A low, rueful laugh rolls out of me, half-breath, half-steam because the first thing I notice about being dead is that it's too damn pretty. No pearly gates, no sulfur pits, just a mile-deep velvet void strewn with jeweled pinholes and spinning baubles. Planets drift past my knees like lazy beach balls; comets comb my hair. It's gorgeous, sure, but also funny, because it means every doom-saying ex who swore I'd "burn for eternity, you manipulative Bitch" was apparently wrong. No brimstone. No Rose either, which stings worse. I died before I could even taste her lipstick. Figures.
I float, standing? sitting? who knows. In the middle of it all, arms folded, muttering at the cosmos. "Really? All this drama and I don't even get a welcome brochure?" My voice tumbles out, echo-less, swallowed by velvet.
"Dear child," a woman's voice chides, playful as wind-bells, "it's rude to sulk in the presence of the Divine. "
Child. That sparks a scowl; I'm nineteen, well, was but I whirl anyway, trying to pin the speaker. Nothing but starry emptiness. The laugh comes again, deliciously lazy, sliding down my spine like chilled wine.
"Up, little comet."
I tilt my chin and the universe re-rights itself around a colossus.
She's… monumental. A woman carved out of dawnlight and northern lights, lounging among the constellations as though the Milky Way were her chaise longue. Her breasts, barely corralled by a drape of glittering emerald silk, hover somewhere above Andromeda; her calves could crush Jupiter. A necklace of baby comets orbits her throat, the Moon itself dangling as a charm. Her smile is part motherly warmth, part cat-with-the-canary.
My mouth remembers to work. "So, uh—hi. I'm guessing you're not Saint Peter."
"Saints are adorable." She waves a galaxy off her fingernail. "I'm Rhea. Mother of Gods."
Heart, meet throat. I catalogue details the way I always do: bronze skin glitter-dusted by nebulae, hair poured sunlight, eyes an ancient green. And here I am in shredded jeans and a band-tee that definitely doesn't meet goddess-audience dress code.
"Rhea," I repeat, trying to sound worldly instead of terminally confused. "As in Cronus-eating-your-kids Rhea?"
She winks. "That was a difficult marriage."
Dark humor slips out before I can gate it. "Could've been worse. Mine ended via delivery truck." Pause. "Not that I'm bitter. But where am I?"
Her expression softens, but there's mischief flickering beneath. "Between life and death," she explains, gesturing with a lazy sweep that sets meteors spinning, "is my drawing room. Your fate's… malleable."
Right. Limbo. Purgatory. Cosmic waiting room. Somewhere in here, I'm supposed to repent? Yeah no fuck all that.
"So," I venture, "do I get a second chance or a one-way slide south?"
She giggles, the sound a constellation shiver. "South? Oh, sweet star-spark, you're not interesting enough or bad enough for Hell." Ouch. "I'm inclined to grant you four wishes." She lifts four shimmering fingers. "But be clever and don't bore me."
I blink, my throat dry. "Why help me at all?"
"Entertainment," she purrs, shrugging a nebula off her shoulder. "I like messy stories. Besides last one needed a reboot."
What did she mean by that??
Rules materialize as glowing script over her palm:
1. No rewrites of cosmic law.
2. No true immortality. Ageless was allowed
3. Only small aesthetic overhauls, your twin soul must recognize you.
4. World, race, and body pre-selected: Female Snow Elf.
5. Rhea reserves the right to cackle when consequences arrive.
Twin soul? I hitch on that, but when I open my mouth, she silences me with a finger pressed to ruby lips. "Later. Suffice to say, you were born fractured, two sparks, two realms. She's waiting."
Some dank corner of my heart, how odd. "Okay. Four wishes. Let's play."
Wish One
"I want pure Elder Blood, like Ciri, but stealth-mode. Wild Hunt can't find me unless I want to be found."
Emerald eyes flare brighter. "How reckless." But smiled. She spins a thread of red light, flicks it at my chest. It sinks through the sternum, ignites every capillary with red vapor, I gasp half pain, half high.
