The young man sat atop a hill, his gaze turned skyward, watching the stars, each one shimmering like a unique, precious jewel.

  The entire Milky Way sprawled before him in its glory. The stars winked at the young man, while beside him, the crackling of the fire blended with the sound of boiling water, bringing him peace.

  Beep... beep beep...

  His peace didn't last long.

  He flinched at the artificial, jarring sound that tore through the silence of nature.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.

  "What?" he said, scowling. "You ruined my night."

  "KAYRA!"

  The voice was so loud and sharp that he had to pull the phone away from his ear.

  "WHY DID YOU JUST TAKE OFF WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE?"

  Kayra brought the phone back to his ear.

  "If you're going to keep yelling, I'm hanging up, Elsa."

  "Go ahead, don't stop me," Elsa said. "Next time I see you, I'm setting all that camping gear of yours on fire."

  Kayra's expression changed instantly.

  "Blackmail, huh? Fine, you win. I'm listening."

  Kayra's voice lost its peaceful depth from moments ago, taking on the weary tone of surrender.

  "Finally, you're talking sense," Elsa said, her voice still carrying a hint of reproach, but her explosive anger had subsided. "I'm not going to ask where you are right now, because you're probably on some mountain top with barely any signal again."

  Kayra smiled faintly and tossed a small pebble on the ground towards the fire. "Let's just say I'm near the summit. The stars look more real from up here, Elsa. All those artificial lights down there pollute everything."

  "Stars don't fill your stomach, Kayra," Elsa said, her voice softening this time, more like a concerned older sister. "It's our exam year, you realize that, right? The counseling service says you're about to go from being a 'gifted underachiever' to a straight-up 'lost cause' file."

  Kayra, listening to this familiar lecture on the other end of the line, didn't take his eyes off the sky. "Potential..." he murmured to himself. "What good is the potential they're talking about, Elsa, other than chaining me to a desk and letting my life rot away? I just want to...

  Beeeeep...

  The call cut off abruptly. Kayra frowned. "You serious, Elsa? Right when I was getting to the good part."

  The screen was black. He tried to turn it back on, but it was no use. "Lost signal again?" he grumbled. Annoyed, he shoved the phone back into his pocket.

  Just then, he felt a strange tremor. At first, he thought it was a faint rumble in the distance, then he realized the ground beneath his feet was vibrating.

  The blazing flames of the fire stretched strangely for a moment, shadows dancing. It felt as if the very air was being bent by an invisible hand. The stars in the sky flickered, as if they were all breathing in unison.

  "What's happening?" Kayra jumped to his feet, his eyes scanning the area. Was it an earthquake? But what he felt was unlike any earthquake he knew. It was as if space and time were folding in on themselves, the order of nature breaking down.

  The surface of a rocky hill just ahead of him began to ripple, as if being kneaded by an invisible force. Rocks stretched, earth strained. In its center, a pitch-black rift formed, as if space itself had torn. A void that reflected no light, seeming infinitely deep. Kayra's heart began to race. His brain struggled to process this unbelievable scene. Had the laws of physics gone mad? Was this a hallucination?

  And from that rift, from within the darkness, something began to emerge.

  First, a massive, clawed hand appeared. Then an arm with thick, leathery skin. Then, a terrifying creature, three meters tall, moving with the muscular power of a gorilla and the agility of a lion, hurled itself out.

  The creature's eyes were like two glowing embers, burning crimson in the dark. Its mouth opened in a roar filled with razor-sharp teeth, a primal sound that echoed across the mountains as it charged at Kayra.

  Kayra's mind went completely blank for a moment. His body froze. This couldn't be real. It had to be a dream, a nightmare. But the creature's rumbling growl, the heavy stench emanating from it, and its shadow rapidly approaching him screamed that this was a horrifying reality.

  At the last second, a primal instinct kicked in and he threw himself sideways. The creature's claws tore through the ground where he had just stood, gouging the earth. Feeling his heart about to burst from his chest, Kayra started backing away. He didn't know what to do. What was this thing? How did it get here? And what was the reason for all this? As his mind churned with these questions, a single thought echoed within him:

  Run.

  Kayra stumbled, trying to anticipate the creature's next move, terrified of tripping with every step. As the creature's roar deafened him, his legs seemed to come alive. He started running mindlessly down the slope. The sound of his footsteps echoing in the mountains, mixed with the beast's snarls behind him, turned the night into a nightmare.

  Kayra's lungs burned, and with each step he fought to keep his balance on the slippery ground. The heavy footfalls of the creature behind him, combined with the crashing of broken tree branches, echoed at the back of his neck like a cold breath.

