Ellie floated.
All around her. Cold. Dark.
The weight of the world was gone, and yet she found herself drifting in a place where the air was thick and heavy, where the wind didn't move, and the silence pressed against her ears. She turned, looking down—or maybe up, maybe sideways, it was hard to tell.
And there it was. A world that barely clung to life. It's sun was dying. Not in an instant, not in some grand explosion that would shake the heavens and burn the world in a final blaze of glory. No, that would have been a mercy. Instead, it was fading like a fire left to smolder until only embers remained.
Clouds hung low, thick and unmoving, as if the heavens themselves were suffocating under the weight of the inevitable. And beneath that sickly, dimming light, the world withered. Barren wastelands, cracked and dry, where nothing but brittle weeds fought to exist in a field of white snow.
And the people—
The people were starving.
Not all at once. Hunger was slow, creeping, a quiet thing that started as an ache and grew into something monstrous. It hollowed out faces, turned children's laughter into quiet whimpers, and made desperate men do unspeakable things. There was food still, hoarded in the cities where the strong built walls and turned away the weak.
Those outside them learned to survive on scraps, on whatever their hands could steal, on whatever their teeth could tear apart.
"What the hell are they eating? Is that?"
It was truly a dog eat dog world. They were eating each other.
Not out of cruelty, but because they had no choice. Children gnawed on bones. Mothers carved flesh from bodies that might have been friends, might have been family. And those who refused, those who could not bring themselves to do it, sat down one day and never got up again.
Her gaze landed on one man.
Unlike the others, he was still standing, still moving with purpose, though his steps were slow, his limbs trembling. He held something close to his chest, wrapped in dirty cloth, protecting it, shielding it from the hungry stares around him. A child, Ellie realized. A baby, maybe a year old, maybe less.
Ellie felt something stir in her chest the moment she saw the baby.
It was small, wrapped in filthy cloth, its face hidden, but she could see the faint rise and fall of its breath, the way its tiny hands curled into fists against the cold.
And the man—
She didn't know him. She shouldn't have known him. But the sight of him, thin and shaking yet still holding the child close, still shielding it with everything he had left—it struck her harder than she expected.
Something swelled in her, thick and heavy. Was it pity? No, it was deeper than that.
She tried to look away, to force herself to focus on the others, the starving, desperate masses who watched him like wolves eyeing a wounded stag. But her eyes kept returning to him. To the way he never loosened his grip, to the way he pressed his cheek against the baby's head, as if memorizing its warmth.
And then, as he fell to his knees, as he placed the child gently on the ground, as he met the hungry eyes of those who would consume him. Ellie's breath caught. She wanted to scream. To reach out. To do something. But she wasn't there. And even if she was… what could she have done? She could only watch as he let go. As he whispered words she couldn't hear. As he stepped forward, unflinching, into the arms of death.
They ripped him apart. Ellie flinched as the first bite tore into his shoulder, as the first hands dragged him down. And yet he didn't fight. He just closed his eyes. She didn't understand it. How could he do that? How could he leave the child? How could he die like that—with nothing but quiet acceptance?
Her fingers curled. She hated it. She hated the way it made her feel, the way it clawed at something buried deep inside her, something raw and aching. Why? Why did it hurt so much? Was it because she never knew her father?
She had never thought much about it before. It was just a fact of her life, a hole she never tried to fill. But looking at the baby, so small, so helpless, looking at the man, whose arms still reached for it even as he was swallowed by the starving. She felt something close to grief. Grief for someone she didn't know. Grief for something she never had. And somewhere, buried beneath it all, a whisper of something even worse.
Recognition.
His regrets, his weakness, his last moments. They were hers.
She had died with nothing. She had died weak, offering what little she had left to a child who would never even know her name.
The air around her shifted. A whisper rose, not from one place, but from everywhere. A promise sealed in blood and suffering. Ellie didn't understand. It wasn't in elven nor the language used by the saints. But she felt them. A wish. For her to find solace.
Suddenly, the thread connecting her to the promise snapped.
Ellie gasped.
A screen suddenly appeared, hovering in the empty void, written in the saint's language.
**[Commencing sacrifice]**
Something was tearing her away, ripping her from the remnants of that past life, from the grief, from the sorrow that wasn't entirely hers but had nestled so deeply within her soul.
Then, fire. It roared to life, swallowing the ruins, the whispers. It burned without heat, golden embers swirling like living things, forming walls that caged her in and shielded her all at once.
Unyielding. The fire tried to consume everything but it failed.
It flickered, cracked, and then the whispers laughed.
"The promise had been made."
The fire stopped. It no longer raged against the whispers, no longer sought to burn away the weight pressing against her. Instead, it turned inward. Ellie barely had time to react before the flames moved. They surged into her, pouring through her skin, through her bones, through the very core of her being. The words coiled around her, threading into the fire, binding it deeper.
