Origin Witch - Waking on Cold Straw
Five years, three months, and eleven days. That was how long Corinne had not felt her legs. Grease glued her bangs to her forehead in a stiff, jagged clump. Outside the unlatched window frame, the night air smelled of stagnant cabbage water, wet rust, and the metallic tang of exhaust drifting from the boulevard four blocks north. She couldn’t feel her legs. She hadn’t felt them in five years, three months, and eleven days. But the damp chill of the slum floorboards climbed up her spine all the same, settling into her marrow like powdered ice.
She lay flat on a cot welded from mismatched galvanized steel pipes. Through a thumb-sized gap in the rotten wallboards, her eyes stayed fixed on one point in the dark sky: a crimson obstruction beacon blinking rhythmically atop a sixty-story glass tower on the wealthy side of the canal.
Five years earlier, a drunk nineteen-year-old with a trust fund and a three-ton German SUV had crossed the yellow median at eighty miles an hour. Her parents died before the seatbelts could snap their collarbones. Corinne woke in intensive care with her L3 vertebra crushed into white gravel. The heir walked out of the courtroom with two years of unsupervised probation and a court-ordered rehab stint. Her aunt and uncle had volunteered to manage the insurance payout and the settlement fund, weeping into handkerchiefs at her bedside. For four years they played the devoted guardians, slowly moving the cash into offshore shell accounts while leaving Corinne in a private care facility. Then came the primary doctor and his chief orderly. Three days ago, when the last bank account hit a zero balance, the doctor signed a discharge slip citing unexplained recovery, and the orderly hauled her out the back door in a laundry hamper, tossed her into the bed of a rusted pickup, and dumped her here.
An abandoned squatter shack in the Sector 9 drainage ditch. No running water. No lock on the door.
“You’ll be bone-dry before the landlord remembers he owns the dirt,” the orderly had muttered, wiping tobacco juice from his chin as he tossed her onto the pipe-frame cot.
Seventy-two hours. Her tongue felt like a strip of salted hide stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her lips were cracked deep enough to bleed, but her blood was too thick to run.
“You won,” she rasped. The sound was like two dry shingles grinding together.
Footsteps squelched in the mud outside. Heavy, uneven boots. Someone kicked the bottom of the unlatched door, sending a shower of dried mud flakes across the floorboards.
“You sure this is the spot?” a voice growled from the dark. Low, raspy, heavy with cheap tobacco. “The latch is off.”
“Told you, man,” a second voice twitched out, higher, nervous, fast-paced. “Saw a guy and a woman in nice coats walking out of here three nights back. Had to have left something. A stash, maybe some copper wire.”
The door swung inward with a dry screech.
Two silhouettes framed themselves against the faint orange glow of the distant city lights. The tall one was gaunt, his shoulders hunched inside a filthy denim jacket, his eyes darting side to side like a cornered rat. The shorter one was built like a fire hydrant, with a thick neck and a jagged white scar running from his left cheekbone down into his collar.
Knife-Face took two steps into the dark, his boots crunching on glass shards. He squinted at the cot.
“This your damn stash?” Knife-Face swung his forearm back, slapping Lanky across the side of his skull with a heavy wet crack.
“Ow! Hey, it could be worth something!” Lanky stumbled, clutching his ear. “Look at her!”
“Look at what?” Knife-Face took a step closer, bending down until Corinne could smell the stale beer and rancid fat on his breath. He shoved her shoulder with two heavy fingers. Her upper body rocked helplessly. Her legs remained dead weights under the striped linen. “Hospital gown. Striped cotton. Standard Federal issue. They dumped her here to rot, you idiot. Federal hospitals clean their wards like this every winter. She ain’t got copper. She ain’t got a wallet. She’s just meat waiting for the flies.”
Corinne didn’t blink. She stared right through the scar on his cheek, her dark pupils unmoving.
Knife-Face spat a thick glob of yellow phlegm onto the floor right beside her hand. “Trash. Let’s go before the precinct patrol rolls through the ditch.”
