I don’t know when the shaking stopped.

I don’t know when I could move again.

I don’t know when I finally checked on Milvarr’s corpse, but she was unmistakably dead.

There was no hope of her being able to regrow a head through some weird magic.

I don’t know why she had to die.

Why?

It should have worked, she just had to say the phrase, she knew that, she told me that, I knew that, it should have worked!

“The true followers wish to retrieve his blessings from the sea. That was all she had to say-” as I said that, the ground shook, Milvarr’s head rolled to the side, and following its eyes I saw the stone door finally open.

It opened. Just like that, even though I was the one who said it?

What was different? Why?

And then I slowly realised, with a sinking pit in my stomach… There was only one difference between the statues as she came and when we tried to leave… the key the last statue was holding.

I took that key, and Milvarr died. Now the key was back in the statue’s hands and the door worked…

My actions changed that. My actions… lead to this.

Why did this happen to Milvarr? Those actions are the reason.

I am the reason. I killed Milvarr…

…

I don’t know how long I wallowed in those murky emotions, the disgust of knowing my slip up led to the loss of a life.

With every surgery I’ve performed, it was my greatest fear, and here in my carefreeness, I actually thought that everything was going well! I didn’t think that the MAIN ITEM of one of the four statues of the puzzle should have been in place for it to work!

It felt like it had been both hours and just seconds that I mourned for the loss of the kobold I had only gotten to know for a few minutes.

I didn’t even know if Milvarr was her full name, or the name of her friend whose body I was living in, nor who the priest and monk who betrayed them were. There were too many questions I thought I could take my time and learn… and a funeral I promised to attend. It was two now…

But at some point, I started moving forward.

I don’t know if it was some kind of survival instinct, the heart of this body taking control, or just my fragile mind compartmentalising everything for the sake of maintaining my sanity.

I vaguely remember a cave, I don’t know if I walked for a few minutes or hours, but I eventually saw light. I didn’t need the lantern anymore, but I didn’t remember where I even put it, I must have lost it somewhere.

As I stepped out from the cave’s entrance, I found myself in a forest bathed in moonlight, a light fog hugging the ground. And overhead, I saw a vibrant purple sky with three moons staring down at me… judging me.

Looking down, I was holding Milvarr’s corpse. I don’t know when I picked her up, but at least she wasn’t destined to rot away in that horrid dungeon.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

My mother was a strong believer in ‘destined fate’. Astrology, palm reading, crystal balls, the whole deal. I never really cared for most of it, but I always had a strong draw to one thing she showed me, tarot cards.

She had a whole spiel about them, and was all fancy about them, playing fast and loose with what they meant to fit the story she wanted to tell rather than what the cards said… I don’t even remember what future she read for me, probably something like ‘living a good life, but be careful of careless mistakes’ or something.

But I’ll never forget that one night when I thought it’d be interesting to draw a card for myself, just to see what it would be: The world, reversed.

It meant nothing back then, but…

‘Lack of closure, lack of achievement, feeling incomplete, emptiness’… those were all the meanings, and if I were honest, ‘lack of closure’ described everything about my life.

I never got closure on the old man I didn’t help.

I never got closure on my career in the Bundeswehr.

I never got closure on the people I helped during the earthquake.

I never got closure on my own life.

I never got closure on Milvarr.

Looking back, I couldn’t even see a hint of the dungeon, just a regular hard to spot break in the rock that led to a cave.

I didn’t know what to do.

My survival training told me that I needed to move fast. I needed a place to sleep through the night. As soon as the first light hits, I’d need to scout the surroundings and look for a source of water.

If I could find a river or the sea, then I could follow the coast if I couldn’t see a settlement or smoke.

I could survive weeks without food, but I’d die in less than 3 days without water. So I needed to move, and fast.

But I didn’t care about ‘survival’.

I already died, and everything- EVERYTHING I cared about was taken from me.

At this point, I wanted closure. I knew it was stupid, but I wanted closure.

Milvarr deserved a burial at least.

I had no tools on me other than the shortsword Milvarr gave me and the fancy sword the original me had… but that was enough, I had the training for this.

The trees I saw looked quite similar to kapok trees and were surrounded by dense vegetation, which made me think I was at the edge of a jungle and not a forest, meaning it would be more difficult to travel, especially on my own.

I gathered several fallen branches and sticks, comparing them to find one nearly 90 cm (3 ft) long and 5cm (2 inches) in diameter. I used the fancy sword to carve a flat head point (it cut the wood far easier than I expected), making a digging stick.

With this, I dug the earth, loosening it, before shovelling it out of the way with my hands.

Repeating this over and over for around an hour, I finally had a grave for the kobold.

