Something floated in the dark.
Weightless. Silent. Forgotten.
For a long time, there was nothing.
No thought. No feeling. Only the void.
And then-
Fragments returned.
The cold that had seeped into his bones.
The ache in his bruised muscles.
His lungs struggling to draw air-
suffocating on his own blood.
The helplessness of knowing no one would come.
And the emptiness as his heart gave its final beat-
ending his life.
It had been a while since that moment.
At first, he had tried to count the passing days, reaching a hundred before giving up. By now, it had surely been more than twice that number. Maybe far more. He had lost track. Time no longer mattered. It all felt pointless anyway.
His existence had become stagnant. If this was the afterlife, the living had it all wrong. There was no judgment for the deeds done---good or bad. What awaited after death was simply endless darkness.
An abyss.
A place where the soul drifted aimlessly, where consciousness slowly decayed.
So this was how it ended-his existence slipping quietly into nothingness.
How terrifying.
He never imagined death could be so cruel.
If only he'd understood how precious life was--how fleeting--it might have meant more.
But now, it was too late. All that remained was the unbearable weight of regret.
The silence pressed against him, suffocating him in its stillness.
And then-
A rupture tore through the void, and
a brilliant light--shining, blinding--split the darkness above him. It flooded the abyss, forcing the silence to shudder and crack.
But he did not react. He remained still, lost in his thoughts.
Then, like a dam breaking, the abyss released its captive.
He fell.
Faster, harder, as the light stretched out before him.
His soul--ripped free of the endless night--was thrust forward.
And in that moment, he was reborn. Not on Earth.
But in a world both foreign and somehow... familiar.