He turned on his heel. Lanky cursed under his breath, kicked a fallen cupboard leg, and followed him back toward the mud path.
Corinne let her eyelids fall shut. The red light on the skyscraper kept blinking behind her eyelids, a faint crimson pulse against her retinas. Close enough now, she thought. Just stop breathing. Stop trying to swallow.
A noise hit her.
It didn’t come through the ear canal. It vibrated inside the bone at the base of her skull, flat, dry, devoid of inflection, like an iron plate struck with a lead mallet.
The negotiation between the World-Will of Kaelum and the World-Will of Earth has concluded. To alleviate Earth’s resource collapse, all human individuals aged 18 to 55 are hereby forcefully requisitioned and transferred to the Shattered Realm of Kaelum to expand its local population.
Outside, Knife-Face let out a strangled shriek. “What the hell is in my head?”
His voice vanished.
The air around Corinne turned thick, cold, and heavy as mercury. The faint smell of gutter sewage evaporated. Her stomach lurched as her body plunged through a pocket of absolute vacuum, a sickening three-second drop that made her inner ear scream.
Then came the impact.
Thud.
She didn’t hit concrete. She landed on something soft, dry, and springy that yielded beneath her weight with a loud rustle.
A wave of smell slammed into her nostrils, sharp resinous pine, sweet dried clover, and the cool damp scent of freshly cut sapwood. It was so clean it burned her throat.
Corinne opened her eyes.
The rotting ceiling of the slum shack was gone. Above her spanned a smooth dome-like ceiling made of dark solid timber. The dark was gone too. Hanging from an iron bracket on the wall was a vintage brass lantern, its glass globe filled with dozens of tiny swirling specks of pale yellow light that drifted in lazy spirals, casting a warm amber glow across the interior.
She turned her neck slowly.
The room was circular, roughly twenty square meters in floor space. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all carved from the same seamless dark wood, decorated with flowing deep-green sap patterns that looked almost like living vines embedded in the grain. She was lying on a thick mound of golden straw. Next to her straw bed sat a low-slung wooden table, about two feet high. Opposite the table was a single round glass window looking out into pitch blackness, and a heavy wooden door fitted with a thick iron latch.
Corinne stared at the curved wall.
Kaelum? she thought.
Except for the amber light and the smell of pine, it was just another enclosed space. A clean room instead of a rotting shack. Her legs still lay motionless under her striped hospital gown, two useless sticks of bone and wasted muscle.
“Still stuck,” she whispered to the empty room.
She closed her eyes again. Dehydration didn’t care if the room smelled like pine or sewage. If she couldn’t move, she was still going to starve on this bed of golden straw.
Welcome to the Shattered Realm of Kaelum.
The flat mechanical voice echoed inside her skull again, calm and indifferent.
Kaelum is a dangerous realm filled with wild beasts, raw elemental storms, ether tides, and volatile climates. The very air you breathe is saturated with unrefined magical energy.
To survive in this world, remember the following rules:
One: Your shelter, protected by a magical ward, is your only safe haven. Upgrade your shelter as quickly as possible. Higher tiers offer stronger defense.
Two: Everything must be earned through your own struggle and labor.
Three: The Magic Desk in your shelter possesses various utility functions. Utilize it well to ease your survival pressure.
Four: The coming seven days constitute a novice protection period. High-tier beasts and monsters will not actively attack your shelter. Gather resources with confidence.
Five: Supply crates are randomly scattered across Kaelum. They contain food, water, and survival gear. Do not rely entirely on them.
Six: The nighttime in Kaelum is extremely lethal. Return to your shelter before dark, or bear the consequences.
Seven: Only the bound owner can enter the shelter unless an explicit invitation is extended. You need not fear intruders inside your home.
Eight: Per the agreement between World-Wills, the Kaelum World-Will provides each transferred individual with Basic Spell 1, Talent Awakening 1, and Grade-E Starter Tool 1.