Suddenly, she felt it.
Something was forming inside her. An organ that was not in the physical sense, as if it existed in another plane yet, at the same time, inside of her. It pulsed, not with blood, but with something else. Something vast. Ellie pressed a hand to her chest, but there was nothing to feel. No shift beneath her ribs. No mark on her skin.
The world turned dark, folding in on itself like ink bleeding into water.
Then weight.
Ellie inhaled sharply. The floating sensation had vanished, replaced by the unmistakable pull of gravity. Her feet were on solid ground. The cold bit into her skin. And in her arms something small. Warm. She looked down.
A baby.
Ellie's breath caught in her throat. The fragile weight in her grasp trembled, its tiny body pressing against her chest, seeking warmth, seeking comfort, seeking her.
Her fingers curled around the child before she could even think. It was instinct. The arms holding the baby were thin and veiny. These hands weren't hers. The clothes draped over her body were too large, too worn.
Ellie swallowed hard, her heart hammering against her ribs.
She was in his body. Her past life's body.
"What the? Am I dreaming?"
It couldn't be. It felt too real. The contrast between the baby's warmth and the cold air. The painful hollow in her stomach coming with every suffocating breath.
"That's mean."
Ellie looked up from the baby.
"Fuck."
The hungry mass surrounded her.
Gaunt faces stretched too thin over sharp bones. Their breath rasped in the cold, bodies twitching, trembling from hunger. A hunger that had long since hollowed out the remnants of their humanity.
Ellie yelled out.
"Back off."
The baby whimpered, and the sound felt like a scream against the silence.
The mass twitched as someone took a step forward. Then another.
Ellie's breath came too fast, too shallow.
She had no weapons. No strength. No way to fight.
"I said BACK THE FUCK OFF," Ellie yelled.
The crowd seemed to startle a bit at Ellie's sudden outburst but they quickly resumed their advance.
'Should I make a run for it? No, fuck running away. Enough of that. They will chase after me anyway.'
Ellie doubted she would be able to outrun these savages that were clearly more well-fed than her past life.
'Am I really doing this?'
Ellie took off her cloth, wrapping it gently around the baby. The moment the cloth left her skin, the cold wind struck, biting into her bones and sending shiver through her body.
She placed a soft kiss on the baby's forehead before setting it down where she stood. Her eyes never left the enclosing circle of cannibals. Still crouched low, her fingers brushed against the frozen dirt. Then, she found it. Her grip tightened around a rock, rough and jagged.
'Is this how mother felt?'
Alone, helplessly standing against a world that wished to tear her child apart.
Had she, too, looked upon her child, knowing that if there was a choice to be made, she would not hesitate? That between herself and her child, the answer had been decided long before the question was even asked.
While Ellie only saw House Gemma as no different compared to these animals, selling off their flesh and blood to other members of the high echelon. Her mother must have seen everyone as such because of the maids and the guards venting their dissatisfaction and anger on her, calling Ellie's names.
Ellie fought against the cold to stand as tall as she could. She tried her best to steady her shaking arm that was holding up the rock. The rock couldn't have been that heavy, yet her thin hand struggled to keep it raised.
"I doubt you animals know what chivalry is," Ellie said, scanning for the weakest link in the group.
'You would probably happily devour your fallen comrade.' A stupid grin appeared on her face. 'Let me help with that then.'
The five of them approached Ellie at a slow and uncertain pace, not because of her, but because of each other. After all, this world was a cutthroat one and the only bond they had was hunger.
Ellie slowly back away from the baby, her hand still gripping on the rock.
'One of you... one of you is starving more than the rest. One of you is too weak to fight the others off and could only eat scrap and will risk it to get your hand on the baby first. That's the one I need.'
The hungry mass watched her retreat, thinking she had abandoned her child to save herself.
The weakest among them snapped first. He lunged forward, eyes locking on the baby cooing for Ellie. His mouth watered, his pupils dilated. He was so focused that he didn't notice the rock appearing in his peripheral vision.
Whack!
The rock connected to his temper with the full force of Ellie's swing.
'Moron. You let your guard down. Now have fun being others' dinner.'
However, Ellie judged her strength wrong. She didn't expect this body to be so weak, even with such precision in her strike, the starved man didn't go down. Instead, he was furious.
'Shit.'
Ellie quickly pulled her arm back for another swing. But the starved man was quicker, having caught her arm, he pulled her in for a headbutt and a sickening crunch followed as the man's skull crashed into her nose.
The pain was sharp and jarring. Her vision was blurry, the taste of iron flooding her mouth. Instinctively, Ellie raised her hands up to defend her face but in doing so, she dropped her weapon which was already picked up by the starved man.
'I am done for.' she thought as the rock swung at her.