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}?

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  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."

  sounds like Crystal and Flake were once lovers but in reality, we all know that they were mere acquaintances. Maybe when Frost dies, I'll work on making a character Flake can truly bond with.

  Oops.

  discord, maybe you can stop me from getting rid of Frost.