The rain came down harder, drumming against the windshield like bullets.
Lin Zeyan's wipers swiped back and forth, fighting a losing battle against the sheets of water. The sky, moments ago shining bright with the sun, had turned into a swirling wall of gray.
He narrowed his eyes, trying to see through the downpour. The highway stretched endlessly before him, empty, silent, swallowed by the storm.
Then
BOOM!
A deafening thunderclap split the air, so loud it seemed to shake the entire highway. Zeyan's grip tightened instinctively on the steering wheel, heart pounding.
"What the hell…" he whispered, still driving.
Lightning flashed. For a brief second, the world was drenched in the light of the thunder lightning, followed by another BOOM, a louder strike than the previous one.
"What's with this sudden rain and thunderstorm?" he muttered, switching on his headlights and pushing forward through the storm like every other car.
Then another thunder BOOM, louder and closer than the previous ones. So powerful it felt like the sky had been torn apart. Zeyan flinched, gripping the wheel tighter.
The moment the third thunder struck, suddenly everything changed.
A blinding light, pure, white, and impossibly bright, appeared on the road ahead.
He slammed the brakes. Tires screeched against the asphalt, the car jerking violently. His pulse thundered in his ears. He stopped right in the middle of the highway.
"What the hell?" he muttered, squinting through the glass. "Who's driving toward me on a one-lane highway?"
But the light didn't move. It stayed there, unmoving, steady, not like headlights, not like thunder lightning, not like anything he'd ever seen. Brighter and different from whatever light he had seen.
He wiped the windshield again for a clearer view. And that was when he saw it.
It wasn't a car.
It wasn't anything human.
Just light.
The light was beaming directly from the sky itself, a very thick ray of light piercing down from the sky through the dark and stormy clouds with a faint lightning bolt, landing directly in front of him.
He blinked hard once, twice. But the light didn't vanish, it stayed.
"Wait, am I going crazy?"
He turned to his side and saw other cars continuing to speed past in the other lane, tires slicing through rainwater, drivers focused, oblivious, some even cursing and screaming at him for parking in the middle of the highway. None of them slowed, none turned to look at the lightning. It was as if they couldn't see it at all.
He exhaled shakily, trying to steady his breath. "Maybe I'm hallucinating, lack of sleep," he muttered, smiling to himself. "The doctor did warn me this could happen if I didn't get enough sleep but I'm too busy to hear." He laughed at himself again as he used his back palm to wipe his eyes.
But the laughter died when the light moved.
It opened.
Right before his eyes, the wall of brightness split in the center, parting slowly and eerily like invisible doors sliding apart.
Behind it was nothing but a glowing void, a corridor of light that seemed to hum and breathe.
Zeyan's hands trembled on the wheel.
"This isn't feeling like hallucination again… but I'm sure it can't be real either."
But it felt real. It looked real and it breathed real. The hum of it called to him, magnetic, otherworldly.
He swallowed hard, eyes fixed ahead.
"Whatever this is, real or not, I need to get home. Dad's waiting."
He slammed his foot on the accelerator.
The car shot forward and plunged straight into the light.
Blinding white swallowed everything. A deafening hum filled his ears, every nerve screamed, and the steering wheel shook violently in his hands. The world dissolved into nothing, no sound, no weight, no gravity, before everything slammed back.
GBAM!!!
A violent crash tore through the storm as the Rolls-Royce burst back onto the highway. The light blinded him so hard that he could barely see, the hum filled his ears so loud that he could barely hear, only the deafening hum still roared inside his skull. The tires screeched on the soaked asphalt, the car spun once, twice, headlights slicing frantic arcs through the rain.
"Shit!" was all he managed before the world flipped.
Metal folded with a sickening crunch. Glass exploded. The seatbelt bit deep into his chest, the airbag burst, and everything became a blur of pain, sound, and motion. The car skidded, smashed into the railing, and crumpled like paper.
Steam hissed from the ruined hood. Smoke coiled through the shattered frame. Blood streaked down his temple, dripping onto the wheel.
Lin Zeyan sat slumped forward, breath shallow, blood soaking his shirt. One hand still clung weakly to the steering wheel, crimson trailing down his knuckles.
The rain fell again, soft, hesitant, onto twisted silver and broken glass.
His hand twitched. He looked up through the shattered windshield one last time. The light was still there, distant, humming, brighter than before. He reached toward it, but his arm fell limp. His eyes fluttered closed. His chest stilled. And he took his last breath.
The moment he took his last breath, the world paused.
Raindrops froze midair.
Speeding cars stopped moving.
Clouds halted.
Time itself stood still.
Every life, every human, every creature stopped breathing.
The whole world paused.
And in that suspended stillness, something impossible happened.
From Zeyan's broken body, a faint shimmer rose, a shadow, a reflection, a soul. It drifted upward from the wreck, drawn toward the glowing doorway still hanging in the sky like a wound.
The soul passed through the light.
And just like that, it vanished.
The glow snapped shut, gone as if it had never existed.
Time resumed.
Cars moved again.
Clouds moved again.
Every life breathed again.
And the rain fell again, softer now.
Thunder faded. Clouds parted, and sunlight spilled gently over the wreckage as though the storm had completed its purpose.
Only twisted metal remained.
A ruined car.
And the lifeless body of Lin Zeyan, a man who once ruled boardrooms like kingdoms, now lying still, soulless.
Cars stopped. Someone screamed. Phones rose to record, capturing tragedy like spectacle. Sirens wailed in the distance.
Minutes later, paramedics pulled his body from the wreck, cold, breathless, and rushed him to the hospital.
Doctors fought to revive him.
But the monitor never picked up a single sign of life.
Lin Zeyan, CEO of Zenith Group, declared B.I.D. (Brought In Dead).
Of course he died.
Because what is left of a body without its soul
if not death?