My death was unexpected.

  Sure, I knew I wouldn’t live forever—no one does. Mortality is one of those truths you learn to tuck away in a quiet corner of your mind, acknowledged but never truly examined. I had always assumed death would come with fanfare—pain, panic, noise. A dramatic exit befitting the chaos of life aboard a starship hurtling through unknown space.

  But when it finally arrived, it didn’t feel like anything at all.

  There was no final breath, no cinematic farewell, no blazing fireball or jarring silence. Just... a transition.

  I awoke—not in darkness, not in the cold void I half-expected—but lying on something inexplicably soft. Grass. Actual grass.

  Dew-drenched and springy beneath my fingertips, it spread out in every direction, a sea of green so vibrant it almost hurt to look at. The sensation of lying there—cradled by something so simple, so natural—was oddly intimate, like being embraced by the memory of a place I’d long forgotten.

  And then the air. Clean. Sweet. Fragrant. Not the sanitized oxygen we recycled endlessly aboard the ship, always tinged with the metallic bite of machinery and coolant. This air felt alive, like it had never been touched by pipes or filters or human hands.

  I inhaled greedily, letting it fill my lungs until I felt dizzy with clarity.

  Was I dreaming? Reconstructing a memory from my subconscious? Reflexively, I reached out and ran my fingers through the grass again. Each blade was damp, cool, pliant. I could feel the dirt beneath, rich and gritty. I pulled one blade free.

  It didn’t flicker. Didn’t pixelate. Didn’t dissolve into dust.

  It stayed.

  Real.

  Somehow, impossibly, I was on solid ground again. A planet—if it truly was one. But the disbelief didn’t vanish; it simply morphed into something more complex. It felt too good, too designed. Like someone had carefully constructed an ideal vision of peace and nature, but hadn’t accounted for the subtleties of imperfection.

  For a fleeting moment, I wondered if this was heaven. Or something like it. The thought was comforting, in a vague, distant way. But it brought with it a shadow of doubt. Was this reward? Or deception?

  I opened my eyes fully, blinking against the strange light. It was soft, diffuse—but there was no sun. Just brightness, everywhere, as if the world itself was glowing.

  And then I saw her.

  Sofie.

  Kneeling beside me, her expression a blend of worry and astonishment. Her eyes met mine, and a wave of calm washed over me. Familiarity in an unfamiliar world.

  She reached out a hand, steady and warm. “You’re awake.”

  I sat up, slowly, the grass whispering against my uniform. The meadow spread endlessly in all directions, its rolling hills dotted with wildflowers and figures just beginning to rise. I recognized them one by one—faces from the ship, friends and colleagues, even a few people I barely remembered. All of them waking from the same impossible sleep, blinking at the serenity around them with varying shades of confusion and awe.

  Some laughed aloud, running through the field like children. Others stood silently, eyes wide with wonder. Clusters began to form—familiar groups gravitating toward each other, alliances from our former life reassembling like fragments of a broken mirror.

  But something held me back. Even as others celebrated, something inside me recoiled.

  “Where are we?” I asked, my voice sounding oddly distant, as though muffled by the very air around me.

  Sofie shook her head, slowly standing. Her gaze scanned the horizon, mirroring my concern. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t feel right, does it?”

  I followed her line of sight. Something about the place was... off. Not in an obvious way. On the surface, it was beautiful. Perfect.

  But perfection can be unsettling.

  I looked again—closer this time. My eyes swept the landscape, taking in the endless green, the flowers that never wilted, the breeze that stirred the grass but not our hair. And then it struck me.

  The light.

  It was wrong.

  Too even. Too flawless. It flooded the world without origin, blanketing every surface in the same sterile glow. No shadows. Not a single one. I lifted my hands and cupped them together, trying to form a small void. But even inside that space, light lingered—soft, persistent, unnatural.

  Light without a source.

  Illumination without consequence.

  It reminded me, with growing unease, of the containment rooms back on the ship. Those sterile, blindingly bright places where injuries were patched, illnesses diagnosed.

  Sofie spoke again, her voice low. “This place… it’s too clean. Too controlled.”