It wasn’t fancy, it was a lonely desolate grave in the middle of nowhere, right in front of the horrid place she was trapped for days and then killed. But it was better than leaving her corpse to get eaten by any passing animal.

I placed her body in the grave and took a moment to just stare at it.

She was beaten up, her scales were rotting, she must have been malnourished, and her head wasn’t even connected to her body… It was honestly a gruesome sight, but the shock wasn’t hitting me as hard as it would if I saw a more human-like creature in the same position… a small comfort afforded by ignorance.

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This was the closest to closure I could get right now. I didn’t know what this new world I was in was like, but I wanted to at least find someone to give her proper rites… no, I would find someone. This was now my sworn mission.

And for that mission, I needed so much information. I needed to find out about why she was in the temple in the first place, the people who tricked her, the name of the person whose body I was in, the dangers I would face in town, how to earn the money needed for said rites if they cost money… and that was just scratching the surface of what I needed to know. My overall goal was to return home, one way or the other, and I knew nothing at all about this new world.

That was dangerous.

“I swear I’ll find someone to give you proper rites… I hope you end up in a better place than this, Milvarr.” I prayed, countless stupid possibilities going through my mind. ‘What about resurrection? Maybe that’s a thing in this world?’, ‘Maybe I could carry her to a town?’ ‘, ‘Build a cart for the corpse, a bag, anything?’

I suppose I was always a dreamer. Maybe resurrection magic does exist in this world, but I had no chance of finding a town aimlessly wandering a jungle carrying a corpse that many dangerous creatures might find to be a tasty meal. If one was truly that close by, then great! I could just come back for Milvarr’s body.

Letting out a final sigh, I covered the grave again, using a flat stone and the shortsword as a makeshift headstone to mark the grave.

Standing there in this pathetic excuse of a funeral, I felt awful. I felt so numb, I don’t even know how long it was before I realised I was starting to shiver. It was so humid, and cold. Even if the air was fresher than the temple, it still stank like the sea… I had never really been to the sea, I had no good memories with it, and now the only memories I have with this disgusting salty air is nearly drowning and burying the only person I knew in this world.

After that, I started walking. I had no perspective of directions in this world. The constellations were all different, and there were several especially shiny stars, maybe two of which could have been the north star, but which one?

I had nothing to orient myself with, so I instead focused on the terrain.

The ground was oddly divided into hexagon, with several hexagonal columns of the ground popping out and forming a tiny hill.

It very much reminded me of basalt, in the structure, but it was closer to regular soil since I was able to dig through it, and given that trees were growing out of it.

Either way, it was a hill, and one I could climb to get a peek of what was visible above the canopy.

It was a bit tedious with my injured arm, but I managed to climb up fairly well… and I saw the sea. It must have been ten minutes away, but there it was, the vast ocean.

And in every other direction I saw trees, trees, and more trees.

If there was something else notable, I couldn’t see it in the moonlight, just the seemingly endless expanse of jungle.

After everything I went through, being so close to the sea was a god-send. If I used my tools right, I could have purified water, and navigation-wise, I just needed to follow the coast till I found a river or a settlement. I would eventually find myself somewhere inhabited, all the people in the temple needed to have come from somewhere, after all.

…

A kettle, a fire under said kettle, a container, and a ‘cooling tube’ to catch the steam from the kettle and condense it into the container.

To distil water and make it drinkable, these are essential. And I was lucky enough that I had everything I needed.

A kettle, a tinderbox to set a fire, a waterskin, and sheet metal from the repair kit. With a bit of bending, the metal became a decent enough tube.

I got some water from the sea and set up this makeshift distiller in the cave (with a small fire, for safety), using leaves as a blanket and to cover the cave entrance. I’ve never been more thankful for my survival training… but with everything I needed to survive the night (food was not as urgent a concern), I needed to worry about the wound on my right arm… it was fine for now, but would soon get infected if not treated properly…

I didn’t know how long it would take to find a settlement, and even then I’d have to hope they had proper medicine or an adequate doctor. If they only relied on magic, then I would be shit out of luck if it didn’t work on me…

My mind drifted to the ‘healing potion’ I found in the medical kit. If potions counted as magic, then I would be out of luck and it wouldn’t do anything, but there was also a chance that potions worked fine on me. Milvarr seemed to think that a potion of acid would get through anti-magic at least, so it was likely. I just worried what the repercussions would be if it wasn’t a potion of healing but something more malicious… or just old enough to be expired? I didn’t know if that was a possibility, but it was a worry I could think of.

“No wait, calm down.” I had to tell myself, remembering that modern medicine and alchemy weren’t the only things that existed!

