"Behold, our finest blade drawn from the deepest crucibles of Titan Forge," Sora Miragale remarked with a smile on her face, offering the last weapon she had forged to a group of rookie elven adventures who were looking to fight their first wave of monsters.
They gazed in awe, their lips parted as they looked at the maginificent weapon, it was durable but light as Sora could hold it with just one hand.
"Such steel is never cheap," the female elven adventurer in the group muttered, "Tell me—what price is it worth so I may claim it?"
Before Sora could mutter a single word, the male adventurers protested with the tallest in the group standing forth, "Claim it? Tell me, who do you think allowed you to do that?"
The others nodded in unisance, agreeing with the young elven man.
Her gaze swept over them, her hand on her hip like a mother ready to scold her children, then she pointed the three men, "You all are unfit. When steel is drawn and blood is demanded, you crumble—howling loudly, but never striking."
"That is a blatant lie and you know it," the male replied.
Sora watched the argument amongst the adventurers stretch for minutes. Then she finally snapped, "If ownership is contested," she declared, "Then why not share until worth is proven."
All together the group gripped the blade, snatching it from her grasp, offering a lousy "Thank you" before each tossing three gold coins on the cart that she displayed her items. Sora scooped up the payment from the floor without hesitation and before she raised her head to confront him, he quickly exited the forge.
Sora shrugged at this act, even disdain felt like generosity for her these days—but her lips twitched downward as she looked closer.
One of the metal payments were not of gold but silver.
She exhaled sharply at this scam. Not that she planned on doing anything about it and the adventurers were already gone by the time she pocketed the gold and one silver coin.
Moisture beading along her snow White hair as she swiped a forearm across her brow, amber eyes dulled by exhaustion's relentless siege, pointy ears twitching. Taking her grime-streaked apron off, she revealed a soft, slim and defined physique hugged by a bra top and loincloth, tattered from the work conditions and ths smoke escaping from the furnace where she melted her scraps.
"Connoisseur of fine overpayment, they are," she muttered dryly, clearly showing a sign of sarcasm before putting an end to the flames in the furnace with a bucket of water, 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 scrap collector in TitanForge, a city where twenty percent of its population were inhabited with elven travelers who were in need of the best metal weapons to fight their battles.
Sora was well known for going into deepest corners of the Underworld, a place marked by blackness and grey, where metal grew from rocks.
Some said she had talent, some thought she was foolish.
Talent though, couldn't shield her from meeting unsatisfied or crazy elvens. The adventurers weren't the first. 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. She exhaled slowly. "This kind of pressure only gives me a headache. If I were a knight, maybe it would sharpen me instead."
Once, she'd dreamed of charging into battle, an elven sworn to shield humanity from monsters. Now, that elven girl's ambition felt like a stranger's tale. Fate's cruelty coiled around her ambitions, 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 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 and 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 like 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, her 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, the force being so strong it caused her face to slightly distort, 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 something emrged in thin air before herresembled 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 to acquire the power of Chaos. Do you accept?]
✤Yes/Nay
"What… sorcery is this?" she hissed, recoiling. The air itself seemed to curdle, the field rippling like water struck by pebble. The cloaked man dissolved into the warping horizon as the ground buckled beneath her.
Reality fractured before her eyes. The rice stalks bending into spirals, the sky collapsing 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 were 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 was reduced to nothingness, now an aftermath of geometric nightmares.
Sora jolted awake a second time, but this time to the cream of her own bed frame, the musty scent of home clotting her lungs. Her bedroom. Familiar, yet wrong as this wasn't where she had last been.
She sat upright, the sheets tangled at her hips going in between them, chest heaving as her breaths came in heavy, ragged gasps like she'd outrun death itself. Sweat pooled from her body, leaving the sheets damped.
She was naked.
She froze as she realized, fingers clutching her bare skin where her clothes should've covered. No memory of stripping. No proved logic as to how she was in 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 orange glass burned in her mind's eye—so vivid, so sharp it bled into the waking world making it feel more real than reality itself, as if she could see it right there in the waking world. Its message pulsed, with a searing and undeniable serenity:
[You have acquired the power of a Chaos Crafter]
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 the realization struck her like a bolt of red lightning. The dream's massage had been different, wildly different.
She screamed, terror clawing at her throat, raw and primal as she jerked backwards, 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 laid.
The realization struck her like a jolt of lightning, and she screamed, terror clawing at her throat. In her panic, she tumbled off the bed, her bare body hitting the hard wooden floor with a painful thud—right beside the crumpled remains of her discarded clothes.
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 moved crawled back, trying to get away, it stayed attached like it was a part of her.
"Stay away! Don't come any closer!" she warned, grabbing any item she could find—vase, candles and even a chair, hurling it across the room towards the square but this did nothing.
At first, she was under the impression that this was a dream and just a figment of her subconscious. But this was barely a dream, no matter how much she struck herself on the face, the tablet still 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 did nothing.
She slowly raised her head from the confines of her thigh and arm, slowly glancing at this strange object that floated midair before her. She took in a few deep breaths, before standing on her feet and the tablet followed her move.
This time she took time to carefully read out 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 though 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.
Name: Sora Miragale
Title: ???
Class: Chaos Gauntlet User
Rank: D
Physical Amplification (PA): 0
Chaos Output (CO): 0
Adaptation (ADT): 0
Entropy Control (EC): 0
Stability (STB): 0
Mental Resistance: ???
✤Quest: Gather Six Scraps
0/6
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 whichever space it emerged from.