My arm was gone, there was no feeling in it at all. As I wandered through the swamp, my dried up and burnt body part was slowly disintegrating into an ashen trail behind me.

Before heading onward, I spent what felt like an eternity sitting in the swamp, staring at the burnt wolf, even though I’m sure in reality I only stayed there for a few minutes.

I found a torch attached to one of the pieces of cloth remaining of the two men.

Luckily, there was a piece of flint stone in the caravan, unluckily I was missing an arm. Lighting the torch was much more of a struggle than I expected, not only due to my lacking anatomy, but also due to simply having never lit a fire of any kind in general.

You might be wondering how I even knew what flint stone looked like, but the answer was the same as always: video games.  

The mist thinned out around me noticeably ever since the torch was lit. Maybe the stuff was a gas of some kind instead of actual water vapor? Luckily, it didn’t seem to be the explosive kind of gas.

Pondering these mundane things was all that I could do to keep my mind from racing too much.

To be precise, my head wasn’t abuzz due to the unimaginable horrors I just faced, but more so due to how everything played out in the end.

The reason I had bet everything on my idiotic fantasy right there, was simply due to a hasty observation I made. I mentioned about something missing as I stood before the wolf. I couldn’t figure it out until the last moment.

When it dawned upon me, I realized I had a choice. A choice to believe in my haphazard guess or try something more concrete.

In my infinite lunacy, I chose the haphazard guess… simply…because my heart wasn’t beating.

I tried feeling around my chest, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I felt excited, adrenaline was surely bursting through my veins… and yet, I was unable to feel the familiar weak thumping.

It was quiet to the point of absence. At the moment, I realized I might not have a heart to begin with, and that I might actually be a witch.

This was one way of getting my answer to the question of if this was a magical world or not.

I just cast a spell with a sigil I knew from my past life. In my desperation to become a witch, in my hopeless effort to cure myself, I had learned all the magical symbols from a game I played in the past. Somehow… its name keeps escaping me, but I distinctly remember the patterns found within the witches’ lairs.

They had magic symbols carved into walls to act as magical traps. The witches had no heartbeat, meaning they were heartless, both literally and figuratively.

Most importantly, they were enemies. You couldn’t play as them… and yet, I remember the witches having incredibly robust lore behind them. Somehow, I never found it odd why such random enemies were given so much attention…

But thinking back on it now, it does seem weird, doesn’t it? I admit I had no issue with them having a denser story to them. They were what filled me with empty hope through my teenage years, so I am forever thankful for all the pointless backstory, and it seemed my obsession with them saved my life just now.

With all this, I couldn’t help but think this world had some sort of connection to my past life.

There were various little elements from different kinds of media I used to drown my misery in decorating this world. The fantastical scenery, the monsters, beautiful princesses and ballrooms…  

And most importantly, the witches. The embodiment of my desperate hopes and dreams. I didn’t care if they were the enemy. To me, they were everything I could ever want…

As yet another piece of my charred arm fell off, all I could think of… was that this world was like…

An amalgamate.

The stories… games… Things I used to escape from reality with, mashed into one.

Maybe it was a personal purgatory I had been put in. Could be it existed to judge the value of my soul. Perhaps giving up on life was a sin, even if your life is worth nothing, so, now I was being put through a test to see, if I truly knew how to value my life.

To be fair, none of this mattered to me at all. What was crucial, was that I lived through a horrific encounter with my own strength.

The answers to the other questions I could find along the way. What was important now, was to find myself some shelter.

Almost as if on cue, a structure of some kind appeared before me. It was a worn-out log cabin. It wasn’t very big, maybe two rooms and nothing else. There wasn’t anything particularly notable about it, except for a crude little stone monument next to it. It seemed hastily made, and there were clearly human hand-prints all around it in the mud.

There were no lights on, and my pace hastened as I made my way to it. The door had bloody claw marks on it, and upon closer inspection, there was a trail of red going into the building.

Listening closely, I could hear quiet repeating noises of some kind coming from inside.

Brandishing my torch, I pushed against the door, only to find it didn’t yield. There was a somewhat rustic metal lock underneath the handle. It was missing a key.

Groaning to myself, I wandered around the little cottage a bit. It had windows, but they were really high up and small, probably to prevent monsters from getting in. To my surprise and delight, one of the windows was broken, and within the shards of dirty glass laid a big rusty key.

It fit the lock, and I slowly opened the door, only to find the source of the strange noise.

A knight in full armor was slumped against the furthest wall from the door, a trail of blood marking the path they had taken. It was hard to discern their identity due to the bloodstained steel covering them from head to toe, but it was easy enough to see they weren’t your average knight.

The armor was adorned in beautiful, finely crafted golden ivies. It was clearly the gear of someone rich… An aristocrat maybe? Judging by the blood, I guess they got ambushed by a wolf as well.

For whatever reason, the bloodied person was weakly slapping their hand against their helmet.

I hoped with all of my lacking heart, that they weren’t one of those nasty aristocrats from the infinite novels I read in my past as I entered the building properly.

As I took my first step into the room, the creaking of the floorboards alerted the knight of my presence immediately, and the slapping stopped.

