PROLOGUE
[ SYSTEM NOTICE ]
Host Status: Critical
Soul Transfer Pending
Artifact Bound: Crown of Reflection
Beginning Initialization..... Complete
Waiting for host confirmation...
Stripe woke up just enough to know he was still miserable.
His cheek was pressed against damp grass. The cold seeped through his shirt like the ground had teeth. A metal edge dug into his back where the park bench underside met his ribs. He had crawled under it hours ago, not for comfort, not for safety, but because it kept the wind off his face and the security lights from hitting him directly.
Under the bench, he could pretend the world was not watching.
His hand still had the vodka bottle in it.
It was glass, mid shelf, and he still had standards even while he was failing at being alive.
He brought it to his mouth and drank like it was medicine. It was the kind of medicine that did not cure anything. It just made you stop caring that you were sick.
The city sounded far away even though it was not.
Cars.
Distant laughter.
A siren that rose and fell like a tired animal.
He exhaled and watched his breath fog faintly in the cold.
The bottle tapped lightly against the concrete when his arm went slack.
That sound bent in his head until it stopped being glass.
It became a glove thudding into canvas, and a referee palm slapping the mat.
His memory grabbed him hard, like it had been waiting for an opening.
He saw the ring.
He saw lights hot enough to make your skin sweat before the fight even started.
He heard the crowd roaring his name so loud it vibrated in his teeth.
Stripe.
Stripe.
Stripe.
His opponent circled him, bigger, heavier, confident, like confidence was armor.
Stripe slipped right.
He threw the overhand right and followed with the left uppercut.
It was the exact combination, the same rhythm his body still remembered even if the rest of him did not.
His opponent folded like someone cut his strings.
The arena exploded.
In the front row she was there, laughing, hands covering her mouth, eyes bright like nothing bad could ever happen as long as he kept winning.
Later, in the hallway outside the locker room, she grabbed his face and kissed him hard while reporters shouted questions that he ignored.
WIFE:
“You looked ridiculous with one glove still on.”
He smiled in the memory.
Then a kick slammed into his ribs and snapped him back into the park.
Air left his lungs in a harsh grunt.
He tried to curl tighter under the bench, but another kick landed, and this time it hit higher, near his shoulder.
Teenagers stood above him in the edge of the park light.
They had clean shoes and clean hoodies. They had the kind of careless posture that only exists when you have never had to sleep with one eye open.
TEENAGER 1:
“Bro what is this. This motherfucker is really posted up under a bench.”
TEENAGER 2:
“Nah for real, look at this dude. He smells like he pissed himself.”
TEENAGER 3:
“Jesus, he is gross. Yo, he got a bottle too.”
Stripe opened his mouth and something came out that might have been a laugh, and might have been a cough.
STRIPE:
“You guys Uber. I ordered dignity.”
They laughed like that was the funniest thing they had heard all week.
One of them yanked the vodka bottle from his hand.
Stripe reached for it instinctively, not because it mattered, but because it was his. His body still understood ownership even when he had nothing else.
TEENAGER 2:
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Bro, he wants his drink back. Look at him looking goofy as fuck.”
The kid lifted the bottle like a trophy, then tipped it out onto the grass.
TEENAGER 2:
“Nah. You are not drinking that it reeks.”
Stripe tried to sit up.
The bottle came down on his head.
It did not break the first time. It bounced and rang like a bad bell.
Stripe blinked hard, stunned by the sound more than the pain for half a second.
TEENAGER 1:
“Again, again hit that dirty bitch again.”
The second strike shattered it.
Glass exploded across Stripe forehead. The thick base hit bone with a hollow sound that felt wrong, like a door slamming shut inside his skull.
Warmth ran down his face.
Vodka and blood mixed together.
His ears rang.
The park light blurred.
Somewhere inside his head, the arena roared again.
The ring lights flickered in his vision.
His wife face appeared for a heartbeat, not as prophecy, not as mystery, just memory slamming into the present because his brain needed something familiar while it broke.
WIFE:
“Stripe!”
The scream overlapped the moment without explaining itself. It mirrored the way she had shouted his name after wins, but distorted now, stretched thin by panic and pain.
Another blow landed.
Then another.
The world narrowed until it was only pieces.
The bench above him became a dark ceiling.
The grass became a wet smell.
The laughter became far away.
TEENAGER 3:
“Yo, yo, we gotta go. He is not moving.”
TEENAGER 1:
“Nah, he is breathing. I think. Bro, what do we even say if someone asks.”
TEENAGER 2:
“Say less. He was tweaking and came at us. Self defense.”
Their voices layered over each other, panicked and fast, already building a story while Stripe drifted out of it.