  The beast's snarl grew closer with each passing second.

  "This is impossible, this can't be real!" he yelled to himself, but the pain of a branch striking his leg as he leaped through the bushes was all too real.

  Suddenly, the air in front of him began to warp again.

  Unable to stop his momentum, Kayra tried to halt, but the ground beneath his feet pulled away like a sheet being yanked. The same black, spatial rift that had appeared behind him was now opening right in front of him, in the middle of the path he was running on. But this one was different; it wasn't just a rift, it was like a massive vacuum, sucking in everything around it.

  The air was being pulled towards this anomaly with a deafening whistle.

  It felt as if gravity had shifted direction. Kayra tried to dig his nails into the ground, lunged for a root to hold onto, but his fingers only grasped empty air.

  "No, no! Stop!"

  The anomaly pulsed with a flash of purple and black light, bending the reality around it. Kayra's body lifted off the ground.

  His gaze turned back to the darkness ahead. At the center of that black hole was an absolute nothingness, where not even stars existed.

  "Elsa..." he managed to whisper with his last breath.

  As if an invisible hand had grabbed him by the chest and pulled him in, Kayra was suddenly swallowed by the darkness.

  The sound stopped. The light vanished. There wasn't even cold. He only felt himself floating in a bottomless, timeless void. His body tingled as if it were being torn into a thousand pieces and then reassembled.

  Just before he reached the brink of unconsciousness, a voice echoed within the darkness—mechanical, yet ancient:

  [Guide Bot Activated...]

  [Analysis: User vital functions at critical level.]

  [Analysis: External threat level is 9400% above current defense capacity.]

  [Conclusion: Predicted outcome is absolute death.]

  [Protocol 0: Initiating compulsory intervention...]

  [Soul integration 1%... 45%... 100%. Compulsory intervention active!]

  Kayra's consciousness slammed back into place, as if falling from a cliff thousands of meters high.

  He tried to open his eyes, but his lids were heavy, sealed shut with a sticky fluid.

  He tried to breathe; but what filled his lungs wasn't air, but a thick, metallic-tasting, sweet-smelling liquid that burned his throat.

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  His heart pounded furiously, as if trying to burst out of his ribcage. When he tried to move, his rigid muscles betrayed him.

  Every muscle fiber ached, as if a truck had run over them.

  "Where am I?" he wanted to shout, but only muffled bubbles escaped his mouth.

  The darkness was absolute, pitch black. He groped around with his hands; his fingers sank into a slimy, jelly-like layer.

  Panicking, he spread his arms wide and hit a hard, curved wall. The wall was smooth, but he could feel vein-like protrusions on it. What he touched was warm, even pulsating faintly, as if it were alive.

  Then he understood.

  He wasn't in an empty space. He was trapped inside something.

  He started thrashing in the tight space. The fluid got into his nose and ears, choking him. Just as he was about to lose consciousness again, the same mechanical voice echoed in the depths of his mind:

  [Warning: Oxygen levels critical. Break the shell.]

  Driven by the instinct to survive, Kayra forgot all his pain and slammed his fist against the hard wall. Thud. The sound was muffled, like being underwater. He struck again. And again...

  Finally, a faint cracking sound echoed in the ancient darkness.

  The first ray of light seeping through a small crack was blindingly bright to Kayra's eyes.

  Along with the crack, the freezing air that rushed in stabbed into his lungs like a knife. With a mix of pain and determination, Kayra dug his fingers into the crack. The shell didn't crumble like sandstone; it resisted, then broke like hard bone.

  He pushed himself out through the hole he had barely widened. A disgusting squelching sound echoed as his body, covered in viscous fluids, slid free from the mucous membrane inside the thing he was emerging from. Kayra fell face-first onto the damp ground. When his lungs met the air, he started coughing violently, expelling the dark fluid from his mouth.

  Rising on his hands and knees, he looked back at what he had emerged from.

  In the light, it was clearer: a massive egg, about two meters tall, dirty white in color, with a network of purple veins webbed across its surface. The thick, translucent-gray fluid was still seeping from the hole he had made. The egg didn't look like the shell of a fruit, but rather like the chrysalis of a creature. When he looked around, his horror deepened; in this cavern-like place lit by a dim light, there were two more eggs like his own, but whatever had been inside them was long gone.

  Kayra looked at his trembling hands. They were covered in that sticky fluid, but he was alive. The peaceful campfire on the hilltop was gone. Elsa's voice was gone.

  There was only darkness, silence, and that disgusting shell he had crawled out of.

  He remained like that on the damp ground for a while. With every breath of that foreign, cold air, he felt a burning sensation in his chest.