With how much blood there was everywhere, I was genuinely more surprised over the fact, that the person within the plating was alive, than how their voice was distinctly female.

“Who goes there…?! Dare come closer, and I’ll have you greet your makers…” Her voice was tired. It was more than obvious she was in no shape to go through with her threats.

She didn’t even have the strength to lift her head up properly to look at me. Judging by where there was the most blood, her shoulder was wounded severely. Looking a bit more closely, though… It was also clear some of the injuries on her body were man-made. There were broken arrowheads covered in blood next to her.  

“I don’t know who you are, but I’m not here to hurt you. Look, I’m in the same boat as you.” I tried to speak as calmly as I could, but as frustrating as it was to admit, my voice was shaking a bit.

“Don’t lie to me, scum! The kingdom sent you! Didn’t it !?” The knight’s voice had an honorable, commanding air to it, despite her obvious plight.

“Just give me a proper look. Do I really look as if I’m even capable of hurting you?”

This finally made her glance up a bit. Her grip on the sword she had next to her loosened.

“Did you perhaps get ‘exiled’ too?” My question caused the knight to jolt a bit.

A moment of silence preceded a weak mixture of coughing and grim laughter. The knight loosened her grip on her sword fully. I honestly doubted she even had the strength to lift the weapon anymore to begin with.

“I wish…” Her reply was short and marred with bitterness.

She gestured behind her. There was a wooden door leading into a somewhat filthy pantry. There were some dry foods and supplies along worn-out shelves. Judging by the sight, this building was most likely some kind of outpost for travelers or guards passing through the swamp.

I used the torch to light a fire in a somewhat filthy fireplace on the opposite side of the wall the knightly lady was resting against. The slightly moist wood crackled a bit, but eventually caught fire properly. Some of the worn-out furniture was also sacrificed to the fire to warm up the cabin.

I found some strange dry and flat bread with dried meat in the pantry. It wasn’t particularly good, but hunger is a powerful spice.

I ripped into it as if my life depended on it… and well, maybe to an extent it did. I was in a ragged shape to put it very lightly… but somehow, I didn’t feel like I was growing weaker. Surely, a normal person might get poisoned from having the toxins from burning your own arm enter your blood? I’m no doctor, but I do feel like my body was recovering faster than any normal human’s.

“How can you eat that with such joy on your face?” The knight seemed thrown off by my appetite.

“Fuddup! I’m hungwy!” I mumbled with my mouth full of food, some flying out. Furthermore, I had just gotten almost killed. Table manners were not my primary concern in a situation like this.

Taking a glance at the knight again, she really was wearing pretty crazy armor. I don’t know exactly what kind of armor it would classify as, but it looked pretty! Or… would have if not for all the blood and denting on it.

“We should probably do something about the bleeding, or you’ll die.” I spoke after swallowing.

“No point. I have nothing left to live for… I’d rather die. The only reason I threw the key out was simply to help other poor souls who might get lost in this hellhole. It wasn’t a plea for help.” The knight scoffed at my words.

A curious reply. She seemed to be in rather good health outside of the… obvious gaping wound around her shoulder. I’d say no severely important blood vessels had been torn, judging by the fact, that she was still alive.

The room had all of its fixtures left, although a few were rapidly burning to cinders in the fireplace. The furniture was made of wood, but the surface had worn out over time considerably and was now full of splinters and dirt of all kinds.

There were two tiny windows in every direction of the room. One of them was obviously broken due to the key having been tossed through. Due to the small size of said windows, the majority of light inside the room was from the fireplace.

Judging by how red the blood was and how none of the furniture had been used as kindling, it was clear the knight hadn’t been here for a very long time.

“Why? Do you have some kind of incurable disease?” I asked the knight.

Her reaction was strange. She seemed to gauge me, as if to see if I was joking. As she came to the conclusion that my question was sincere, she sighed heavily.

“No. I don’t. Why?”

“Because I don’t see any reason to give up on life, unless all control is literally forced out of your hands.”

My reply seemed to confuse her. She was about to begin speaking, but I spoke over her.

“Is there really any other reason to give up on life? If you have a healthy body, it means you still have a way to gain control again.”

This time, as I was about to continue on my monologue, she interrupted me.

“Don’t speak of my life as if you know anything! I LOST EVERYTHING!! THAT MISERABLE WOMAN!! SHE DESTROYED EVERYTHING!! MY HUSBAND!! AND MY… my child…!!” Her screaming was hoarse. Weak, but still carried a hint of elegance to it.

I sat by, looking at her. Only the crackling of the fire and her quiet sobbing filling the quiet abyss of the room.

“What… the hell would you even know…!!” She muttered to herself.

“I…” I couldn’t think of what to say.

As someone who was confirmed to die young from the start of my past life, I admittedly felt there shouldn’t be any other reason to really give up on life, unless you literally had no other choice.

But the mention of… a child… or a husband? It made me realize that it was only easy for me to give up on my past life, because I truly had nothing to begin with. By the time I was resting on my deathbed, I had no friends, no family, no personal interests, no religion, no hopes or dreams. I had nothing to cling onto life for.

What would it feel like to be given everything you ever wanted… and then have it robbed from you? I could somewhat understand this sentiment. I didn’t want to give my current life up.

That’s why I fought…