So… this is it.
This is how I die?
Not in a blaze of glory. Not saving a child from a speeding truck. Not even in a dramatic knife fight in a dark alley, defending some semblance of honor. No, the universe decided my life was worth exactly one loose brick.
A single, stupid, clay-fired rectangle.
I remember the shadow first—a flicker across the sidewalk, a sudden shift in the light that made me look up. I didn't even have time to move. I just saw a blur of red, and then the world shattered.
No last words. No heroic monologue. Just gravity, bad luck, and a construction site that apparently had a personal vendetta against me.
All I wanted was to get home. I could almost taste the leftover pepperoni pizza in my fridge. I could feel the familiar, peeling faux-leather of my gaming chair. I just wanted to disappear into a digital world for a few hours—a world where I actually mattered.
Was that really too much to ask? To just… exist for one more night?
The silence that followed was the loudest thing I'd ever heard.
There was no pain. That was the strangest part. The "red" faded into a white so bright it felt heavy. I didn't have a body, yet I felt a phantom ache where my chest used to be—a lingering tightness of regret.
I tried to look down. I wasn't flesh and bone anymore; I was a smudge of light. I looked like a charcoal sketch that someone had tried to erase but couldn't quite finish.
"Okay," I whispered. My voice didn't vibrate in my throat; it just was. "This is new."
There were no pearly gates. No smell of incense or sulfur. Just a soft, colorless void that felt like the universe had hit the pause button and walked away to make a sandwich.
"Is this where all souls end up?" I asked myself, my inner voice cracking with a sudden, sharp edge of panic. "Because this is going to be incredibly boring. Hell, did I fall through a cosmic floorboard?"
"Wow," a voice said, dry as parchment, from somewhere behind me. "You ask an extraordinary number of questions for someone who has just ceased to be."
I spun—or rather, my consciousness pivoted.
A man stood there. He was tall, dressed in layered white and gold garments that seemed to hum with their own light. His silver hair was perfectly groomed, but his eyes… they looked tired. Not sleepy, but old tired. Like he'd watched a thousand civilizations rise and fall and was really just waiting for his shift to end.
"Who are you?" I demanded. My mind was racing, trying to find a category for him. "And how did you hear that? I didn't say anything out loud."
"You did," he replied, his expression neutral. "Just not with a mouth. You are a soul now. You are all 'out loud' now."
I tried to think of my name to introduce myself—to assert that I was a person, not just a "soul." I opened my mental mouth to say it, and… nothing.
The name I'd carried for twenty-odd years, the name my mother had called me, the name on my driver's license… it was gone. It felt like trying to grab a handful of fog.
"I… I can't remember who I am," I whispered, a cold hollow opening up in my chest.
"The transition strips away the unnecessary," the man said, his tone not unkind, but clinical. "My name is Zandriel. I'm the overseer in charge of the passage to the afterlife."
"That is the most bureaucratic way you could possibly describe death," I muttered, trying to hide the fact that I was trembling.
"I find that being straightforward reduces panic," he said.
"Well it isn't working," I snapped. "You're telling me I'm dead because of a brick? That's it? That's my story?"
Zandriel sighed, and for a second, he looked less like a god and more like a man who hated his job. "Your death… was not supposed to happen. It was an accident."
"Yeah, I noticed. Bricks don't usually have a flight path."
"Not that kind of accident," Zandriel corrected. He looked at something invisible in the air—a cosmic ledger. "An angel passed too close to the mortal plane while cloaked. The displacement of air from its wings loosened a brick. A worker saw the brick that loosened and tried to catch it. He unfortunately failed."
My memory replayed the moment. The shadow. The red. The sudden end of every hope I'd ever had.
"Great," I said, my voice thick with a sudden, hot grief. "You're telling me I'm dead because of an angel flying too hard? You're describing my death like it's spilled coffee on a rug."
Something flickered in Zandriel's eyes—a momentary softening. "I am being transparent about your death because the error is ours. You weren't supposed to die that day. Responsibility has also been acknowledged… by the Source."
"The source? Do you mean God feels bad?" I asked, skeptical.
"Yes."
"And what does divine guilt get me? A gift card?"
"Compensation," Zandriel said. "Reincarnation in realm where magic is everywhere. A world where your life will not be shackled by the same rules as your previous one."
My inner twelve-year-old, the one who spent every weekend lost in fantasy novels, stood bolt upright. But the adult in me—the one who had been beaten down by reality—stayed cautious.
"And do I get a 'cheat'?" I asked. "Something to make sure I don't get taken out by a falling roof tile in this new world, too?"
"You may choose one ability," Zandriel said. "And you may alter your form. A new life requires a new vessel. You cannot take the old one with you."
I looked at my glowing, blurred hands. I thought about the man I had been. The guy who hid behind a mop of hair because he didn't like his jawline. The guy whose voice always seemed to fail him when it mattered.
"Okay, better than nothing at least." I said.
I didn't just want to be "better." I wanted to be the man I'd always imagined I could be if the world hadn't been so heavy. I imagined myself taller, more solid. I wanted a jawline that looked like it was carved from marble. I wanted piercing blue eyes that didn't look away.
As I thought it, the light around me shifted, thickening, turning into something like clay. It was a strange, intimate sensation—like finally putting on a suit that actually fit.
"And your chosen ability?" Zandriel asked.
"Summoning," I said instantly.
He tilted his head. "Be specific."
"I don't want just disposable minions," I said, my voice sounding deeper, steadier in my new chest. "I want entities I can rely on. I want… company. If I'm going to a world where everything can possibly try to kill me, I don't want to be alone."
Zandriel went quiet. He looked at me for a long time, and for the first time, he looked truly impressed. "A request for strength born of a desire for connection. I will allow it."
He reached out. A spark of light, deep and ancient, gathered in his palm. "But such beings require a well of power far deeper than what a human soul can carry. I will connect you to a source."
He moved his hand toward my chest. I expected a tap. Instead, it felt like a hook catching in my ribs.
A connection locked.
For a heartbeat, I wasn't a man anymore. I was an open door. Something infinite, something that felt like the cold, terrifying depth of the ocean, poured into me. It wasn't a number or a "mana bar." It was a weight. A terrifying, endless weight.
Zandriel's hand shook. He looked like he wanted to pull back, to sever the link, but the connection had already fused.
"…That will be enough," he whispered, his voice sounding strained.
I gasped, my new lungs burning with the sheer scale of what I was holding inside. "What… what was that?"
"A mistake," Zandriel murmured, though he quickly regained his composure. "Or perhaps, justice. You will manifest with the basics. Armor, a blade, and a name."
The white void began to bleed into a blinding gold.
"Wait!" I shouted, reaching out as the floor fell away. "Where am I going? Is there a map? A tutorial?"
Zandriel was already fading, turning back into the light. "You will adapt. You have the depth of the stars within you now. Try not to drown in it."
He raised a hand, and as the world dissolved, he spoke the final words that severed me from my past forever.
"Go now, Aleric Saint. I sincerely hope we do not meet again."
And then, I wasn't a ghost anymore. I was falling. And for the first time in my life, I wasn't afraid of the landing.