I’ll be coming back home soon. I picked up something from the grocery.

How was school?

Honey?

Are you out late again? I made some food for you.

Ezra, it’s midnight.

Are you trying to find him?

You’re scaring me.

Where are you?

Read: 1:23 AM

Rain pounded the concrete, the wind howling under the bridge. A streetlight flickered outside and cast shadows over the surging canal. In one of the few dry spots, the light of a phone screen burned against the wall.

Ezra stared at the text messages.

Where are you?

She always asked that question, but he knew she hadn’t even bothered to look for him. She never did, after all.

He scrolled upward through his text messages. Ezra’s room had been cold the last time he’d checked. No one had bothered turning on the heat in months, and he doubted it would be any different now. The fridge would still be empty, the laundry piling up in the corner like always. It was easier to be on the streets than stay home.

His fingers hovered over the letters for a few seconds before he stood up. He turned his gaze away from the LED light and approached the river.

He held his phone above the water and loosened his grip.

The phone passed into the water. The light of the screen flickered, then disappeared. Ezra walked back to his dry patch underneath the bridge and sat down. He stared out at the other side of the underpass.

A cold breeze swept past Ezra. He shivered, then drew his jacket around his knees. He’d been hoping to be on a bus out of the city by now, but the storm had conjured itself out of nowhere and forced everything to a halt.

Out of the corner of his eye, he looked at his backpack. His hands reached out and pulled it to him. He set it on his lap and unzipped it. He had all the essentials—some money, food, water. Most importantly, he had a map of the entire continent.

He reached into the backpack and his hand brushed against the plastic of a handheld gaming device. He froze. His fingers twitched and he forced them to move down, grabbing the map and pulling it out.

The map was complete with roadways and all the navigational information he’d need. Ezra traced out his planned route with his finger. He wanted to find a quiet and abandoned town. Once there, he’d wander into the wilderness and live off the land.

It was the perfect plan. Yeah, maybe he’d never lived off the land before, but it would probably be fine. Totally.

He stuffed everything back inside the backpack, then zipped it up.

There was another flash of lightning. Moments later, the sound of thunder blasted out.

Ezra jumped, then glared in the direction where the noise had come from. He frowned and shifted his backpack so that he could sleep on it. There was no point in waiting for the rain to disappear.

He laid his head on his backpack.

After about an hour, he finally felt his consciousness drift off to sleep.

----------------------------------------

He woke up on the shores of a river, the figure of a dragon soaring through the skies.

----------------------------------------

Ezra rubbed his eyes awake and pushed himself to his feet. When he registered what he was seeing, he stared up at the sky serpent, slack-jawed. Before long, the monster flew from his sight, no more than a dot. He turned his head toward a castle floating in the distant blue.

He blinked several times. Nothing happened. If this was a dream, it was an incredibly vivid one.

After that, he started counting his fingers. The only thing that happened was he looked like an idiot.

Ezra bit down on his tongue. Pain spiked up his nervous system and the taste of blood dribbled down the inside of his mouth. Nope, not a dream. And what’s more, his mind felt clear. He mentally ran through the trig problems he’d been working on when he’d been in school…

Well, he sucked at trig, but not any worse than he normally did.

This was shaping up to seem more and more like reality.

Was Ezra in another world?

The thought seemed impossible on the face of it. How on earth could he have ended up in another world? But on the other hand, there was no denying what he’d seen. That was a dragon—or at least, something similar to a dragon. That was fire that he’d seen. And last time he checked, castles didn’t float in the air—unless you happened to be in a Ghibli movie. How could it have occurred? Had someone at that Hadron Kaleidoscope thingy gotten a bit too trigger-happy? Blasting a hole across dimensions seemed irresponsible, but scientists did ethically ambiguous stuff all the time.

It wasn’t possible.

But it was, because where the hell else could he be?

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Ezra stood still for a moment. He looked back to where he’d seen the dragon disappear.

He turned his head down.

If this was reality, then he’d never see anything from his world again.

He’d never see anyone from his world again.

He was somewhere totally unfamiliar. Where the fantasy was reality.

Ezra raised his arms and let out a whoop.

“Another world!” he said. “Hell yes!”

He ran through the field before jumping into the grass and rolling onto his side. His momentum drained and he came to a stop, facing toward the open air. He smiled and looked up at the boundless blue sky. Massive clouds floated in the distance. Ezra felt that he could’ve reached out and touched them.

After a few minutes of lying on the ground, his stomach growled. Ezra pushed himself up to his feet and did a sweep of the surrounding area. It was mostly rolling grassy hills in every direction, with one notable exception. A forest. They were broadleaf trees, similar to that of oaks. If Ezra was lucky, they might’ve had fruits that he could munch on and stave off some of his hunger. He started walking in that direction.

Bright yellow appeared at the edge of his vision.

He paused and looked to the right.

It was a field full of yellow flowers. A light buzz echoed out, like the hum of cicadas. Ezra’s feet began moving. In the meadow, tiny prismatic specks darted from flower to flower. It was like bits of the rainbow had been attached to each of the floating creatures. Perhaps they were bugs of some sort?