  When he tried to push himself up by pressing his palms to the ground, he flinched, realizing how much his arms struggled to support him. His bones creaked as if they were made of glass.

  He raised his hands and looked at his fingers in the dim light. He gasped at what he saw.

  He didn't recognize his own hands. His fingers were elongated, the flesh almost completely gone. His skin was like pale parchment stretched tightly over his bones. He touched his wrists; the bone protrusions were so sharp they looked ready to tear through the skin from the inside.

  "What's happening to me?" he tried to murmur, but his voice came out as only a raspy growl.

  He ran his trembling hands over his torso. His horror deepened as his fingertips traced his ribcage.

  Each rib was individually countable, the spaces between them forming deep hollows. His once healthy body was gone, replaced by a skin-and-bones wreck, ravaged by hunger and decay. When he tried to reach his back, his spinal column jutted out along his spine like a row of sharp rocks.

  His muscles... The youthful energy he'd always relied on had completely melted away. Every time he tried to move, he felt his fibers tearing.

  He touched his face. His cheekbones were as sharp as knife blades. His cheeks were sunken, his eye sockets deep.

  Only his hair... though wet and matted with that disgusting fluid, it was still there, the only familiar part of this alien body.

  Kayra, frail and pitiful, swayed on the spot. His eyes still couldn't see clearly; everything was behind a blurry gray veil, but the reality he touched was enough.

  He was no longer that young man on the hilltop. It was as if only his soul had been transported inside that egg, while his body had been cast into the embrace of a thousand years of starvation.

  He tried to stand, but his knees buckled beneath him. His legs were so thin they couldn't even support his own weight. As he tried to crawl away from the egg, the mechanical voice crackled in his mind again:

  [Critical Warning: Muscle mass loss 85%.]

  [Nutrient supplement required.]

  With his face buried in the damp earth, Kayra clenched his teeth. That cold, emotionless voice echoing in his mind was reducing this nightmare he was living through to a video game statistic.

  "Who are you?" Kayra whispered. His voice was rough and weak, as if his throat was filled with shards of glass. "Where am I... Answer me!"

  There was a moment of silence in his mind, then the mechanical crackle sounded again:

  [Identification: I am a Guide Bot. You have not yet assigned me a name, User Kayra.]

  Kayra pushed himself back a little more with his trembling hands. "A name? Am I talking to a robot?" He looked at his own frail wrists, at the bones that seemed ready to burst through his skin. "What happened to me? Why am I like this? Why am I no different from a skeleton?"

  [Question analyzed: Reason for current physical state...]

  [Answer: Your condition is completely normal. Sleep duration and nutrient deficiency have caused muscle atrophy.]

  "Sleep duration?" Kayra's heart began to race. "How long was I in there?"

  [Checking records...]

  [User Kayra, you have spent 500 years, 4 months, and 12 days inside the said egg.]

  Kayra forgot to breathe for a moment. The world started spinning around him. "Five hundred years?" he tried to shout, but only managed a hoarse rasp. "You're lying! I was just... just a moment ago, I was on the hilltop. I was talking to Elsa!"

  [Error: Your perception of time is limited to your last recorded data. However, your biological clock and environmental data confirm a period of 500 years. Without intervention, the survival process would have failed and your life functions would have ceased.]

  Kayra looked at the other eggs around him in horror. Five hundred years... Everyone he knew, the world, the buildings, the exams... It must have all turned to dust long ago. His weak, Gollum-like body was actually proof of a great miracle.

  He hadn't just been born into another place, but into another time, an entirely different world.

  [Warning: Nutrient supplement required. Muscle mass at critical level.]

  "Everything's gone..." Kayra murmured, tears streaming from his eyes. "Was I inside that thing for five hundred years?"

  [Confirmed. Current priority: Survival. Please move toward the primary nutrient source.]

  Following the Guide Bot's instruction, Kayra turned his gaze to the massive, veined egg he had just emerged from. His stomach churned once more at the sight.

  "You mean that?" he asked, his voice trembling. "Eat that disgusting thing?"

  [Answer: The eggshell contains pure calcium and concentrated mana minerals. The mucosal fluid remaining inside is a high-protein essence accumulated over 500 years. This is the only safe nutrient source your current form can digest.]

  Kayra reached out a trembling hand towards one of the broken shell pieces. The shell felt cold and metallic to the touch, but was also flexible, like the flesh of a fruit. When he tore off a piece and brought it to his mouth, he was jolted by the sharp, stale metallic smell that filled his nostrils.