Wish Two
I recall how I always wanted to be a monster fucker so time to make that a reality but with extra perks.
"I want the ability to harvest race traits from creatures via heart, blood, or… Cum." I let the last word drip honey. "Store them safely. Combine them later, only after I cleanse them with another power. So kinda two wishes, but it makes things far more interesting" (Because I'm not fond of parasitic curses hitchhiking home.)
Rhea's chuckle vibrates moons. "Carnal archivist. Hmmm, very well, I'll allow it." She presses two comet-beads together; sparks fuse, dart down my throat like fizzy liquor.
Wish Three
My mouth shapes the next desire without pause. "Alpha werewolf, Teen Wolf flavor with progressive forms. But I don't want the Deadric prince of the hunt on my ass, so it shouldn't have any connection to him. My pack, my rules."
Her grin glints fanglike. "My, my, Snow Elf with a howling heart." A cyclone of starlight rings me, searing bone. For a breath, I smell pine, iron, wild musk.
Wish Four
Last bullet in the clip. "I want the Oblivion System, Elder-Scrolls style HUD, leveling system. A store, Cause I'll need it if im going to have to deal with crazy things."
Rhea claps, cosmic thunder echoing. "And there we have a story worth binge-reading." She flicks a finger; a glassy panel unfurls overhead, faint runic glyphs scrolling LEVEL 1.
[[Race: Snow elf
Birthsign: The Mage
Class: Mage
Level 1
Magicka 260 +50 + 50= 360
Strength 30 + 10 [werewolf]
Intelligence 55
Willpower 45
Agility 40+5 [werewolf]
Speed 30 + 3 [werewolf]
Endurance 40
Luck 50
-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
Major skills
Alchemy 35
Alteration 40
Conjuration 35
Destruction 41
Illusion 35
Mysticism 40
Restoration 30
Spear 30
---------------------------------\
Minor skills
armorer 5
Athletic 8
Blade 5
block 5
blunt 5
hand to hand 5
Heavy armor 5
Arcobatics 6
Light armor 5
Marksman 10
Mercantile 5
Security 8 [aka lockpicking]
Sneak 12
Speech Craft 12
-----------------------------------------------\
Perks
Frost resistance: 25 percent reduction from frost spells targeting you
Frost empowerment: 15 percent damage increase from spells.
Snow Elf: Bonus 50 MP
Elder blood: Bonus 50 MP
-------------------------------------------------------\
Abilities
Cleaning touch: The power to convert and remove unwanted evolutionary traits from a willing being. One month cooldown
Taboo Collector: The ability to gain an ability that affects the body and rarely the soul, powers from different creatures, races, or monsters by collecting hearts, blood, or Cum. must be used with cleaning touch and stored to be used. The number of samples varies from being to being.
Blood powers:
True werewolf mother.
Beast form Werewolf. (Teen Wolf)
Red, blue, and Golden eyes. Can switch freely
Elder Blood- Information unknown.
Teleport mastery 0
Planes walking mastery 0
-------------------------------------------------\
STORE
Gold septims: 0
Food Tab
Spell, books, and maps tab
Weapon and Armor Schematics tab
raw resources tab Locked: Requires materials
Appears tab
Donation tab]] (sad to say this version beats the shit out the other one without using spells)
Rhea's emerald gaze slides sideways, like she's just remembered dessert. "Ah—one more courtesy before the plunge." She flicks her wrist; stardust congeals into a full-length mirror rimmed with orbiting meteoroids. It floats there, angling itself until it captures me head-to-toe.
And there I am, or rather, the new me? Old me.
First hit: height, I've been compressed to maybe 5'2. All my old 5'9" authority gone.
Second hit: skin no longer the warm human cream but slightly more pale. Like I don't go outside kind of pale.
I'm stark naked, soul-naked, and the void's draft is nonexistent, but instinct makes me straighten anyway, shoulders back, stance wide. I was skinny, fuck this old body didn't eat properly from the look of it. Hips slim. Breasts… a definite downgrade from my former D's flattened to modest B's that barely curve from the chest. I tilt the mirror, squint, poke one nipple like I'm checking pastry dough. "Really?" I mutter. "That's it? Grandma's genetics finally caught up."