  I nodded slowly, heart sinking.

  This wasn’t heaven.

  This was a simulation.

  A mask.

  And something—or someone—was watching us from behind it.

  “Where are we?” I forced myself to appear calm, though my instincts screamed otherwise. Every part of this place, beautiful as it was, felt like a veneer stretched too tight over something unnatural.

  “Dunno. I just woke up here a minute ago,” Sofie replied, her voice soft but steady. Hearing her grounded me—tethered me to something real in this increasingly surreal tableau. She rose slowly, brushing her hands against her pants as her eyes swept across the meadow, scanning with the same wary curiosity that I felt deep in my bones.

  I stayed seated, fingers still threaded through the grass like I could anchor myself to the ground through touch alone. I wanted to trust the sensation, to let myself believe this place was what it appeared to be—but I couldn’t.

  All around us, our fellow crewmates were awakening like flowers unfolding at dawn. Some blinked into the light with dazed expressions, others already laughing, calling out names, hugging old friends. People who had barely spoken on the ship were now gathering into buzzing little clusters, reforming old social circles like puzzle pieces clicking into place. Familiar alliances reassembled. Cliques emerged as if this alien paradise was just an extension of our old lives.

  And yet, Sofie and I stood apart.

  Two observers at the edge of a celebration.

  “What happened?” she asked after a long pause, her brow furrowed. “I remember the sirens, the alarms blaring… and then—”

  “We died,” I said quietly, interrupting her. “We must have. The ship... it collided with one of those things. One of the creatures. Or portals. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

  I tilted my chin toward a nearby group—three boys lounging together, their conversation animated. Raul, Nelson, and Alexander. Old friends. We’d shared countless nights over cards and stories, petty squabbles and drunken speculation about where the ship was headed next.

  They noticed us. Raul, always the first to see, raised a hand. His gaze fixed on mine, and I saw something in his eyes—recognition, but also understanding.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “You were on the bridge, weren’t you?” he asked. His tone was quiet, not accusatory, just... heavy.

  I nodded, slowly. The question hit harder than I thought it would. Raul had remembered my schedule better than I had. We’d joked about duty rotations just a day earlier. He had known. And yet, none of us were spared.

  “Yeah,” I said, voice softening. “I guess that means... we’re all dead. Raul, Nelson, Alexander, Sofie...” I paused, looking each of them in the eye. “It was good knowing you.”

  There was a silence then, broken only by the ambient sound of windless grass swaying. It was strangely comforting—until something caught my attention in the distance. A flicker. Not light, not movement, but something else—like a ripple in reality itself. A shimmer that quivered at the horizon like heat rising off pavement, except there was no heat here. Only that perfect, sterile brightness.

  “Hey, come on,” Alexander said, forcing a grin. “Maybe this is heaven, right? Endless fields, everyone back together. Could be worse.”

  His laugh was light, almost convincing. But his eyes darted too quickly. The edges of his smile trembled. He didn’t believe it either—not really.

  I remained quiet. If this was heaven, then heaven felt disturbingly artificial.

  Sofie narrowed her eyes, following my gaze to the distant shimmer. “I doubt this is heaven,” she murmured. “Does heaven have boundaries?”

  The word hung in the air like smoke.

  And she was right. The shimmer stretched along the horizon in a thin, transparent arc—almost invisible unless you looked for it. A dome. A barrier. A cage with a beautiful view.

  “I think we’re—” I began, but the sentence broke. No sound emerged. My lips moved, my tongue formed the words, but nothing came.

  Panic bloomed like wildfire in my chest.

  I clapped my hands together sharply—no sound.

  I turned to Sofie in alarm, only to find her frozen mid-sentence, mouthing something I couldn’t hear. All around us, faces turned in confusion, mouths moving in silence. Dozens of people, all suddenly mute.

  Then, as if the world had been waiting for us to notice, a voice entered my mind.

  Not through my ears. Not through air.

