huff... huff...
A figure dragged itself across the sand.
The sun was setting, bathing the world in shades of amber and gold. It was beautiful. Perfect, even. The kind of sunset that made people stop and stare, that made them write poetry or take pictures or call their loved ones.
huff... huff...
The figure's name was Adom. Adom Sylla.
Today, Adom had decided he was going to die. By drowning, specifically.
It was supposed to be peaceful, poetic even - just him, the waves and that perfect sunset. Instead, he'd somehow managed to get attacked by a troll.
A troll, of all things, on his carefully chosen quiet beach.
The irony that he'd fought so hard to stay alive against something that could have done his job for him wasn't lost on him. But getting his head repeatedly smashed against rocks hadn't been part of the plan. He had standards, after all.
The final reading of the connected wheelchair flashed through his mind:
CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE
Mana Stability: 12% [DANGEROUS]
Neural Sync: ERROR
Life Support: OFFLINE
Connection Lost...
At least he'd made it to the beach.
He couldn't breathe right. Each gasp tore through his lungs like broken glass, leaving the taste of blood in his mouth. The sand felt wrong under his hands - coarse and wet with something that wasn't just seawater.
His legs wouldn't work. Hadn't worked since the fall, or maybe it was the explosion. Everything after the screaming started was a blur. He forced another handful of sand behind him, dragging his body forward.
The sea breeze carried salt and rot and the beach stretched out ahead, empty except for the bodies. So many bodies. The tide was trying to take them, pulling at uniforms and civilian clothes alike. A knight's armor, somehow still pristine except for the dark stains, bobbed in the surf.
War didn't care about perfect sunsets or final moments. War just left things broken.
Another push. Another few inches gained.
His chest hurt. The diagnostic warnings had gone quiet minutes ago. Or hours. Time wasn't working right anymore.
"Just... a little... more..."
His voice also didn't sound right anymore. Too weak. Too old. Each word cost him more breath than he could spare, but the silence was worse. The silence meant hearing the waves lap against dead things.
Something massive lay half-submerged near the pier. Probably a leviathan. Best not to look at it. Best not to remember what it did before the artillery finally brought it down. Best not to think about the sounds it made.
Blood dripped onto sand. His blood, this time. A cough wracked his body, and for a moment the world went dark around the edges.
It hurt. It hurt so much.
But he kept crawling. One hand in front of the other. Away from the bodies. Away from the thing in the water. Away.
Just a little more.
He could almost hear the echoes of laughter, see the ghostly outlines of those long-gone structures. The phantom sensation of sand between his toes, the warmth of the sun on his skin, the salty air that engulfed his lungs - all these memories washed over him, as relentless and bittersweet as the tide itself.
Seventy-nine years of life. A lifetime for most, an eternity for some.
Few were those who could boast of such longevity, and fewer still who'd want to, given the circumstances. Adom Sylla's case was, to put it mildly, a surprise to everyone - himself included.
His arms shook as he tried to pull himself forward again. Failed.
You never really appreciate your legs until you wake up one morning in your third-favorite hospital room and can't feel them anymore. Puts things into perspective, watching nurses wheel you past the playground you used to run in. Watching life continue while yours just... stopped.
...Thump... thump...
She looked human, and yet clearly wasn't. Like a painting of a person that somehow stepped out of its frame, too perfect to be real. Her skin was Sun-kissed bronze hue, seeming to absorb the dying sunlight rather than reflect it.
Hair white as the whitest of moons flowed around her face as if underwater, defying gravity in gentle waves. A midnight blue robe draped her form like liquid shadow, moving with impossible grace even in the stillness.
Her features were regal, elegant - high cheekbones, full lips curved in a gentle smile, a straight nose that would have made ancient sculptors weep.
"I... didn't expect you to look like this."
Who would have?
She turned to him then, and Adom found himself staring into eyes that contained entire universes - deep green pools filled with spinning galaxies and dying stars. Her smile widened slightly.
"Everyone sees me differently," she said. "Some see an old man with a beard. Others, a young boy or young girl. A grim reaper with a scythe. A wolf. A bright light." She chuckled, the sound like distant wind chimes. "Some people even saw me as a truck."
Even her laugh was elegant, Adom noticed.
"I'm not unhappy with this form, I must say," she added, running a hand through her cosmic hair. "It suits the evening, don't you think?"
"It does," he agreed, watching the sun sink lower.
It was strange - he had no lungs to breathe with, yet he could feel the air. No skin to feel with, yet the breeze touched him. No nose to smell with, yet the incense scent lingered. But apparently, even as a soul, his legs still didn't work.
Seriously?
As the sun dipped closer to the horizon, he asked, "When do we go?"
"What do you mean?"
"You came here to take me, didn't you?"
"Hmm." She traced patterns in the sand with a finger that left no marks. "Did I?"
"What do you mean?"
Adom then drew in what felt like a breath - funny how those habits lingered even without a body. He wanted to say something.
'I'm ready.'
The words were difficult to push out, weighted with all his regrets and unfinished business. He wasn't ready. Not really. But at least... well, at least this confirmed something, didn't it? An afterlife. The possibility of seeing them all again, make amends - Mother, Father, Sam, everyone...
Wait.
The realization hit him like a bucket of ice water. Adom had never believed in any of the old gods or the new ones. Had actively rejected them all, in fact. If there was an afterlife, then there was probably... everything else too. Paradise. And its rather uncomfortable alternative.
Oh.
Oh no.
