I don't know what I expected death to look like. Maybe it was a cloaked stranger waiting for me with a sickle. Maybe it was a Grimm ready to guide my soul to rest. In my last moments, it was neither.
Death was the salt and the tide. The burning of my lungs, the choking of my throat, the last desperate breath before I finally lost my strength, and my will, to survive.
In my last moments, with darkness creeping into my sight and the moon hanging over me with all its pale brilliance, I dreamed. I dreamed of what may await me when this was all over.
I dreamed of the promised land of gold. I dreamed of the paradise which held neither strife nor sorrow. Where a garden of eternal bliss and pleasure awaited. Maybe even a land full of mighty warriors who trained for the end of days.
I thought that I might be met with a test. My heart placed on a scale against a feather. My worth judged by scrutinising cherubs. My possessions being given away for passage against a fiery river, with my only company being a silent ferry man.
My last thoughts, before the creeping darkness finally consumed my sight, were of the promised Nether, of Hell and Tartarus. I was never much of a saint, after all, such a fate seemed fair.
A bittersweet grin lined my face then, because through it all, I only wished for one end. A pleasant darkness which would strip me of all my senses and allow me to lay and never wake again. An eternal rest from a world that only brought me misery.
Finally, the suffocating pain of my body vanished, the darkness consumed me, and I accepted my end. Within that darkness, I felt myself float, it was peaceful, quiet, almost serene.
I blacked out. At peace with my acceptance.
But it did not last.
Because when I next opened my eyes, it was not sweet release that I was met with, but instead, the taste of salt on my tongue and the feeling of sand covering my body. At first, I had thought that maybe I had survived.
That somehow, through some bizarre miracle, I had lived to see another day. The sun was high above me, radiant and casting a heat wave that forced me to move my weary body.
Everything had hurt at first. My muscles ached; my mind was filled with cobwebs. I felt water falling freely from the corner of my lips, whether it was from the sea or simply saliva, I wasn't sure.
What I did know, in that moment, was that I had lived, and that I was covered in a thin layer of sweat that left me feeling uncomfortable. It forced me to move, to take shaky steps into the sea before me.
I was on a beach, was my first thought, as I splashed cold water over my face, wiping away grains of sand. My second thought was a frightening realisation. Though the sea receded, I was still able to catch a glimmer of red.
A glimmer of red on my hair where only gold should be.
I rushed further into the water, desperation pulling me forward, until it sat at my knees. I could only stare in shock at the reflection which met me.
Because the face staring back at me, was not my own.
Where I once had gaunt, sunken cheeks from malnourishment, I now had high cheeks bones, with sharp features. I looked almost like a model. Instead of the greasy, long golden hair I had inherited from my mother, I now had crimson hair that fell just below my shoulders.
My eyes, once a dull cerulean, were now instead a dark, crimson shade.
"Reincarnation…?" My voice startled me. Because it too, was not my own. Instead of the low, gravel tone I had grown up with, mine almost sounded velvet, soft and low in its own unique way.
If that wasn't strange enough…then what flashed before my eyes, certainly changed everything.
Because I was no longer looking at the churning sea beneath me, nor my rippling reflection, but a translucent, faintly pulsing, black screen, ornate with swirls of gold, where a singular message sat within it.
[Welcome. User. To the System]