Darkness.Not the kind that comes when night falls, or when the lights go out in a quiet room.This was heavier.The kind that soaked into his skin, that pulled at his chest like deep water, that muted every thought before it could rise.A silence so complete, even memories struggled to breathe.

  There was no pain.No panic.Just the quiet knowledge that something had ended.A whisper in the void.This is it.

  He didn't remember the impact.Maybe a car.Maybe his heart gave out.Maybe he simply collapsed under the weight of an ordinary life gone wrong.

  It didn’t matter now.There was no before.No after.Only the hollow space in between.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  But something stirred in that emptiness.Not a light — not yet.A presence. Gentle. Curious.Like the world itself was tilting, peering inward, deciding what to do with what remained of him.

  And then, breath.

  A gasp, sudden and violent, tore through his lungs.Air — thick, earthy, cold — rushed in as his body convulsed on damp soil.He choked, coughed, rolled to his side. Fingers dug into moss, dirt packed beneath his nails. His body was real again. Crude, flawed, but alive.

  Caleb Voss opened his eyes.

  Above him, branches swayed gently in the wind. Birds he didn’t recognize sang in the canopy.The sky was too blue. The air too clean.The world... not his own.

  No city sounds.No distant engines.No sirens.No screens.No second chances.

  Only this: the beginning of something strange, and the end of everything he’d ever known.