  It spoke within me—clear, dispassionate, almost mechanical in its precision:

  “Humanity has died in your universe. Every intelligent being perished around the time your vessel was attacked. The creatures that destroyed your world are what we call demons. Once ordinary beings, they have transformed—feral and bloodthirsty, the result of cosmic corruption.”

  The voice continued, smooth and flat, almost bored:

  “It was our fault. We—the gods—allowed the breach to occur. We are sorry for the pain caused. We cannot restore what has been lost, but we offer recompense to those who died beyond the normal cycle of reincarnation. You have been chosen. All of you. For a new world. Each of you will receive a patron god. They will grant you a small number of wishes—gifts suited to help you survive and thrive in this new life. The planet you will awaken upon has no advanced technology. Instead, it operates under the laws of magic. You may use your memories to innovate. To flourish. To build anew. But we ask something in return. The demons that ravaged your universe... exist in this world, too. Help us stop them.”

  And just like that, the voice faded.

  Silence fell once more—but it was no longer the tranquil quiet of a meadow. It was the silence that follows a slap. An electric stillness, humming with doubt.

  I didn’t feel reassured. Not enlightened. There was no warmth in that voice—no real apology, no compassion. It was a broadcast. A script. It felt like we were being processed... like subjects receiving a procedural welcome packet.

  I glanced at Sofie. She hadn’t moved. Her face was expressionless, but her eyes were haunted. I knew she was feeling the same thing I was.

  Meanwhile, Raul and the others were cheering. Laughing. Talking about wishes and powers, already fantasizing like kids in a game.

  Let them have their illusions.

  Sofie and I slipped away from the crowd—unspoken understanding guiding our steps. We didn’t belong among the dreamers.

  I turned to offer her a smile, just to reassure her—reassure myself—that she was still with me.

  But the world fell away.

  Darkness surged like a tidal wave, swallowing the light in an instant. The soft grass disappeared beneath me, replaced by something rough, gritty. Something that crunched as I shifted my weight.

  Gravel? Ash?

  “Sofie?” My hand reached instinctively toward where she had stood.

  But there was nothing.

  Only empty space.

  And silence.

  The god of hope had separated us—without warning, without care, without even the illusion of kindness.

  Hope, I thought bitterly, had become a cruel joke.

  A word dressed in light but steeped in shadow.

  Hope, I thought bitterly. More like cruelty wrapped in rhetoric. If this was the god of hope, then hope had died long ago.

  I crouched low, my fingers brushing over the terrain as if touch alone could explain the impossible. Gone was the soft, dewy grass from before—the meadow of false serenity. In its place, the earth had become fractured and uneven, jagged plates of stone jutting up like broken teeth from a dead jaw. The rock beneath me was cool, coarse, and unwelcoming. It felt ancient, untouched by weather, time, or life.

  I was on a plateau, perhaps—though that was only a guess. The dark made it hard to say. And above me?

  Nothing.

  Not cloud. Not sky. Not even stars.

  Only void.

  A vast, crushing blackness that didn’t just surround me—it invaded me. It pressed down on my shoulders, filled my lungs, clawed at the edges of my sanity. It was not merely the absence of light—it was the absence of meaning.

  But I could hear myself again. That mattered.

  The soft rasp of my breath. The grit of loose stone shifting under my boots. The faint, hollow whistle of distant air currents brushing across empty space. All subtle reminders that I was still alive—or something like it.

  And somewhere in this godless dark, I was meant to meet my so-called patron.

  I stood cautiously and called into the abyss, voice steady despite the tremor coiling in my gut. “Hello?”

  The reply came with a delay. But when it did, it was as smooth and precise as a scalpel.

  “A living soul in the land of the dead. What a curious thing…”

  The voice was everywhere. Around me, behind me, inside my skull. It didn’t echo, because that would have required a place for sound to bounce from—and this place defied such laws. It was like the voice was bypassing the air entirely, sliding directly into the hollows of my mind.

  I didn’t get a chance to respond. My boot clipped something unseen—a jagged stone or half-buried bone—and I stumbled forward with a graceless curse. The pain was immediate and sharp, flaring up my shin.

  Charming. Whatever allure this place might have had evaporated in that instant.

