She didn’t wait for an answer. Her mount surged forward with a growl and a spray of gravel, leaving me standing alone in the chaos, ears ringing, breath shaking.

  There was no plan.

  And I was thinking that damn crow made extra sure there wouldn’t be. No clever loophole. No secret exploit. No god-blessed debug menu.

  I pulled up my interface. Status Screen. That was it. No chat. No party tab. No logout button.

  That one stung.

  Just a plain status panel, floating like a middle finger in my face. Two skills. Level: Zero. No weapon. No class. No perks. Just Charlie.

  And all around me? Tents crackling like kindling, bodies strewn like forgotten loot, and screams that didn’t fade. I glanced toward her, my captor, just in time to watch her lift her hand in a flare of fire.

  The chief never stood a chance. One burst of magic, and his body was swallowed in flames. He didn’t even scream. Just whoomph, and gone.

  Brutal. Efficient.

  She kind of reminded me of Dmitry.

  “Alright, girly,” she said, voice practically purring as she rode up. She reined the beast to a halt with one sharp tug and slid off. “Hands forward,” she ordered, her boots thudding close.

  Didn’t matter.

  The whole thing felt like a fever dream with a vengeance patch. So I obeyed.

  Slowly, I raised my hands, fingers trembling despite myself. Her gauntlet caught the light as she reached out, and in a blink, cold metal snapped shut around my wrists.

  The cuffs weren’t just metal. They hummed. A low resonance, like chimes underwater. She pressed two fingers to the runes on the surface, and the magic responded instantly.

  A shimmer rolled through the cuffs.

  I stared at the words until they faded, like they might change if I blinked hard enough.

  “Good girl,” she cackled, and with the strength of someone who clearly didn’t skip upper body day, she yanked me clean off the ground and up onto her mount.

  The beast snarled beneath me, heat rising off its hide like coals. I clung to the saddle’s side brace; the cuffs biting against my skin as we rode, away from the camp, from the smoke, from any illusion of control.

  Welcome to Rimelion, Charlie. Population: screwed.

  We rode through the steppe.

  This was a real steppe, endless, untamed around the edges. Yellow-brown grasses bowed under the wind like they were too tired to stand, stretching in all directions with only the occasional lone tree clawing at the sky.

  The ground was cracked and dry in places, soft and spongy in others, the kind of terrain that made wagons rattle and beasts groan. Far ahead, the land rose into low hills and we left looming moutains behind us.

  Our formation was a textbook slaver.

  Dame Karzi, the knight-commander of this cheerful band of doom, led the march at the front, reins in one hand, me perched on the saddle like an accessory she looted off a quest boss. Behind us rumbled the wagons… reinforced, with bars and runes glowing faintly against the wood.

  Wagons were full of people. Some pressed to the bars. Some silent. Some still crying.

  Scattered around us were mounted riders. Not on horses. Of course not.

  Wolves.

  Huge, muscled, unnervingly intelligent wolves, their paws barely making a sound on the dry grass. And each rider? Wearing carved wooden wolf masks. Not enchanted. Just aesthetic. But the vibes? Full cosplay.

  I cringed so hard I nearly sprained something.

  Karzi Wolves.

  That’s what they were called. Karzi. Wolves.

  I had to bite my lip for a solid minute just to keep from making a noise.

  They even howled. For fun.

  No formation signal. No war cry. Just a bunch of grown-ass wolf-enjoyers yelling at the sky like they were trying to impress a full moon.

  We rode until midday, until the sun turned mean, and the steppe started baking under its weight.

  The air shimmered in the distance, dry as over-baked bread, and the wind tasted like dust and dead grass. Eventually, the howling idiots decided to break for camp, parking their wagon zoo in a rough circle and starting fires that popped and snapped like impatient fingers.

  They started cooking… something. It smelled vaguely edible. Spices, some oil. Maybe some kind of meat. But that wasn’t for us… the cargo. The caged.

  Except me.

  Apparently, I was special.