The wound was a deep gash on my right upper arm. Horizontally, I could barely cover it with my hand, and vertically it was nearly a finger wide. There was flesh missing, but it wasn’t too severe an injury. It hurt like hell, but for an injury like this, properly cleaning the wound and dressing it would be enough to kickstart the healing process. After that, it would just need time. Medicine would definitely help, a healing potion that worked would also be quite nice, but as long as I kept cleaning the wound and changing bandages, there wasn’t too much risk of infection. I just needed time, and to avoid putting strain on it.

What was suspicious was how little I was bleeding, as that would be the main danger for a wound like this… I didn’t know what to think of it, so I pushed that matter aside for now.

Something was wrong with me for me to forget something so simple… no, many things were wrong with me right now… Too many things…

I was just so tired…

…

The morning sun was a long welcome sight.

How long had it been since I had seen it? I had been in the dark dungeon and then the cave for so long that time felt meaningless… though it must have only been a few hours at most.

Then again, I suppose I had never seen this morning sun before. It looked like the sun I was familiar with back home on Earth, this wasn’t Earth… This was a completely new world to me, with a completely new night sky and moons, but it was nice to know the sun still rose here and looked the same. It felt soothing, though the heavy humidity did put a damper on that joy.

With the light, I could see a lot more than I could only imagine in the darkness. The trees I vaguely recognised had strange spiralling patterns and markings. They were surrounded by bushes and plants that all seemed incredibly foreign to me. It could be that they were plants that existed on earth in places I haven’t been to, or they could have been completely foreign flora and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

I saw several colourful looking fruits that had shapes and colours varying from papaya to grapes, red to yellow… Following the universal edibility test, I might have been able to figure out which was edible, but it felt incredibly dangerous to attempt that in a different world that might have different rules for everything.

No, I’d survive several days without food, but I’d die rather quickly if I ate poison. I needed to get to a town, village, or any settlement. I had some money, which was a boon. I’d at least be able to buy safe food with it, and if I could meet other people I could find out what was edible and what wasn’t if I didn’t have enough money to stay in a town just yet.

It was sad how quickly I could think about these things, but I had read enough fantasy books to know that the biggest hurdles were language, money, and information.

I could speak to the people here, so language wasn’t an issue. I had some money, even if it wasn’t a lot. But I had zero information. Nothing at all.

I had ideas, I knew various cliches and common tropes in stories, I had survival training for earth… but how much of that applied here? In this world? I had no idea… I wish I could have talked to Milvarr more…

As I thought through everything, I double checked that my waterskin was full as I approached the ‘shore’. I say it like that because I had never seen a shore of basalt before… or at least that’s what I believed it was. The hexagonal stone formations sloping downwards and under the crashing waves to make some kind of stone beach. An uncomfortable one where everything was a tripping hazard.

If the water was less turbulent, I’d have loved to have finally gotten a look at myself, but that wasn’t possible yet. I’d have liked to know what I was starting ‘my new life’ as, but I suppose it wasn’t very important. I’d find out eventually as long as I didn’t die.

What a cheery thought.

Keeping myself somewhat positive, I considered myself lucky that I wasn’t feeling hungry yet, which was convenient! And with that thought I followed the shore as I started walking to the right. As long as I had a guiding path, such as the shore or a river, I was bound to come across some kind of settlement… or at least it would be harder for me to lose track of where I was.

Such thoughts quickly came to a stop as I saw a large fish-like creature with spindly looking legs crawl out of the ocean in front of me.

It was long like an eel, easily as wide as a wolf, with the head and scales of a fish, large bulbous eyes staring in every direction. Like a spider or some kind of centipede, it had long needle-like legs that bent in every which way and skittered it along the ground.

With my heart racing, I drew my sword, the reclaimed sword of the original me, watching the fishipede in silence. It seemed to flop for a few seconds, before regaining its footing and turning towards me, sending a shiver down my spine.

Then, it simply started walking away, as if it didn’t even notice me… whatever that creature was, maybe its sight was based on movement? Either that, or magic, of which I had none.

I had no idea what that creature was, and I had no idea how it would even attack. That terrified me, but as long as I didn’t have to deal with it, I was willing to ignore it for now and keep walking, filing it away in my ‘I don’t even know’ cabinet of this world’s creatures.

On a… lighter note, I had a creature in my ‘I do know’ cabinet, as I looked over to the jungle where this thing skittered off to and saw a fairly large squirrel sitting on a tree just staring at me like I was an idiot.

At least this world had squirrels that looked like the ones I knew. I was sure red squirrels weren’t as big as a coconut, it was adorable, so it was fine. A small comfort after everything.

And then the squirrel lifted up a hand and flipped me off…

I take it all back.

Why? Just why?