Mind Over Mana

You only have to die first.

I spent twenty-three years hunting the cheat code — the hidden menu the winners could all see and I couldn't. Then my best friend put a knife in me over money, and I found it.

I woke up four feet tall and freezing in a forest that wasn't mine, in a body that wasn't mine, with three cold words hanging in the dark: Survive 4 nights.

No magic in these hands. No sword, no flames, no chosen-one starter kit. Just the one thing I was ever good at — seeing the gap nobody else can — and a mind that won't shut off, in a world where an ordered mind turns out to be the only power that scales.

There's also the wolf. The one that picked me out of a whole forest, won't stay dead, and won't stop following me. I've decided not to think too hard about why.

I died with nothing. I'm not planning to stay that way.