  As he took his first bite, the shell didn't crumble like sand in his mouth, but dissolved like a thick jelly. It tasted like a mix of rusty iron, earth, and an intensely sweet flavor he had never experienced before. It was so dense that for a moment Kayra thought he would choke. But as that awful liquid slid down his throat, something he had never felt before happened in his body.

  A warm wave spread from the center of his chest, flowing towards his freezing limbs. The stabbing pain in his muscles gave way to a pleasant tingling.

  [Analysis: Nutrient supplement being received.]

  [Nutrient quality: High.]

  [Cellular repair 0.1%... 0.8%...]

  Despite his disgust, Kayra began scooping the mucosal fluid from inside the egg with his hands. His body, driven by the savagery of a 500-year hunger, seemed out of control. He was consuming the very thing he came from like a starving animal. With every gulp, he could feel the muscles beneath his sunken cheekbones tightening slightly, the blood in his veins pumping faster.

  When he had consumed half the egg, a new window suddenly appeared in his mind.

  This time it wasn't just a sound, but a translucent blue screen glowing in the middle of the dim cave.

  [FIRST DEVELOPMENT SIGNAL RECEIVED]

  [User: Kayra]

  [Age: 18]

  [Level: 0 (Wreck)]

  [Stat Point Earned: 1]

  [Guide Bot Note: You have earned your first development point. You must use this point to get your body back on its feet. Which attribute do you wish to develop?]

  Kayra wanted to touch the blue screen with trembling fingers, but his hand passed through the empty air.

  "I don't know..." he said hoarsely. "I just... I just want this shaking to stop and to be able to crawl out of this damn place."

  [Recommendation: Developing the 'Vitality' stat is advised. This process will stabilize your nervous system and repair micro-tears in your muscle fibers without compromising your current skeletal structure. It will not cause a dramatic change in your physical appearance, but will increase your motor skills by 15%.]

  "Do it, then," Kayra said wearily. "Whatever it takes."

  [1 Stat Point allocated to 'Vitality' attribute.]

  [Vitality: 1 -> 2]

  At that moment, a thin, electric tingle began to flow down Kayra's spine. It was different from the warm wave before; sharper, more targeted. The uncontrollable trembling in his legs slowly subsided.

  His cheekbones were still as sharp as knives, his body still skin and bones, but the "wreck" who moments ago couldn't even move a finger could now clench his fingers into the earth like claws.

  With difficulty, he pressed his palms to the ground. His bones still protruded as if they might pierce his skin, but this time there was a "resistance" in his arms. Slowly, as if shedding a thousand years of rust, he rose to his knees.

  [Warning: Cellular repair is still ongoing. Sudden movements may cause bone fractures.]

  Holding onto the shell of the egg he had emerged from, Kayra took his first step. His legs were still as thin as toothpicks and knocked against each other with every step. But he was no longer just crawling; though he staggered, he was on his feet.

  Slowly, his eyes began to adjust to the depths of the cave.

  Though he felt as if he could hear his bones grinding with every step, he didn't stop. That tiny bit of resistance provided by the Guide Bot was his only chance to cling to life.

  The sharp stones on the cave floor hurt his bare feet, and the mucosal fluid seeping from his body made a wet, echoing sound with each step.

  From within the pitch-black darkness ahead, a pure, bright beam of light began to seep through.

  "Light..." Kayra murmured. His throat still burned, but the desire to reach that light overpowered all the pain in his body.

  With unsteady steps, holding onto the rough rocks on the wall, he moved towards the mouth of the cave. As he got closer, the musty, metallic smell of the cave dissipated, and fresh air filled his lungs. With a final effort, he reached the cave exit and stepped outside.

  The sight before him made Kayra's legs give way.

  He looked up, shielding his eyes with his palms as they were dazzled. The sky was still that deep, boundless blue he knew. The clouds were white, the air familiar. But within that blue, an image defying all logic stood still.

  A massive, orange sun, descending towards the horizon, was plunging the surroundings into a crimson silence as it set. But directly overhead, at the highest point in the sky, hung a second sun—smaller but much brighter, almost white in color, shining as if it were noon.

  Two suns shared the same blue sky, casting strange, intertwined shadows on the ground before Kayra, stretching in two different directions.

  "Two..." Kayra whispered, rubbing his eyes with his frail hands. "That's impossible."

  [Analysis Complete.]

  [Celestial Bodies: Primary and Secondary Star Identified.]

  [Welcome to the New World, Kayra.]

  As Kayra stared at the two suns above him, he realized in that moment that 500 years hadn't just thrown him into a temporal void, but into an entirely different universe where the laws of physics had been rewritten.