The howling wind bore down on me as I trekked through the forest, flinging ice shards and lumpy snowballs at my head as I walked. I almost regretted taking off my helmet just to have some protection against the freezing projectiles, but the metal froze fast in the cold. I didn't want to risk it getting stuck on my head, so I took it off and held it under my arm.

The blizzard made it hard to keep track of the forest path I walked on, not to mention the packed snow I had to walk through. I had the strong urge to melt everything with some fire spells, but I didn't want to risk lighting the trees on fire. So instead I powered through it, kicking up snow with my boots and peering down at the ground every once in a while to make sure I was still going the right way.

Truthfully, though, I didn't know what 'way' I was supposed to be going. I had no idea where this path was taking me, trusting it to lead me to civilization. I'd forgotten to raid the keep to find some sort of map and I was paying for it now. But I couldn't give up; that definitely wasn't an option.

My pride wouldn't let me turn tail and run back to Flake. I wanted freedom and I got it; now I just had to shoulder the burdens of the cost.

As I kicked up another pile of snow, I saw something flash in the winter sun. The shiny thing landed a few feet away, in a patch of untraveled snow. Curious, I wandered over to the area, dug through the snow, and found a large rock.

I was about to discard when I noticed something interesting on the flat surface of the rock: engraved words. My eyes glazed over what they said, though; whatever language they were written in, I couldn't read it.

But that made me think: what language could I read? I'd certainly never had any reading material back at the keep. I didn't know the name of the language that I spoke, either. I never thought about it; I just spoke.

I frowned at this sudden new development. What else did I not remember? Memories of past me were hazy and unclear; who was I before I became Crystal? How come I didn't have a name back then? How did I become a {Guard}?

Did...did Flake have something to do with this? No, no I don't think he did. He was just as clueless as I was about himself. And besides, I don't think he's...well, Flake's a rather simpleminded man. It's just not in his code to think beyond fighting invaders and protecting the keep.

He'd rather stay in that hellhole than leave with me.

I squeezed the rock hard, blocking out those thoughts. We weren't close; we'd hardly known each other for more than a day. Most of our time was spent training together and then arguing about who was worse at what. What that made us, I didn't know but...It wouldn't be right of me to assume he'd just give up everything for some girl he'd just met.

Even if we were sorta kinda friends.

Sighing, I stood up and made my way back to the path. It's no use thinking about what happened; I had things to do. Starting off, I kicked up some more snow and kept walking.

I'm hungry.

It was a new feeling, hunger. At first, I thought it was just cold creeping up through my gambeson so I hugged myself tighter and ignored it. But then my stomach started growling rather loudly and kicking up snow took more effort than before.

Looking at my status, I saw my SP was scarily low. My HP had dropped to halfway from taking cold damage but my MP was still topped off.

I had to stop before my SP was too low for me to move, so I shuffled over to a tree and sat down, ignoring the wet coldness seeping into my pants. My stomach ached for something to fill it but I didn't know what. All I had on me was a rock and a bag of metal coins.

Shivering under my tree, I wondered why I'd ever thought that wanting to eat was a good thing. Hunger pains were atrocious.

To distract myself from my predicament, I took out the rock and studied the symbols. I traced the indents with my thumb, rather enjoying the feel of grainy rock through the thin fabric wrapped around my hands.

The fabrics were a poor substitute for actual mittens, but I didn't have anything better. Just another example of the neglect I faced back at the keep.

I rubbed the rock between my palms, trying to warm it and my hands up. I wonder what would happen if I warmed myself up using fire-attuned mana, I idly thought. That would probably be really stupid, though...But...maybe it wouldn't hurt to try.

Gathering mana, I sent it toward my hands like I normally did. I brought it out, wondering what order I would give it. Before I could figure it out though, the rock sucked up all the mana I'd produced.

And then it started to heat up.

"Oh," I breathed. "That is very, very useful."