Returning home, I felt a loving warmth clinging to me. My skin began to ache from the heat.

  While I'd been outside for just a couple of minutes, my toes had already turned blue. Having gotten used to this painful feeling, I shook the snow off my boots and walked over to the stove.

  I placed the pot on top of the stove and began watching the snow. In just a few seconds, I saw how the snow slowly began to transform and turn into water.

  The process of water formation wasn't as interesting as fire, but it was still worth being surprised by. My hunch had been right after all.

  Watching the now-full pot, I continued my little experiment and observed what would happen if I left the water on the stove.

  Little air bubbles began to form, rising to the surface of the water and bursting. More and more of them appeared with each passing moment. Something hot appeared above the pot. It was steam.

  Feeling its heat, I had to remove the pot from the stove by the handles. Just as I was about to take my first sip, I began to think.

  If that thing above the pot was so scalding hot, then would the water be too? Realizing that this was a pretty smart assumption, I set the pot on the table and waited for it to cool, all the while thinking about how best to drink it. After all, drinking it straight from the pot in such a barbaric manner was strange to me. So I approached these magical cabinets, looking for something that would truly help me.

  Digging through the multitude of broken shards of glasses, plates, and pots, I tried to find something truly whole. Or at least something suitable for drinking from. In the fourth cabinet, I finally found a glass with a large chip, but it was the best of everything.

  This glass was decorated like all the other utensils in these cabinets, as if someone had bought a whole set of these utensils.

  The pot no longer smoked, and my glass dipped into the water, scooping up about half of it. I raised the glass to my still-slightly-cold lips and felt a slight warmth from it. It wasn't scalding, it was almost perfect. My mouth opened and let in a small amount of warm water. It was practically tasteless. Just a slight refreshing sensation, evoked by the mana of the snow from which I'd boiled the water. But for dehydrated me, it was as good as that. Well, not quite like that one, but the taste was still very good and truly refreshing.

  After finishing the first glass, I slowly filled the second one and drank it in small sips, savoring every drop of what seemed like such precious water. After all, I didn't want to go out into that bitter cold again.

  Having finished the entire pot, I sat contentedly in a chair, looking around my home. My left eye fell on the shelf with the intriguing items.

  Getting up from the table, I smoothly walked to the bed. And there I was, sitting on the bed, trying to reach them from the shelf. Realizing I couldn't reach them sitting down, I had to stand up and reach for them. And lo! The first one was in my hands.

  They weren't really heavy, meaning they weighed less than my sword, but they were still quite substantial.

  I sat down on the soft bed, which now felt just soft, not ultra-super soft. Compared to the floor or the stove I was lying on, it felt like fox fur, but it wasn't as cold or as hot as the stove.

  Placing the new item in front of me, I positioned it so I could open it like a door. That is, from right to left. The cover of this thing had some strange symbols on it that, unfortunately, meant nothing to me. They were written in white, and the entire area around the inscription was pale green.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  It felt completely new to me. Its roughness and slight softness seemed intriguing. On the back was a landscape. And oh! I've seen something like this somewhere before...

  It really was, if you removed a few elements, like... a forest! Where I'd been for the last couple... my entire life. Only the book depicted the exact same trees as outside, but unlike the landscape outside my window, the trees in the cover were filled with a ton of greenery. There was a ton of greenery at the treetops. And on the ground, there was endless pale green grass.

  After admiring this drawing, I finally decided to open it.

  Flipping the cover over, I saw another page with a multitude of symbols and drawings. And only now did it dawn on me that there were truly many such pages here. But each one was different in content. I decided not to rush through the rest of the pages and returned to the first one.

  It had something written in large letters at the top, and some small symbols at the bottom, and then more symbols. The long symbols, I assume, were words, and the ones before them... Well... I don't know.

  Continuing to look at the bottom of this page, I saw the exact same symbol as before the first words. Which gave me an idea.

  Could this be some kind of counting system? I think it's logical that I'm not the only one who came up with the counting system. Now I roughly understood which number represented what.

  So there were about ten headings with words. To the right of each word were various incomprehensible drawings and numbers that possibly represented the pages of this book. Looking at the drawings, I realized that I thought I could figure out some of them.

  Next to the number one, there were blue drops. They most likely represented water... Hmmm... Then there were two things lying crosswise, and something was depicted above them... Could it be... Yes! This is definitely a symbol of that beautiful thing in the stove! The one that brings warmth, but in real life, it was much more beautiful. Someone must not be able to draw, I thought.

  There was something blurry and incomprehensible drawn near the number three. Apparently, the book had completely faded. Unperturbed, I continued looking.

  Almost all the following drawings were so faded they were illegible. I could only make out one symbol.

  After all, I couldn't help but remember something like that. The drawing depicted a wolf with its mouth open. Remembering my first encounter with a wolf, a strong shudder ran through my entire body, from the top of my head to my feet.

  Shooting away the negative thoughts, I pieced together the overall picture of the entire page, and this is what I ended up with. Each heading had corresponding pages and corresponding drawings for easy identification. Three of the ten headings I know: water, fire, and wolf. Perhaps in these pages...

  A loud bell pierced my brain. It began simultaneously with my heartbeat. It felt like a needle had been jabbed into my heart and abruptly pulled out with the end of the ringing.

  The sound was so loud, I clutched my ears, trying to make the echo quieter. I lay on the bed, screaming in pain, even after the main ringing had faded, leaving behind only a seemingly endless echo. Tears welled up in my eyes, my heart pounded terribly, and my mind couldn't comprehend what had triggered this attack. Lying on my right side, I saw only an open book.

  "..."

  Now the words in this book began to transform, and it was as if I'd been learning languages ??for a century; I could understand the words written in books, only their meaning eluded me. But looking at them for more than a second, I felt an incredible pain in my head, as if someone were stabbing it with an awl directly into my brain, pumping information about all these symbols into me.

  "..."

  And then another loud and painful bell pierced my entire body, causing me to convulse. My right leg began to shake violently, and my breathing stopped. I tried to breathe, but the ringing sound seemed to be pressing down on me from above, preventing me from even moving. Only when the aftertaste of that hell had passed did I take a deep breath and try to inhale as much oxygen as I could. Tears streamed down my cheeks from the experience. My head still ached and split, but the pain gradually subsided, leaving me shattered and broken.

  I tried to sit up, but my hands were shaking uncontrollably, giving me no support. My whole body swayed, and my vision changed from clear to incredibly blurry.

  And so, after all this torment, I sat propped up on my hands and stared at that damned book! The symbols had changed, and I could easily read them. The most important thing wasn't that I could read them, but that I literally knew everything about the alphabet in this language.

  Specifically, there were twenty-six letters. I could pronounce each one with ease, and the alphabet also included various strokes and intonations. The sticks divided words or parts of words to indicate stress, while the larger vertical sticks denoted commands, questions, or, for example, favors—all of this depended on how they looked and were written.

  And now I could read the headings.