Rhea's laughter ripples comets out of alignment. "Smaller frame, smaller accessories. Laws of scaling, little comet."
"I'm a soul right now, pretty sure physics is optional. But I can fix this with a proper diet."
I keep scanning. Ears: long, elegant fins of cartilage peeking past hair, a sheet of white silk that waterfalls down to my lower back.
Eyes: two polished sapphires rimmed in thick platinum lashes. Face: younger, smoother, sixteen, maybe. And then, wait, I lean closer, hunting the beloved star-dust across my body and face was gone. My freckles, my tiny constellation, erased.
Breasts I can negotiate, stature I can work with, but the freckles? That's where I draw the fucking line!
"Hey. I want my spots back."
Rhea arches a brow, amused. "You'd trade flawless skin for stardust?"
"Yes, I would." My tone leaves no room for jokes.
She rolls galaxy-green eyes but snaps her fingers. Pinpricks of warm light sprinkle across my body, settling in a familiar scatter. I breathe out, and there hang my constellations.
"That's better," I say, softer than intended.
"You're welcome, vain little snowflake." She tucks a comet behind her ear. "Anything else?"
"Well, I take it my clothes didn't make it, so I'm assuming I'll arrive naked?"
"Naturally." She sounds delighted. "Consider it a character-building walk of shame."
I grin, shrugging. "I don't have much of that at all." I flex fingers, slender, tapered, nails opal-sheened. "As long as frostbite doesn't chew them off."
"Snow Elf flesh ignores chill," Rhea reminds. "You'll feel the cold like a summer breeze, not winter chill, well, if you weren't wet, that is"
"Wait, what?"
Rhea's grin widens to eclipse constellations. "Live well, Ellehish. And make it entertaining. I hope I don't have to restart this again."
Her palm flips; the star-floor cracks; gravity hooks me by the ribs. I fall with a whoop.
Black first. Black thicker than ink, cold as Ice. Then a tremble runs up the length of my spine, not pain, more like the world clearing its throat, and my eyelids jerk open to a murky green gloom.
I'm upright, suspended, encased in something that flexes around me when I breathe. Crystal, thin, transparent, spider‑webbed with hairline fractures that pulse a lazy sapphire light. Each pulse syncs perfectly with the pendant resting between my breasts, the same pendant from my dreams. Its glow is weaker now, guttering like a candle fighting dawn.
Outside the cocoon: wreckage. Here and there, armor plates catch stray shafts of moonlight filtering down from the surface and wink back like sad coins. A whole graveyard of my people, still armored in crystal mail. And scattered among them, iron axes, splintered oars. Time hasn't so much softened the scene as freeze‑dried it.
Something drifts past my cocoon, razor‑toothed fish the color of tarnished silver. Its flank scrapes the crystal with a hollow tunk, but it darts away, uninterested. The pendant's field must be masking me.
I flex my fingers. They move, slower than I expect. Cracks spider further, trickling pale light. I cock my elbow, drive it outward. A sheet of crystal shatters like sugar glass; ice‑cold seawater surges in, clamping my ribs in a frigid vise. Instantly, I regret every steaming bath I ever complained about being "too hot."
Still, Snow Elf flesh, cold‑kissed rather than cold‑killed. I tug one last breath of stale, pendant‑filtered air, then kick free, naked body gliding through the graveyard. A greaves‑clad femur bumps my shin. I twist, plant my feet on the silt, and crouch by a skull half buried in the sand.
Its eye sockets are wide, hollow, ringed in faint runework that once held luminous gems. I cradle it with both hands, mud billowing in gentle clouds. Something ancient and mournful hums along my bones, recognition, perhaps. "Who were you?" I murmur in my head, voice a dull throb in my own ears.