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  The dame, Dame Karzi, fireball queen and part-time war criminal, sat beside me on a flattened patch of steppe like we were having a casual picnic. She leaned on one arm, watching her pack of cosplay rejects bark at the sky, and with each howl, she joined them like it was karaoke night at the murder bar.

  She looked so pleased.

  “Girly,” she said, slurping soup straight from the side of a rough wooden bowl, no spoon in sight, “aren’t you curious?”

  “Yes,” I said immediately. Learned that lesson fast. Saying no to Karzi didn’t mean negotiation. It meant pain. I had the half-healed shoulder wound to prove it. “I’m curious, Dame Karzi.”

  She beamed. “Why we’re wolves? What I’ll do with you?” She giggled at her own joke, messy and unhinged. Then took another savage gulp from the bowl, using her hand to shove something solid and wet into her mouth with all the grace of a tavern brawl. Bits of broth clung to her gauntlet, glinting in the light.

  I nodded, eyes carefully skimming the trampled grass around us. Thankfully dry, not mud. That would put them on my list. Small mercies. “Why wolves?”

  “What do you know about Altandai?” she asked. She tossed her bowl aside with a flick of her wrist. It landed upside down, soup splattering like blood across the grass. She didn’t even glance at it. Just leaned closer and poured herself another helping from the communal pot.

  Then shoved the full bowl in front of me.

  “You can eat too!” she said, voice chipper, like she was offering me tea and cookies.

  “Thank you,” I muttered, crawling to my knees. I tried not to think about it as I leaned in and started sipping straight from the rim. Warm. Greasy. Heavy with salt and something stringy that might’ve been meat. It wasn’t bad, but the humiliation tasted stronger.

  Like an animal. Or a slave. Or just a girl playing survivor while sitting in a wolf’s den. But hey, Karzi had eaten the same way. No utensils, no rules. Maybe this was equality? Yay?

  “Altandai,” I returned to the previous subject. “Is… a city where everything is legal? Millions smacked haphazardly. A great lake, full of… drugs.”

  I tried to make my voice sound like an encyclopedia entry, all calm and academic. Failed. But at least I didn’t sound terrified.

  Karzi let out a bark of laughter that nearly knocked her off her haunches. “You know it! Girly, you are so smart!” she sang, like I’d just passed her personal IQ test. “Yes, yes, I swindled some fancy lordling once, just ‘cause he looked at me wrong. Paid with a few slaves and got his whole damn townhouse.”

  She slapped her thigh like it was the punchline of the century. I didn’t blink. “I’ll be offloading you there,” she added, casual as anything. “So you be patient, little slave. Don’t run. Don’t bite. I’m a dame, and you?” She smiled wide, almost warmly. “You’re company I appreciate.”

  I smiled back. Tight. “Honored.”

  She grinned. “My father was a wolf spirit,” she declared suddenly, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. “So I carry the blood of wolves!”

  Then she howled again, head tilted toward the sun like she was expecting a moon to show up out of spite.

  And the others howled back.

  A whole pack of lunatics, dancing around fires, clanging their metal gear together like it meant something. Like it proved anything.

  “Everyone here has a wolf’s blood, girly!” she laughed. “It’s what binds us!”

  I looked around at the masked riders circling like predators too full to kill, at the cages, the smoke, the casual horror, and nodded.

  I’m adding this group on my genocide list.

  We travelled the whole day and only broke camp once the night fell. I even got time to relieve myself… under the watchful gaze of a wolf girl. Not exactly my idea of privacy, but better than what the poor souls in the cage had.

  Apparently, I’d earned the privilege of sleeping in the entrance tent of the Dame herself. Not her tent, mind you. The tent leading to her tent. A glorified mudroom for war criminals.

  It was a whole convoluted setup, but she kept calling herself an alpha, so I shut off my brain and nodded like a good little wolfcub. “Girly,” she grunted, throwing me down. But hey, the floor was padded with leathers. “Sleep here. Don’t run.”

  That was it. A hospitality.