Shelters are spaced anywhere from ten meters to ten kilometers apart. Resources are limited and must be fought for. Strive to survive.
The voice faded into silence.
Corinne’s eyes snapped open.
Magic? Talent awakening?
Her breath hitched in her dry chest. Her eyes drifted over to the low wooden table sitting three feet away from her straw bed.
It wasn’t a table. The mechanical voice had called it a Magic Desk.
If magic existed in this place, if there was a force here that could rewrite the laws of physics and rip billions of people across the stars, then maybe, just maybe, it didn’t care about shattered vertebrae and dead nerves.
Her elbows dug into the straw, fingernails caking with dried dirt and plant fibers, and she pulled. The thought hit her like a bucket of ice water. Better to haul yourself along the floor by your arms than lie still in a box. Maybe some old doctor in the rehab ward had said that. Maybe her father, back when he was still breathing. She didn’t know. She rolled onto her stomach. The movement was ugly, her dead legs twisting awkwardly behind her like two sacks of wet sand.
She hauled herself along the floor by her arms. Five years of bed rest had stripped her arms of muscle, leaving her with barely enough strength to lift her own torso. Her striped hospital gown hitched up around her waist, scraping her bare thighs against the smooth timber floorboards. She didn’t care. Pride had died in the Sector 9 drainage ditch three days ago.
Two feet. Then three.
Her hands caught the lower edge of the dark wood desk. Grasping the corners, she pulled her chest up against the wood, gasping for air, her lungs burning from the sudden exertion.
The desk surface was roughly four feet wide, made of the same dark timber as the walls, but set with two glass-like touchscreens. The left screen was large, taking up two-thirds of the surface area. The right screen was small, about the size of a tablet.
On the large screen, glowing white text stood out in plain English: Place hand on the small screen to bind shelter.
Corinne raised her right hand and pressed her palm flat against the small glass panel.
Ding!
A sharp chime rang out from the desk.
Treehole Shelter (Tier-1) successfully bound.
The deep-green sap patterns carved into the wooden walls suddenly flared with a soft lime-green light. The glow pulsed once, twice, and then sank deep into the timber, disappearing entirely. On the back of Corinne’s right hand, a dark green mark shaped like a birch leaf settled into her skin, looking like a fresh precise tattoo.
The large screen flickered, revealing six main interface tabs along the top margin:
[World Chat] [Regional Chat] [Regional Exchange] [Personal Profile] [Friends 0/0] [Coming Soon]
Beside the [World Chat] tab, a terrifying string of numbers ticked down slowly: 22,658,441,209 / 22,658,441,209.
Over twenty-two billion people. More than the bulk of Earth’s living population had been swept up in the transfer.
She looked at the [Regional Chat] tab: 9,983 / 10,000 (Sector 666: Canopy of Outcasts).
Ten thousand people assigned to this region. Seventeen were already dead.
Corinne didn’t bother opening the public channels. She didn’t care about twenty-two billion panicking strangers. Her eyes scanned the small screen, looking for the talent option.
The small panel flickered, displaying a pop-up window:
To our dear Earth transfer: The small panel on the Magic Desk serves as a material transfer node. Transferred items will be stored in your Exchange Store for trade, or retrieved into your physical space. Ensure adequate clearance around the small screen during retrieval to prevent blockage. The small screen also features an Appraisal function for unknown items.
She tapped the screen to close the pop-up. Immediately, a second prompt replaced it:
Talent is the mirror of the soul. Place your hand on the small screen, hold your deepest desire in mind, and awaken your talent.
Corinne’s heart thundered against her ribs like a trapped bird.
She lifted her trembling right hand and pressed her palm against the glass.
What do I want?
Five years ago, she would have said her parents back. Three days ago, she would have said a quick death. But right now, staring at her useless motionless legs draped over the straw floorboards, the answer burned in her gut like pure acid.
Mobility.
