Liraya sat with her knees pulled up to her chest and her chin resting on them. The small fire flickered in front of her, weak and unsteady. Night had arrived completely. The last gray light between the trees had disappeared. Only the tiny flames gave any light at all.

The forest sounds had also changed. The small rustling things that had moved in the bushes earlier had gone quiet. Now the sounds came from farther away. They were larger. Heavier. And they did not try to hide.

She knew she could not stay here out in the open. Her knowledge of the forest told her there was a natural overhang four hundred meters to the northeast. A rock shelf that jutted out far enough to give cover from above and had a narrow approach that would limit how many directions something could come at her from. She had watched mortals use places like that for safety thousands of times.

Just as she remembered about it, she stood up.

Her legs still held her weight. So, she picked up the last of her dry twigs and the flat piece of bark she had used for the fire. After picking up everything, she started walking northeast. Quickly.

Four hundred meters in deep forest at night with no shoes was the first real test for the goddess of fate.

Every root she knew existed on her mental map, but they still caught her foot, as she sometimes stumbles on them. The wet ground made her slide sideways twice. But she caught herself each time, hands pressing into cold mud, and kept moving after getting up without making any noise. She knew any sound might bring something that she might not like.

And on top of all of this, the darkness of the forest was a pain in the butt for her. She couldn’t even see three steps ahead of her as she was walking. No moonlight gets inside the forest.

A low branch she had pictured in her mind as something she could duck under turned out to be exactly at face height for her current body. It hit her forehead hard. She stopped and pressed her hand to the spot. The skin felt hot and already swelling.

She stood still for a moment, breathing through the pain. Then she got up and kept walking.

It took her almost an hour to reach the overhang with all these minor incidents.

The area was exactly how she used to know. A rock shelf that jutted out far enough to keep rain and falling branches off her. The ground underneath was even dry. The approach was narrow. So, in other words it was perfect for her to spend the night here safely, as safe as she can get in this deep in the forest.

She stepped inside and set her materials down.

Then she rebuilt the fire closer to the rock face. She had to lit-up the fire from the get-go, because she couldn’t risk carrying a fire all the way to here, other predators would have noticed here faster then.

The stone reflected the heat back toward her. The flames grew a little stronger than before. She watched them and felt no satisfaction. Because, it only proved how inefficient her first fire had been.

After making the fire, she got up and started gathering more fuel while the fire was still alive. Dead branches. Strips of bark. Anything dry enough to burn through the night. She made three trips to gather all these.

On the third trip when she was returning with another handful of dead branches, suddenly she heard something behind her.

It was not wind. And it was definitely not something small.

She turned slowly.

Two shapes stood at the edge of the firelight. Low to the ground. Wide-shouldered. They moved in the patient half-circle of predators that had done this before and knew someone was there just a couple of minutes ago.

She identified them immediately. Forest boar variants.

But looking closer at them, she figured out something almost instantly. Something was wrong with them. They were much larger than the normal breed. Their tusks were longer. Their eyes had a faint yellow tinge that meant they had been feeding on something they should not have been feeding on. These were definitely not ordinary animals. They looked capable of killing her without any real effort. She knew it right away, instinctively.

She assessed the situation.

She had the fire, had the rock face behind her. And she also had the narrow approach in front of her, so these beasts cannot pin her from multiple sides.

But what she did not have was weapons, physical strength above a normal person, or any way to simply make them disappear somehow.

She reached for magic anyway.

Not full divine power. She already knew that was gone. But the small channeling of mana that should be inside every human being on this planet. The basic shaping of ambient mana that even a moderately talented human mage could do. She had watched it done countless times from inside the Pantheon. She knew the exact internal alignment. She knew how to reach for the ambient mana threads as if it was in the back of her mind.

She started to draw those mana.

But surprising her, nothing happened.

She tried again, focusing harder this time, reaching exactly the way she had seen mages reach for mana from inside their body.

Still nothing.

Then something clicked in her. There was no mana in her at all. Not blocked. Not depleted. Simply absent. This body did not have the pathways for it. She was not a mage in a weakened state or something like that. She was just a person with no magical capability whatsoever right now.

Shock filled her thoughts. She had never seen this before. Even though the evidence was right in front of her, still she couldn’t fully believe such a state could exist until this exact moment.

Shock from fear and surprise for the first time awakened something inside her she didn’t knew was possible.

The two boar variants took another step forward. Their hooves made soft sounds on the wet leaves. Their yellow eyes reflected the firelight.

Liraya stood between the rock face and the two large corrupted predators, with no weapon, no magic to defend herself. The fire was the only thing currently giving her any advantage. But even that behind the beasts, not reachable for her.

She did not move. Her face stayed calm and dry. Even with this absurd situation she did not lose her cool, she knew it was the only thing that could save her right now.

She spoke quietly to herself, voice small, almost mocking herself.

"This body cannot even do basic mana shaping? So, all this time, trying to save mana, even while I was making the fire by myself without relying on magic, was all of that just my foolish imagination?! Mana wasn’t even there inside me in the first place?!"

The words came out plain. There was no panic. No drama. She simply felt what feeling powerless was like for the first time in her life.

Then, shaking her out of her imagination, one of the boars snorted. The sound was low and wet. The other also shifted its weight, tusks catching the firelight.

Liraya looked at the fire, then back at the two creatures. If only she could somehow reach the fire by crossing these two, then she might have had a chance at this. But how does she do that? Her mind was racing with this one question over and over again.

Then, suddenly, before she could find an answer to that question, one of the boars jumped at her with absurd speed.