Hill stared down at the sad, watery broth in his bowl. The single, mushy lump in the middle seemed to be some sort of weed that the cooks thought was edible. And it was, but it tasted bitter and was tough to swallow.
Beside him, Soleil had already finished her portion. Her technique for eating this food was interesting, to say the least. After practically inhaling the portion, she crumpled to the ground and clutched her stomach while squeezing her eyes shut.
After a few minutes, she seemed fine, but it was evident that the taste and feel of the food was too disgusting to ignore. Her behavior didn't inspire Hill to take another spoonful.
"Something wrong?" she asked, her harmonious voice cutting through the quiet. "You've been staring at that for five minutes."
"It's just..." Hill poked the lump with his spoon. "It's awful. I don't even know what to call this."
"I'll eat it if you don't want it," Soleil said quietly.
Hill's head snapped up, his eyes widening in surprise as he stared at the blue-haired girl. He couldn't believe she'd just said that after collapsing from how bad the food was.
"Are you insane?" he hissed.
"No. I'm malnourished."
Hill opened his mouth to respond, then stopped. He looked at her properly—the hollows under her amethyst eyes, the way her dirt-caked clothes hung off her frame.
Despite his skinny frame, he suddenly felt obligated to pass her his bowl of stew. So he did.
She was the one who did most of the work anyway, so it felt right.
Soleil took it without thanks and downed the bowl in a couple of gulps, repeating the process of lying on the floor and forcing the digestion.
As she did that, the sound of footsteps approaching from the camp alerted Hill. Looking back, his eyes landed on a bulky ginger man with muscular forearms. He wore a red cloak that hung around his shoulders. A patch was sewn onto it, reading "III". Hill intuitively understood that this man was part of the Third Company.
"Deulegarde." The man's tone was impatient. He paid Hill no attention. "We have a task for you."
"What now?" Soleil mumbled, her eyes remaining closed as she stayed face down on the ground.
"We have a plot that needs clearing and tilling. Get it done by the sundown bell." He didn't wait for a response, already turning away.
For a moment, the two members of the Fourth Company just stayed there in silence. Finally, Soleil stirred, pushing herself to her feet. She spat on the ground and wiped her mouth repeatedly, brushing dirt off her clothes before pulling Hill off the log he was sitting on.
"All right, Hill," she began, tugging him into the camp. "We've got work to do."
----
The rest of the day was a grueling, hazy blur of back-breaking labor. Clearing the new plot of rocks and tilling the hard soil was punishing work for the frail bodies of the Fourth Company.
The bulky man in the red cloak, Torvin, checked on them once and laughed at their slow progress before leaving them to their misery. Soleil had shown some emotion then, biting down hard on her bottom lip in anger before forcing herself to continue working.
They worked until the sundown bell rang, but unfortunately weren't able to finish clearing the plot. As a result, they weren't given any food for dinner and were forced to check out for the night.
They trudged back to the Fourth Company's desolate corner of the camp, coated in a fresh layer of dirt and sweat. Soleil led the way to her small tent, which happened to be the only one in the area. Hill stopped, looking around in the gloom.
"Where... where do I sleep?" he asked, the obvious problem finally dawning on him.
Soleil shot him an annoyed look, as if he were an idiot for asking. "They didn't give you a tent?"
"No."
She let out a long, frustrated sigh that seemed to drain what little energy she had left. "Those idiots in the Third Company really love making my life hell." She pushed aside the tent flap. "Fine. You get that corner. Don't snore, and if you so much as touch me, I'll break your fingers."
The tent was cramped, barely large enough for two people to lie down with a foot of space between them. There was a single bedroll on one side of the tent. Without a word, Soleil collapsed onto it, not even bothering to wipe the grime from her face. Within moments, her steady breathing told Hill she was fast asleep, clearly spent from the day's labor.
Hill, on the other hand, felt terrible. He settled onto the hard ground near the tent wall opposite Soleil, but sleep wouldn't come. Chills wracked his body, yet his skin felt hot to the touch. He felt sick.
His head throbbed, and pain wracked his chest with every breath. His overworked and underfed body was giving up on him already.
As he lay there in the darkness, trying to sleep, his mind became a chaotic swirl of thoughts.
This had been his first day in Igashia, and he had learned quite a lot during the past few hours.
One thing he learned was that everyone who was part of the camp had died back on Earth. They were then subjected to a soul trial in which they were all victorious.
So it wasn't just chaos; it was a pattern. Some kind of system.
He wondered: What if the monster horde wasn't an apocalypse? What if it was just... a gateway?
He figured that instead of a mindless horde that sought to kill all life, the horde was actually just a violent selection process that would funnel the "winners" of the soul trial to this new world.
For what reason? He would love to know.
This theory sparked something else within him. A fragile but desperate hope that warmed him even more than his fever. If death on Earth was the price of admission to Igashia, then maybe... just maybe... his family had survived in the only way that now seemed to matter.
He thought of his family. Had they been given a soul trial too? Had they passed? They probably weren't here, in this underground forest. But Igashia was a planet. They could be somewhere else, alive under a real sky maybe. The thought that he might not be the sole survivor of his family wasn't an impossible fantasy.
Clinging to that flickering ember of hope, Hill felt the tension in his body finally begin to release. The darkness of the tent seemed to deepen, and he let his heavy eyelids drift shut.
He closed his eyes.
And opened them again.
He was standing on an endless expanse of fine, black sand that shifted coolly under his bare feet. The fever and body aches were gone; he felt strangely refreshed.
Above him, a deep indigo abyss stretched into infinity, filled to the brim with the sparkling light of a billion stars.
And hanging within the heart of that cosmos, directly above him, was something he thought he would never see in its entirety. Especially with the naked eye.
He was looking at a solar system.
Planets of marbled rock and swirling gas moved in perfect orbit around a star made of... pure darkness.
It was a perfect sphere of absolute nothingness that drank all light and color. It was as if he was staring at a hole in the fabric of space.
He stared upward, awed by the sight to the point that it took several seconds before he could even react.
"W-What is this?"