Another fracture sparks across the pendant. That hum of power is dying; I feel it. Time to surface. I push off the seabed. The cloak of crystal shards that still clings to me splinters with each stroke, drifting behind in iridescent petals. Fish scatter. Forty feet, twenty, ten—moonlight brightens to silver. The barrier gives one last sympathetic crack, then dissolves entirely as my head bursts into icy night air.
Gasping.
The first breath knifes down my throat, feels like inhaling peppermint knives, but sweet‑sweet oxygen rides the blade. I cough, sputter, suck another lungful, then flooted in the water, Looking around.
Black ocean mutters in every direction, its surface pebbled white with foam. To the northeast, an island hunches under wan moonlight, jagged cliffs, ruined towers outlined against the aurora. Solstheim. Home, in the loosest, grimmest sense.
Wind screamed across the waves, flogging my hair against my shoulders. Water isn't killing me, but that wind really was starting to make me feel the cold. My jaw started to tremble as I started the swim toward land.
Waves hurl me onto the sandy beach, rolling me twice before abandoning me in a puddle of glacial saltwater. I crawled onto my hands and knees, coughing up water.
"Can't waste time… Must find shelter." Wrapping my arms around my chest in a futile attempt to shield myself from the biting cold, looking around, I decided to make my way up the path that led to the ruined keep, stubbing all the way.
The sight of what was once my home brought for some reason, tears to my eyes, the memories of laughter and warmth now replaced by an eerie silence and the merciless chill of the wind. I could almost hear the distant echoes of children playing, cheerful banter exchanged among the guards.
As I reached the old gates, I paused for a moment, running my fingers along the rough stone, feeling the ghosts of the past brush against my skin. With a deep breath, I stepped through the gate.
"Must...find something..." My mind raced, seeking solace in any semblance of safety. As I stumbled upon a door blocked by a stone pillar, the only part of the keep that appeared intact. Grunting with effort, I pushed, my fingers gripping the cold stone with a desperation born of pure survival instinct.
"Come on...move!" My voice was hoarse, strained from the exertion. After several attempts, the pillar shifted to the side, crumbling into dust as it hit the floor. "Finally"
Now with that out of the way, I moved to open the door, my eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness of the room. Dust cascaded down from the ceiling, tickling my nose and causing me to sneeze violently. Wiping away the dust from my face with a trembling hand, I surveyed the room. It was an old storage space filled with remnants of a past long gone.
"Better than nothing," I muttered, stepping further into the room.
I gingerly reached out towards a shelf, my fingers finding purchase on some old blankets covered in dust. Clutching them tightly as I began to shake off the dust. Before using the fabric to dry my freezing body. With each cough and sneeze, I cursed my current predicament.
As I sat in a corner, creating a makeshift bed out of the old blankets, a small light flashed in the corner of my eye. Intrigued, I attempted to touch the source of the light but failed as my fingers passed through it like air.
"Of course," I chuckled bitterly. "Just like those protagonists in the webnovels I used to read."
Deciding to use my mind instead, I focused my thoughts on interacting with the mysterious light. To my surprise, a small status screen appeared before me. The information on the screen was the same one I'd seen before.
"Interesting..." I mused, my eyes scanning over the details.
In that moment, a cold determination settled within me. a resolve born from the realization that I would not simply fade away into the annals of history. No, I would fight, claw, and seduce my way back to power if I had to. and exact my revenge upon those who had wronged me and my people.
"Watch your backs, Nords," I whispered into the darkness. "Cause I'm coming for you fucks and you will learn the true meaning of terror."
As I tried to rest on my makeshift bed, my head landed on a neatly folded set of clothes. A letter to the side. As I reached out and opened it, it read as.
"I decided to send you a set of clothing from that body pillow I found in your room. I have enchanted the mask to help you along your way. Remember, now I'll be watching." And as I turned my attention back to the clothing, it turned out to be a set of fire keeper clothing (Dark Souls 3), Along with their headgear. Dressing myself, I was glad I got the modded one. With one final movement, I placed the crown on my head and covered my eyes. Interesting, I could see through it. This would come in handy, I couldn't help but think.