Hammer, hammer, hammer.

  I was making nails, so many nails, thinning out the stakes until they were sharp of point and of acceptable shape, then beating it down in the Pritchel hole. Hammer up, hammer down, a rote repetition to fill my ears with the sound of the forge. Alongside my father and the furnace? It was practically a symphony. A small concert to encapsulate my personal hell.

  I had my suspicions, but I was certain of Asna’s insanity at that point. How could someone who communicated with the world as often as they do people be considered sane? Was I going to lose my mind the closer I got to the whispers of reality? I hoped not, sanity was awful useful.

  Two thousand nails a day.

  That was the task my mother assigned to me, no plan on how to integrate mana into the process, just a goal that’d be impossible to someone of mundane capacities, leaving me to figure it out from there. The problem was I was very much a basic bitch, sure I had mana but to the extent where I could double the output of my father? Insanity.

  I’d never made so many cursed implements of constructural purpose, let alone over the course of consecutive days. The normally soothing activity was starting to grate on me, and I had yet to even pass a month.

  I just spent every day for the past two weeks exclusively smithing nails, needing to skip training with Isidro and Jiso to keep up with the ridiculous quota. Everyone thought I was undergoing some kind of test, because that was what I deigned to tell them. My poor father took a hit to his reputation for making an eleven-year old girl spend every waking moment on smithing.

  I felt bad, they should’ve been directing their ire to my mother, that was the real source of my suffering.

  To my mother’s credit, I had been making progress. I had perhaps an hour of free time if I had enough energy to exercise it, whereas before I had to cut into my sleep to finish. As it stood, I just took the extra time to get more rest. Using so much mana over the course of so many days had its consequences, and by the end of each day I experiences violent bouts of what I had decided to call ‘mana sickness’.

  It wasn't like I was doing anything complicated…I was just making the borders of my pathways more malleable, letting the mana escape from the rivers it flowed through. Then I grabbed it with my will, infused it with the purpose to mend, and voila, my body was restored! Not entirely but enough to maintain a full day's work with minimal breaks.

  But I’d get those two thousand done.

  Every. Single. Day.

  My father seemed genuinely stunned at my insanity, probably didn’t believe me or his wife when we told him I unlocked mana. Poor man, his heart must’ve been experiencing a conjugal visit with age at the sight of his daughter making so many nails. After the first week my mother gleefully suggested they add another thousand to the quota, and I was a witness to one of the few moments where my father actually got angry enough to start yelling.

  I didn’t bother telling him that I genuinely considered it.

  What! It was working! I was getting stronger, and it wasn’t even that hard, just a marathon. My body could last so long as I fed it mana and I didn’t tip over what I could tolerate. Which was growing over the days.

  How did I know?

  Well, I went from sleeping with a bucket and a severe fever to just a splitting migraine alongside some lethargy! In only two weeks too. Maybe tolerance grew exponentially the further I pushed it? That would presume that mana growth didn’t follow because then all mages would be insanely powerful if they just applied themselves.

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  To be fair, most people didn’t have the motivation of armageddon at their heels, threatening sanity and good sense.

  It was still just a tenth of my mana pool, but I had a feeling I could go as far as a ninth, and that didn’t include however much my mana rivers had grown. Damn, I wanted to call it a pool, but that wasn't what it was, it was constantly flowing through me like a raging river. If the river were mist but also a liquid.

  That doesn’t make much sense did it? Well, neither did magic so who fucking cares!

  At least we’ll be making plenty of coin.

  Was it weird of me to think of profits during what was arguably torture? Yeah, probably, but progress! The more I could do the more I could survive and…maybe protect. I didn’t like to think about it, but I kind of had to, didn't I? The End was coming, and the only thing protecting the souls in my village was one measly girl.

  But what could I do? If I were honest with myself, I’d recognize that even centuries of training couldn’t prepare me for the gods stepping foot on this Earth. Anything that I was doing then was just thinly veiled hope for survival. I didn’t even know when it was coming for gods sake!

  There were plenty of mages, knights, warlocks, and witches.

  None of them were capable of stemming the tide of what was coming. Horrifying apocalypse as a cutesy backdrop from some pampered princess’s journey with a bunch of dumbass suitors in steel. The game was actually pretty bright from their perspective, but everyone else? Suffering galore, and all the leads could think about was getting in each other's pants.

  I, admittedly, had no fucking idea if that was how they’d act in my new reality, but giving the prospect thought properly pissed me off. I’d tried to warn my fellows of what was coming, going into gratuitous detail on many an occasion.

  The things that would spill over into their reality was innumerable and horrific, all for a dick swinging contest of a bunch of divine pricks. Entire fields of groaning bodies as carrion of sharp beaks tore through ever regenerating organs. Diseases that brought insanity to the mind, or was it truly insanity if the things they imagine manifest into reality? Fears and hungers brought to torture more than just their hosts. A cascade of godlings fighting for a place in the pantheon, gathering their armies and tearing through mortal bodies—

  They didn’t believe me, the fucks didn’t take me seriously no matter how desperate I became in my explanations. Some even saw it as entertainment. So I’d stopped trying, only mentioning it in passing.

  Not even my mother believed me before I unlocked mana, and that woman can read the World.

  So I had the burden of knowing the End without the capacity to do anything but try and survive, and was survival really enough? I didn’t know, should I even care? Should I even be fighting?

  I was just a peasant girl, my fancy little ears and burgeoning magical capacity meant nothing to the things that would bring their wrath to the world. Just a village idiot, futilely trying to survive.

  Someone said something in a bid for communication, but I didn’t register the words, like they belonged to a frequency I didn't recognize. I stared at the stake held by tongs with a fierce intensity.

  I was going to die, and it wouldn’t be clean. The number of ways to torture the mortal form are myriad, and sadistic creativity would flourish in the coming disaster. It wouldn’t even entirely be the divine, mortals would take the opportunity just as well.

  Skinning alive, burning from the inside out, sharp claws tearing, pointing fangs ripping—

  My breath came hard and fast, the best part? The worst fates were only alluded to, the game company presumably deciding that some things were best left unmentioned for marketability. All for mortals to suffer in what would become a divine playground, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  I was just a girl, not some archemage, not some legendary warrior—

  Just a girl.

  Just a helpless girl.

  Someone shook me by the shoulders, trying to break me from my stupor but it didn’t work, I was breathing so fast and shallow, heart hammering as I—

  I was going to die, oh gods I was going to die and it would be so painful, and all this rebellion meant nothing in the face of something so so horrific. Just a girl. Just a girl. Just—

  Someone slapped me, and I was dragged back into reality, I turned to face my father, who kneeled beside me with a hard expression.

  “Go lay down,” he said, but I didn't really hear him, only interpreting his words from how his lips move.

  I tried to control my breathing and gave a nod, getting up shakily from my stool and heading inside.