Once he was next to the flowers, he narrowed his eyes. Instead of the insect-like body he was expecting, the flies had a structure more akin to that of birds. They seemed to be birds. One caught sight of him, and then they rushed at him. One perched on his shoulder, while another tried to hide in his hair. Ezra brushed them off and they flew away with a squawk. They soon resumed their flower-gathering operations.

Ezra shook his head in amazement. it really was another world. Ezra pulled off his jacket and wrapped it around his waist, allowing him to absorb the wind better and deal with the heat.

He idly noted that his backpack was gone. He pursed his lips. It was a shame... but this was another world. A new opportunity. He should take it for what it was.

Soon enough, Ezra was in the forest. The wind rustled through the leaves like chimes while his footsteps crunched against the ground.

After several minutes of searching, he spotted a blue fruit hanging off a tree. It was spiked like a pineapple, but more medium-sized and shaped like an apple-apple. The only problem was that it was a good 20 feet in the air. Ezra grinned. He stepped forward and grabbed onto one of the lower hanging branches. With a heave of effort, he hooked his leg onto one of the other branches. He pulled himself up, then adjusted his feet to get a better grip on the tree.

There was a smaller branch up ahead. Ezra’s lips tilted into a small frown. It seemed a bit risky, but he figured that he’d be able to spread out his weight and it would work out. He reached up onto the smaller offshoot and pulled.

The offshoot flew off and hit the ground with a thud. Ezra winced.

This time, he looked for something a bit thicker. There was one at the edge of his reach. It would be hard to get to, but it seemed sturdier. He stuck his tongue out, then reached up and pulled.

His body lifted into the air. He clenched his legs around the tree trunk, supporting his weight as he continued to climb.

He used his other leg to push himself a bit higher until he was able to put his foot on a bough. The fruit wasn’t much further.

Ezra reached out and tugged at the next limb. It didn’t break. He pulled hard, lifting himself toward the top and facing the fruit. He looked at it and licked his lips.

Ezra reached out toward the blue fruit, just shaving it with his fingers.

He growled and tried again. Again, he only grazed it.

He extended out as far as he dared, just managing to get a grip on it.

A crack echoed out. Ezra looked back and saw that the branch he was holding onto had frayed.

“Oh, that’s not good.”

At that moment, the offshoot snapped and he sailed through the air. In a panic, Ezra shielded his head with his arms. A second later, his body slammed into the dirt with a thump. Pain shot through Ezra’s body, concentrated in his left arm. He bit his tongue, suppressing a cry.

He took a deep breath, then pushed himself to a sitting position using his unbroken arm.

He looked at his other arm. It was red and swollen. Ezra glanced at the fruit he’d fought so hard to get. It was still up in the air. He hadn’t even managed to touch it.

He scowled. His hands twitched. He started to shake his head when something caught his attention from the edge of his vision. A red bar. Above it was a set of numbers.

72/90

Ezra blinked multiple times in an attempt to dispel the illusion. It didn’t go away.

“Did that fall injure me worse than I thought?” he said.

If he wasn’t mistaken, that was a health bar. And the numbers above it were his health points. But that was insane, right? After all, that’s the stuff of video games. Maybe this was a fantasy world, but why on earth would it operate off of RPG mechanics? It didn’t make sense.

He chuckled.

“Menu,” he said.

Nothing.

“Skills,” he said.

Nothing.

A wild idea entered his mind.

He reached out his left hand at first, then drew it away with a hiss when pain shot up his arm. Instead, he switched to his right hand and made a swiping motion from right to left.

Nothing happened. He sighed. It was unsurprising that it didn’t work. That kind of thing only happens in books, right?

He ignored the fact that he had been transported to another world via some kind of black magic.

Ezra stood up. He needed to find some way to get access to food before he started starving. It would really suck if his grand adventure in another world was stopped because he couldn’t get access to food.

He began to walk away. A word came to mind from a half-remembered book. Surely not…?

“System.”

A blue box with text appeared in front of Ezra. He jumped backward.

Name: Ezra Hawthorne

Age: 16

Race: Human

Class: Ė̴̦̞̗̌R̸̹̃R̴̻͔̟̪̾Ö̸̧̺͕́̂͘R̵̮̟͖͍̒͝

Sub-class: N/A

Bonded Spirit: T̴̪̓̓͂h̵̪̠̲̍é̸͕̃ ̸̟͉̔͘M̷̠̻͉̬͋̿ỏ̴̗̗͒͠ő̸̼͖̅n̸͎̭̄l̸̠̟̚ì̶̢̩̦͚t̶̻̮͓̾̓ ̶̖͗̓Q̴̳̝͈̱̔̋ṷ̷͠ė̵͍̲̐̈̂è̸͈̺̃̀n̸̢̪̟̍͂̒

Health Points: 72/90

Mana Points: 210/210

Level: 1

Strength: 5

Dexterity: 6

Constitution: 3

Intelligence: 6

Wisdom: 3

Personal Skills:

[Calm] - Lv. 1

[Inspect] - Lv. MAX

[Bind] - Lv. 1 - Compatible

Skill points: 0

Stat points: 0

Ability points: 0

Titles:

LOCKED

Ezra’s eyes widened. “Oh my god.”