He looked at the woman beside him, suddenly very aware that he might have seriously miscalculated his entire philosophical stance on existence.
Adom gulped audibly, the daunting question lodged somewhere in his non-existent throat.
She smiled at him then. "Do you really want to go?"
Confusion washed over Adom. He turned back to look at his body lying in the sand, then at her, then back at the body again. There was no ambiguity there - no rise and fall of the chest, no flutter of pulse at the throat, not even the smallest twitch of muscle. That was, without question, a corpse. His corpse. Dead as dead could be.
"Do I... have a choice?" he asked slowly, the words coming out uncertain and slightly baffled.
The lady's smile curved into something more enigmatic. "Well," she said, "I have a deal for you."
Hmm. A deal. Not suspicious at all. No matter what the fairytales said about absolutely never striking deals with mysterious cosmic beings. Very normal.
"...What kind of deal?" he asked anyway, his spectral voice cautious.
"A second chance," she said simply. "To go back. Live your life again. Make different choices. Be happier."
The words felt unreal at first. Adom's non-existent heart seemed to stop all over again. The sunset, the beach, even his own corpse - everything blurred around him as her words echoed in his mind.
Go back?
The images flashed through his consciousness in a torrent - the day the bombs fell, the screams of people as magic tore reality apart, his father's last breath in his arms as the healing spells failed one by one, the burning cities, the mass graves, the dead marches, the endless refugee camps, the final devastating war that had turned the world into a wasteland, as mages unleashed powers that should have remained forbidden.
He'd watched it all crumble. Watched as humanity tore itself apart, watched as the fairy realms collapsed, as corruption poisoned everything good, as hope itself died a slow, agonizing death. He'd lived long enough to see the last tree wither, the last clean river turn toxic.
Lived to see the World Dungeon rise.
And now... now this being was offering him a chance to...
His mind couldn't even process it. The sheer magnitude of what she was suggesting - the possibility of maybe, just maybe...
His ghostly form trembled. All his carefully constructed acceptance, his hard-won peace with death, his resignation to the end - it all shattered like glass.
A second chance.
Those three words contained everything he'd ever wanted and everything he'd forced himself to stop hoping for.
"...What?" was all Adom managed to whisper.
Another thought cut through his shock - everything had a price. What was Death's?
As if reading his thoughts (and perhaps she was), she spoke. "You're wondering about the cost." She drew patterns in the air with her finger, leaving trails of stardust that formed and reformed into spiraling galaxies. "But there isn't one. This moment, right here, was always meant to be."
She gestured at the darkening horizon. "Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. Every tear, every loss, every moment of despair - it shaped you."
Her voice grew gentle. "You're not here to correct a mistake, Adom. You're here because this is exactly where you're supposed to be. Think of it less as a second chance, and more as... the next step in your journey."
"Why me?" Adom asked, his voice small against the vastness of what she offered. "I was just a mage. But not..." he gestured helplessly at nothing and everything, "not nearly enough to change whatever's coming. Not powerful enough to stop all... that."
"Why not?" she replied. "Others have walked this path before you. A simple farmer once changed the course of history, and all he wanted was to grow wheat."
She turned to face the sea again. "If you could go back, with all your memories intact, what kind of man would you be, Adom Sylla?"
Adom considered her question, really considered it.
He wanted everything he did not have the pleasure to experience in his life. He wanted to travel the world. Go on adventures. Eat the most succulent meals. To drink the most bizarre drinks. Talk and befriend people of all intelligent races, visit their lands, experience their culture.
Adom wanted to live. Simply live.
But then a flicker of fear crossed his spectral features.
In order for him to do that, there would need to be a world to begin with. So, would he be burdened with the mission of stopping that?
He felt the fear of failure, fear of watching it all crumble again, fear of being too weak, too late, too little. But then... something else kindled in his eyes. A spark of defiance, bright and sharp as the first star appearing in the darkening sky.
The same defiance that had kept him studying when others said magic was beyond him after the illness. The same fire that had made him push forward when his body wouldn't work. The same stubborn light that had kept him fighting long after hope had died.
The spark that, even after everything, had never quite gone out.
"Yes," she said, satisfaction in her voice. "That is exactly what you need to feel."
Adom confirmed then that she was indeed reading his thoughts. Though... he had no actual head anymore, so she was reading his... what exactly?
The metaphysical implications were starting to give him a metaphysical headache.
She rose to her feet, and Adom found himself looking up, and up, and up. She seemed to stretch into infinity, her robes merging with the darkening sky, stars dancing in their folds. She extended her hand down to him - a hand that somehow remained elegant and human-sized despite her cosmic proportions.
"Accept the deal," she said, her voice now echoing all over the space. "Fight for the world you would like to live in."
Her voice grew softer, gentler. "And when it's all over, when all is said and done, and you have completed a hopefully long, satisfying life..." She paused, her star-filled eyes warm. "Then I will take you."
Being promised collection by this entity, even one who looked like a beautiful lady, should not have felt reassuring. Yet somehow, it only made Adom more determined to make that meeting as distant as possible.
He smiled and reached for her hand. It felt like touching starlight and shadow at once, warm and cool, solid and ethereal, impossibly ancient and perfectly present.
"Deal."
The moment their hands clasped, everything - the beach, the sunset, his corpse, even Death herself - simply... ceased. No fade to white, no dramatic flash. Just sudden, complete nothingness. No up or down, no light or dark, no sound or silence. Not even the concept of empty space. Just...
Nothing.
Through the nothingness, her voice came one last time: