Dorothy is a girl. I— I turned into a girl?!”

  She stood there in stunned silence, her eyes wide, her expression utterly bnk. The cold drizzle kept falling, soaking through her clothes, but she couldn’t even feel it. Her brain had simply stopped.

  And just then—something snapped her back to reality.

  “Oi! Over here! We found the wreckage!”

  “Boss! This way!”

  Voices. Male, loud, and far too close.

  Dorothy’s heart lurched in her chest.

  She turned in the direction the shouts had come from—and sure enough, she could see them. Flickers of firelight glimmered in the darkness beyond the riverside. Lanterns. They were swaying, growing closer with every second.

  The bandits.

  They’d come down into the ravine. Probably looking for loot. Now they were sweeping the area—and heading straight for her.

  Dorothy’s expression tightened.

  No more time to freak out.

  She quickly crouched and scurried behind one of the overturned carriages.

  ‘Shit. They’re coming down to scavenge whatever they can. These aren’t just thieves—they’re cutthroats. If I don’t get out of here fast, I’m dead.’

  Frantically, she scanned her surroundings, looking for any chance of escape.

  But no luck.

  Because of the rain, the river had swollen. The pces where she might have escaped were now submerged under fast-moving water. The slope behind her was steep and treacherous—no way to climb it, not in this weather.

  The only path out was in the direction those torchlights were coming from.

  Which meant—any attempt to run that way would lead her right into the arms of the bandits.

  ‘Damn it— is this a dead end?!’

  Realizing just how bad her situation was, Dorothy’s chest tightened with panic. She briefly considered just colpsing and pretending to be dead—maybe she could trick them?

  But just as that thought crossed her mind—

  A voice spoke in her head.

  It wasn’t human. It had no warmth, no emotion. It wasn’t male or female—it was both and neither, like a thousand whispering mouths speaking in unison just beneath her consciousness.

  “Soul integration complete… Link established…”

  “Offer knowledge… Receive knowledge…”

  “…What the hell?”

  Startled, Dorothy blinked and shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts.

  ‘What the hell was that? That voice—it was inside my head. Am I losing it? Or wait… could this be…?’

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘A system?! Is this one of those cssic isekai cheats that show up when you reincarnate?!’

  The thought came out of nowhere, but it made sense. As crazy as everything had been so far, this might just be the thing that saved her.

  Her heart still pounded from the incoming danger—but now, there was a glimmer of hope.

  If this “system” could offer knowledge… maybe, just maybe, she could find a way out of this.

  If this really is one of those isekai stories… then there’s got to be some kind of system cheat, right?

  Maybe I can use it to fight off the bandits!

  With that desperate hope, Dorothy shut her eyes tightly, almost like she was praying. In her heart, she called out—trying to reach that so-called “system.”

  Whoever—or whatever—you are, if you’re the one who spoke to me just now— please, give me some kind of power! Anything!

  The cold, alien voice responded almost instantly:

  “Power… is knowledge. Sacrifice knowledge of this world… to receive knowledge of another.”

  Dorothy’s eyes widened. So this ‘power’ comes at a cost?

  And the currency was… knowledge?

  ‘Wait, what kind of knowledge do I even have that’s worth trading?’

  As if answering her thoughts directly, the emotionless voice returned again:

  “Current most valuable knowledge… consists of nguage and writing.”

  “Language and writing…?”

  Dorothy furrowed her brow.

  Of course. In the memories of the body she now inhabited, this was the one thing the original Dorothy had taken pride in—her ability to read and write.

  Raised in a rural vilge, literacy was a rare skill. Most vilgers had never even seen a book, let alone written a letter. But Dorothy had studied hard at the local chapel, and among the children of the vilge, she stood out.

  In a society like this—one that had an armingly high illiteracy rate—nguage was power. Words were worth their weight in gold.

  So the system wants to convert that into… power?

  Whatever. No time to second-guess. It’s now or never.

  Dorothy clenched her fists and took a shaky breath. In her heart, she called out again:

  ‘I offer up all the knowledge I have about nguage and writing— In exchange, give me the power to survive this!’

  No sooner had the thought left her mind than the voice returned:

  “Prittish nguage. Full grammar structure. Active vocabury: 3,027 words. Proficient in reading and writing.”

  “Confirmed. Exchanging…”

  Suddenly, Dorothy felt her mind swell—as if something foreign was being injected directly into her brain.

  It wasn’t a memory.

  It wasn’t from her past life.

  And it didn’t belong to the original Dorothy, either.

  It was knowledge.

  A new kind of knowledge. Alien. Dangerous.

  In front of her eyes—though whether it was real or an illusion, she couldn’t say—symbols began to shimmer into view. Mysterious, ancient characters, burning with a strange, inner fire.

  They were jagged and wild, full of primal power. They looked like they’d been cwed into the very stone of the world by some ancient beast.

  “Dragon Language. The Way of the Voice. Three Words unlocked.”