Chapter 5: The Man from Nowhere

The air wasn’t cold here; it was thick, sharp with sulfur and strange herbs that stung the back of the throat.

Kaiser lay flat on his back. A dull, warm light pressed against his closed eyelids. Every inch of him throbbed—bones, muscles, skin—like he’d been taken apart and reassembled by someone in a hurry.

He inhaled. The smell was wrong. Not pine needles. Not city exhaust. Something medicinal and alien.

“…Where am I?” he rasped.

A familiar glow flickered at the edge of his vision. Kai materialized instantly, translucent eyes wide with unmistakable relief. “I have no clue either.”

Kaiser swallowed. His throat felt like gravel. “How am I… still breathing?”

Kai paused just a fraction too long. “…Donno.”

Kaiser forced his eyes open. Rough wooden beams crossed the ceiling above him. Paper lanterns swayed gently, casting soft orange light. A real room—not forest dirt, not endless void.

Seven strangers ringed the bed.

A bearded man with sharp, calculating eyes. An older woman in healer’s robes. A mountain of a man in battered armor. A golden-haired kid barely out of his teens. A girl with a longbow slung across her back. A hooded figure lurking in the shadows. And a blue-haired girl gently pressing a damp cloth to his forehead.

“He’s coming around.” “Looks like he crawled out of a grave…” “How’s he even conscious he looks so malnourished?”

Kaiser tried to sit up. Pain flared, but his body moved—cleaner, stronger, strangely obedient.

“…Ughh” he croaked.

The blue-haired girl offered a small, careful smile. “Relax. You’re safe. Our scouting party found you unconscious in a nearby forest.”

Kaiser didn't remembere any forest.

Kai hovered behind the group, invisible to everyone else. “Play it smart. We can't trust them yet , mention bare-handed monster murder and they’ll chain you to a table for study.”

The bearded man stepped closer. “Name’s Ronan, Guildmaster of Blazewing Guild. Mind telling us who you are?”

Kaiser opened his mouth—then shut it. He needed time. He needed to understand this world’s rules before he gave them anything real.

He frowned, letting confusion seep into his voice. “…I don’t know.”

Silence dropped over the room like a curtain.

The healer leaned in, brows knitting. “Nothing at all? Family? Home? How you ended up in the forest?”

Kaiser replied back,“No, nothing at all.”

The healer sighed.

The girl with the bow clicked her tongue. “Memory’s not the issue here, guild master.” She pointed towards a fist-sized stone resting on the bedside table. It sat dark and lifeless. “Look at the reader.”

She picked it up and pressed it gently against Kaiser’s palm. Nothing happened. No glow. No hum.

“He’s got no detectable mana,” she said quietly. “Zero.”

Ronan’s face hardened. “That’s not possible. Everything alive has at least a trace. A bug has mana. A weed has mana. Zero… that’s not weak. That’s a void.”

The armored giant shifted, hand drifting toward his sword. “Then how did he survive till now?"

No one had an answer.

Kaiser cleared his throat, voice still rough. “What… what’s that stone supposed to do?”

The girl with the bow glanced at him, surprise flickering across her face before she answered evenly. “It’s a mana reader. Basic tool—glows in proportion to the mana flowing through whoever touches it. Everyone has some. Even animals. Even plants.” She set the lifeless stone back on the table. “Yours didn’t react at all.”

Mana? Kaiser thought, the word bouncing around his skull like a foreign coin. Now what the hell is mana?

Later, after Ronan and the others filed out to “discuss this new person” Kaiser stood alone in front of a cracked mirror in the corner.

“What… the hell…”