  She left me alone. Not unguarded. There were sentries on one side and her very self on the other, but alone enough. And that? That was the kind of opportunity a freshly minted slave dreamed about. Or, you know, exactly the kind of bait a certain crow god might leave dangling.

  “Didn’t think I’d go with it, huh?” I muttered to the floppy, half-torn roof above me. Wouldn’t stop a breeze, let alone rain. But whatever. “Be obedient,” I whispered. Then smiled. “But not forever. Goodnight, mysterious crow god, whose name starts with an S.”

  The moment I closed my eyes and drifted toward sleep, something yanked. Not my body. My soul. Like someone had grabbed it by the collar and dragged it through divine fire again.

  “I hate you,” I managed to shout at the nothingness, right before I got unceremoniously flushed back into the real world.

  With a sharp crack of flame, I was back on the throne.

  No ceremony this time. Just a single priest sitting cross-legged on the floor, mid-prayer. He blinked up at me like I’d just dropped in from orbit.

  “Sister! You return!” His grin lit up. “And… different!” His eyes went wide.

  I looked down. Still had the same clothes on, including that ridiculous jacket. “What do you mean, different?”

  “Here!” He pointed to a mirror leaned up against one of the far pillars.

  It wasn’t there before.

  I shrugged, stood, and padded across the stone floor barefoot.

  I stopped in front of the mirror and stared at the blue screen. Then at my reflection.

  Blue hair. Pointed ears. Tanned skin that definitely wasn’t mine before. Same jacket, sure. But the rest?

  I stared at the screen. Then back to my ridiculous-but-amazing eyes.

  Then the screen.

  Then my absurdly cute frame.

  Then the screen again.

  Then—

  “Damn,” I said, still staring at myself.

  My reflection blinked back, blue hair tousled from divine combustion, pointed ears peeking through the mess like they’d always been there. My skin had this subtle tan now, like I’d moisturized with starlight. Same clothes, yes. But the vibe?

  Whole new patch notes.

  “How long was I out?” I asked, still halfway hypnotized by the mirror.

  “It’s been more than half a day, sister,” the priest replied, his voice calm, like divine burning was just another afternoon. “You should return home and reflect upon the changes. After the ritual, we are… tired. But the divine fire is endless. Especially with your success.” He bowed slightly from his sitting position, then folded his hands again. “We will be ready to receive you… perhaps in a week?”

  Then, just like that, he dropped back into prayer mode. No follow-up. No goodbye. Just rerouting his brain straight to Saevrin’s inbox.

  I stared at him for a moment.

  “It checks out,” I muttered to myself, rubbing my temple. “Time flows the same. Great. But why a week? What, is there divine cool-down now?”

  He didn’t respond.

  I leaned in slightly. “Do I need, I dunno, a god-mandated checkup? Sacred diagnostics? A taste test?” Still nothing. The man was deeper in his crow god playlist than I could reach. “This is weird,” I said flatly, straightening up. “You’re weird.”

  He didn’t flinch.

  I sighed, turned, and made my way toward the alcove where Jerry waited like a forgotten smartwatch exhibit.

  Outside, the air hit me like I’d stepped into a half-forgotten dream.

  The sun was… off. Dimmed down to, like, five percent brightness. Just enough to ghost light across the path and let shadows stretch wherever they pleased. Cool wind stirred my hair, tugged at my clothes like it wanted to be noticed. Everything was too quiet, like the world had paused for a breath and just… never exhaled.

  I spotted my heels near the edge of the stairs, lying exactly where I’d kicked them off. I slid them back on with a practiced wobble.

  But the path ahead?

  Shadow-drenched. No stars. No birdsong. Just the faint rustle of the sacred meadow and that ever-present scent of incense and burnt stone clinging to everything.

  “Cool,” I muttered, stepping forward into the gloom. “Now to find my way home like some blue-haired elf who just escaped the world’s quietest cult.”

  I paused and glanced down at my heels. “I knew foot magic was weird.”