They say death comes quietly. A whisper. A flicker. A closing of the curtain.
Mine came with the blare of a horn and the taste of coffee still bitter on my tongue.
It started like every other day. I overslept, cursed under my breath, and sprinted to catch the train in time. Same overcrowded platform, same blank expressions around me. I was just one more cog in Tokyo's machine, suit-wrapped and half-dead behind the eyes.
Work? Don't ask. Meetings that went nowhere. Papers stacked like monuments to a life wasted. And for what? A paycheck that barely felt worth the burnout.
I wasn't the hero of anything. Not even my own story.
But fate -if you believe in that sort of thing- had something different in mind.
It happened in a blink.
I was crossing the street, eyes half-glued to my phone, thinking about some pointless email… when the world erupted in white light.
Headlights.
A scream I never finished.
Then nothing.
---
Darkness swallowed me. Not pain. Not even fear. Just... absence. As if I had blinked out of existence.
That should've been the end.
But when my eyes opened again, they weren't staring at a sterile hospital ceiling or the inside of a morgue drawer.
I was lying on grass.
Real grass.
Soft. Cool. Alive.
The sky above me stretched in all directions, impossibly blue and cloudless. A warm breeze tickled my face. The air smelled of pine and earth, fresh in a way I'd never known back home.
I sat up slowly, my limbs sluggish -but weightless. My body didn't ache. In fact, it felt... younger.
My voice came out hoarse. "Where... am I?"
And then-
Ding!
A crystalline chime echoed around me.
A floating screen shimmered into view, translucent and impossibly real. Strange runes scrolled across it before reforming into something I could actually read.
_______________________________
[Welcome to the World of Eldoria]
Initializing system...
Assigning starting class...
_______________________________
I blinked. Rubbed my eyes. Still there.
Some part of me wondered if this was the afterlife. Or a hallucination. Or the last flicker of neurons firing off in a dying brain.
Another screen appeared.
_______________________________
[Starting Class: ???]
Status: Locked. Unlock conditions must be met.
_______________________________
I stared at the text, heart hammering in my chest. My hands trembled. This wasn't normal. This wasn't sane.
And yet... I wasn't dreaming.
I reached out, fingers hesitating just before they touched the screen. It pulsed in response—then exploded with light.
A wave of something tore through me. Energy? Memory? I couldn't tell.
Visions that didn't belong to me crashed into my mind.
Flashes of twisted beasts rising from shadows.
A warrior cloaked in lightning. A dragon breathing fire over shattered towers. Books glowing with magic I couldn't begin to understand.
Names. Skills. Worlds. Power.
Too much.
Too fast.
And then—stillness.
Silence, save for the wind stirring the trees.
My breath caught as realization settled in like a stone in my chest.
This wasn't Earth. It wasn't a dream.
Somehow, I had been dropped into a world that ran on magic and madness—a world where people didn't scroll through social media, but fought monsters to survive.
And worst of all?
It already had plans for me.
I didn't know the rules. I didn't even know the objective.
But one thing was certain.
Whatever this place was...
I was now a part of it.
And this time, I wasn't waking up late for work.