She wanted to move. She wanted to rise, to drift, to go anywhere she damn well pleased without relying on an orderly’s mercy or a wheelchair’s wheels. She wanted to lift above the filth, above the mud, above the cold steel pipes. Like a bird cutting through the clouds. Like a hawk looking down on the sixty-story towers that had mocked her from across the ditch.
The small screen glowed bright gold beneath her palm.
Ding! Talent acquired: Zephyr Float (Grade-E).
Basic Skill acquired: Matter Extraction (Grade-E).
Starter Tool Package unlocked. Please select your tool.
A long list of icons flooded the small screen:
[Longsword] [Shortsword] [Dagger] [Katana] [Battleaxe] [Hunting Bow] [Crossbow] [Iron Staff] [Spear] [Hoe] [Pickaxe] [Sledgehammer] [Sickle] [Gardening Trowel] [Quill Pen]…
There were over a hundred options, ranging from military weapons to basic farm tools.
Corinne looked at the swords and spears, then down at her motionless legs. A two-handed battleaxe was useless if she couldn’t shift her weight to swing it. A longsword required footwork she didn’t possess.
She bypassed the tools for a moment and tapped [Personal Profile].
Name: Corinne Mercer Race: Earth Human Level: Lv1 Strength: 2 Agility: 1 Physique: 2 Spirit: 8 (Average Earth peak value is 10) Health Points: 20/20 (Physique * 10) Mana Points: 80/80 (Spirit * 10) Talent: Zephyr Float (Grade-E) Skills: Matter Extraction (Grade-E)
Corinne stared at her stats. Five years of rotting in a hospital bed had degraded her physical attributes to those of a frail child. Strength 2, Physique 2. Agility 1 was probably a generous rating awarded simply because she could still haul her torso with her arms.
Only her Spirit was an 8, near the peak of human capability. Five years of sitting motionless in a dark room, staring at a ceiling, reading every book she could lay her hands on, and obsessing over every detail of her isolation had forged a terrifyingly quiet, focused mind.
She tapped the red dot beside her talent to view its details.
Zephyr Float (Grade-E): 1. Reduces the user’s body mass density, allowing complete levitation. 2. Consumes 1 Mana Point per minute of active use.
Levitation.
Her breath caught in her throat.
She closed her eyes and focused on the mark on the back of her hand. Activate.
The familiar heavy pull of gravity vanished. It wasn’t like being lifted by hands. It was like the air around her had suddenly turned into warm water, supporting every inch of her skin. The dead weight in her waist and thighs dissolved into weightlessness.
Corinne pressed one palm against the edge of the Magic Desk and pushed gently.
Whoosh.
Her body drifted upward into the air.
Unprepared for the lack of friction, she floated four feet off the floor, her head gently bumping against the curved timber ceiling before she bounced slowly back down, hanging suspended in mid-air like a piece of drift-cotton. Her dead legs hung below her in a slack, boneless cluster, dangling uselessly, but her torso was entirely airborne.
She floated in the middle of the room, suspended three feet above the floorboards.
A sound tore out of her throat. It started as a dry wheezing gasp, then turned into a loud hysterical laugh that echoed off the wooden dome.
“I’m flying,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “I’m fucking flying.”
It was only an E-rank talent. It didn’t shoot fireballs, it didn’t summon lightning, and it didn’t grant S-rank strength like the arrogant fools bragging in the global chat. But for a girl who had spent five years chained to a mattress, it was everything.
She cupped her hands against the air, swimming through the empty space of her treehole like a diver in a quiet pool. She drifted to the heavy wooden door, reached out, and unlatched the iron bolt.
The door swung outward.
A rush of cold night wind hit her face, carrying the wild scents of damp moss, unknown flowers, and ancient earth. Outside, beneath a pale silver moon, lay an endless sea of giant trees, canopies stretching out as far as the eye could see, their trunks as thick as skyscrapers.
Corinne suspended herself in the doorway, her dead legs dangling over the thirty-meter drop into the dark forest below, and smiled.
— Origin Witch —