Somewhere Far from the Cloud Forest
The child lay in a forest clearing as dusk bled into twilight. Motionless beneath the fading sky, his shallow breaths were enough to make one realize that his condition was dire. The teleportation had ravaged his small body; life flickered within him like a guttering candle. Death hovered close.
Then, footsteps.
A burly woodsman and his daughter halted at the clearing's edge. The girl's gasp cut through the silence.
"Father—look!"
She darted toward the small form before her father could react.
The woodsman knelt, his calloused hand brushing the child's icy cheek. After a weighted pause, he answered, his voice coarse and low
"Beyond saving. His thread's nearly cut."
Pity hardened the edges of his words—the kind reserved for wounded animals left to the forest's mercy.
The girl gripped his arm, knuckles white.
"We can't leave him! The fever-herbs in our cellar saved Marta's baby last spring. Please."
The woodsman studied his daughter's desperate eyes, then the dying child. With a grunt that spoke of surrendered arguments, he lifted the boy against his worn tunic.
"Don't hope, girl," he warned, turning toward the distant lantern-glow of their village—the last outpost before the wilds claimed the land.
___________________________________________________________________
Aldin—formerly the university student with questionable life choices—drifted through an endless void.
No pearly gates, no fiery pits. Just… featureless oblivion.
When awareness flickered back, he found only suffocating darkness.
Okay, he thought, so I'm either dead, crazy, or stuck in the world's most boring prison cell
His first coherent thought? Not grief for his unfinished degree. Not longing for his family. Nope.
"Finally! Time to meet a bombshell goddess!"
A grin split his spectral face.
"Gotta negotiate the terms upfront. Heroics? I will pass. Let some other unfortunate soul handle it. Saving worlds sounds like unpaid overtime."
He waited.
And waited.
Hours oozed by. No divine beauty. No reincarnation questionnaire. Not even a bored receptionist!
"You've gotta be kidding me," Aldin groaned to the void. "Eternity in cosmic timeout? I'd rather relive calculus finals!"
Just as despair choked him, an invisible force—vicious and sudden—snatched him backwards. A voice cut through the darkness, colder than frozen iron and vibrating with terrifying power:
"CLAIM THE THRONE."