  Still, I didn’t retreat. Couldn’t afford to. I forced myself upright, brushing dust from my palms. The voice remained silent, as if amused.

  “Why is it so dark here?” I asked, my tone flat, cautious. “Can’t you make it a bit brighter so I can see you? It’s weirding me out.”

  A pause.

  “No,” came the reply, patient and matter-of-fact. “Normal light is completely absent from this space—for various reasons.”

  “Right. It sucks to live here, I guess.”

  A sound followed. Not quite laughter—more like the echo of a grin inside a coffin. A sound full of teeth.

  “Yeah… yeah, it does.”

  I regretted the sarcasm immediately. Now wasn’t the time to poke a being whose power I didn’t understand. But, oddly, he didn’t seem offended. If anything, he sounded amused. And that, somehow, was worse.

  “I assume you heard the old geezer before,” he continued, as if we were just continuing a casual conversation. “So tell me… what do you wish for in your new life?”

  It was such a simple question. Deceptively so.

  There was no kindness in the offer, no invitation. Just inevitability. Ask, or he’d decide for me.

  I didn’t hesitate.

  “I want immortality.”

  I said it quickly, without filter, like a hand played in a high-stakes game. If he denied me, or tried to barter it into something else, I’d know he had limits—or that his power came with cost. But if he accepted outright…

  “Sure.”

  That one word rattled me more than I expected. No conditions. No devil’s bargain. Just a clean affirmation, like he was granting a glass of water, not eternal life. Which meant he could do it.

  So I tested further.

  “Can I take back my wish?”

  “No,” he said flatly. “What is granted cannot be undone.”

  I froze as the void began to shift. Not lighten—never that. But change. It felt like something darker than the dark itself had stirred, detaching from the black canvas like ink separating in oil.

  It came closer. A silhouette, vaguely human but fluid in its boundaries. Its skin—if it had any—seemed to absorb the surrounding nothingness. There were no features. No eyes, no mouth, no expression. Just a hollow outline filled with hunger.

  I couldn’t breathe for a moment.

  I stared directly where a face should’ve been, refusing to back down, even as my nerves screamed.

  The voice came again—closer now, inside my ribs.

  “I am lucky to have you, so I feel great today. I grant you three more wishes.”

  There it was. No benevolence. No mentorship. This god was not a guide. He was a collector. And I was a novelty in his collection.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” I replied, voice thin with forced politeness. “If you could just send me onwards, I’d be grateful.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Take them,” he said, “or I will pick them for you. And I will screw you over so badly you’ll wish you didn’t exist.” There it was—the mask gone. The truth of him, laid bare.

  This wasn’t a generous deity. He was a sadist with omnipotence. And I had no choice.

  I had to outplay him. Or at least, minimize the damage.

  “I want to be able to find other reincarnators like me,” I said. Safe. Passive. Information.

  “Done,” he said, far too eagerly. “Quite a useful ability… well, not for you, but certainly for someone who’d like to use it against your friends.”

  My heart stilled. I hadn’t even considered that. Of course he’d twist it.

  So I aimed for the innocuous.

  “I want to eat the best food in the world.”

  A dry chuckle, deeper this time. “Gluttony? Sinning before you're even reborn? I like you.”

  He was enjoying this far too much. Every word was a scalpel, every laugh a trap.

  I swallowed and made my final wish carefully, quietly.

  “A family I can love… and that will always love me back.”

  “A double wish,” he mused. “Greedy. But whatever. The more you wish, the more fun I’ll have.”

  There was a final pause.

  And then:

  “Let me think about your wishes for a bit. I must grant them completely, of course. And I still need to decide how. So… do your human things while I’m busy. Bye-bye.”

  And just like that, he vanished.

  No parting gesture. No light. No comfort.

  Just silence.

  And the dark.

  I stood there for a long moment, wondering what exactly my “human things” were. Breathing? Doubting? Waiting to be screwed?

  I wasn’t sure anymore.

  All I knew was this: whatever came next, I would be walking into it with my eyes open.

  Even if I had to do it blind.