Then everything dropped out.
White.
It was not hospital white, and it was not ceiling tile white.
It was endless white, like the world had been erased and nobody bothered to redraw it.
Stripe blinked slowly.
A woman stood before him.
Except she was not fully a woman.
His mind tried to draw lines around her shape and failed. Light folded around her form in a way that refused edges. There were curves, but they shifted. There was skin, but it was not skin. His brain grabbed the closest approximation it could manage and rendered her as something vaguely feminine and unclothed, because that was easier than trying to process something beyond structure.
It felt wrong to look at her too long, like staring at the sun through thin cloth.
ASTRAEIA:
“You are dead.”
Stripe frowned.
STRIPE:
“No I am not.”
Astraeia did not react like she had been insulted. She reacted like she had been inconvenienced.
ASTRAEIA:
“You are.”
STRIPE:
“That is not how being dead works. I would know.”
ASTRAEIA:
“You would not.”
Stripe looked down at himself.
There was no pain. No blood. No bottle.
He looked back up at her blurred outline.
STRIPE:
“If I am dead, why are you here.”
ASTRAEIA:
“I am a goddess. I usher chosen souls into new worlds where their regrets may be addressed.”
Stripe squinted at her.
STRIPE:
“Okay. First, that is a lot of words. Second, why are you naked and you have not even told me your name. This is crazy.”
The light around her form shifted slightly, like it was trying to decide whether to be offended or amused.
ASTRAEIA:
“You speak to me as though we are equals.”
STRIPE:
“You are the only person here. Who else am I supposed to talk to, the white void.”
Her presence sharpened.
ASTRAEIA:
“You are dead.”
Stripe shook his head.
STRIPE:
“I have taken harder hits from bigger men.”
ASTRAEIA:
“You were weakened. Your body had deteriorated. You were no longer the champion you once were.”
That stung more than the word dead.
Stripe lifted his chin anyway because he did not know how to do anything else.
STRIPE:
“Prove it then.”
The white space fractured.
The park returned.
His body was on the ground. Glass was in his hair. Blood mixed with spilled vodka.
He's pretty sure he saw some brain matter.
Police lights flashed.
The teenagers stood shaking, not crying for him, but crying for themselves.
A courtroom.
A lawyer speaking confidently about self defense.
Security footage.
His arrest record displayed clean and simple.
A judge gavel.
Case dismissed.
Another image.
The teenagers being praised as resilient. Scholarships. Smiling for cameras.
Another image.
A funeral.
Empty chairs.
A closed casket.
No former teammates.
No crowd.
No one.
Then, without warning, a different memory surfaced.
A kitchen table.
Evening light pouring through the window.
A golden championship belt sitting casually between two plates of takeout like it belonged there, like it was just another household object.
Her laughter filled the room.
WIFE:
“You are not putting that thing on the table again.”
Stripe grinned in the memory.
Then it vanished.
The white returned.
Stripe stared ahead.
He exhaled slowly.
STRIPE:
“This sucks.”
ASTRAEIA:
“Do you still contest your death.”
Stripe swallowed.
STRIPE:
“Nah, you made your point. I kind've went out like a bitch though.”
Silence stretched between them.
STRIPE:
“You got a name or do I just call you Goddess.”
ASTRAEIA:
“Astraeia.”
STRIPE:
“Really, that's a bit dramatic. By the way you never answered me, why are you naked?”
ASTRAEIA:
“I am not naked. You just can't comprehend my true form.”
STRIPE:
“A naked glowing woman who is completely see through is what I comprehend. You're saying you didn't choose this.”
ASTRAEIA:
“..... You may select one divine blessing.”
Absolute Strength
Perfect Regeneration
Arcane Supremacy
Instant Mastery
Great Sage
Astraeia begins explaining each ability. All of them were insanely simple and over powered. Then she gets to Great Sage. She talked for what felt like an hour.
Four sentences in Stripes eyes glossed over and he tuned her out.
STRIPE:
“That one, I will take the long one. Please just stop.”
ASTRAEIA:
“You comprehend it.”
STRIPE:
“No. But if its description is that long it must be good.”
STRIPE:
“That name is definitely copyrighted somewhere. Change it.”
ASTRAEIA:
“You think death is a game. Fine. It shall be called Crown of Reflection.”
STRIPE:
“That sounds expensive, I fuck with it.”
ASTRAEIA:
“You will never again experience intoxication.”
Stripe blinked.
STRIPE:
“Wait what? Hold on. Why?”
Astraeia form glows in a way that seemed like she was chuckling. Although Stripe doubts she'd ever admit to it.
The white beneath him cracked and vanished.
He fell.
