Title: The soul that arrived late
Death, Duke decided, was annoyingly bright.
He expected darkness, or silence, or that dramatic tunnel everyone talks about. Instead, he floated inside a river of glowing mist, soft blue currents carrying thousands of drifting souls like lanterns on a festival night.
The place felt too calm. Too organized. Like a bureaucratic airport… but for the dead.
Souls lined up in streams, guided by shimmering runes that flowed like traffic signs. They drifted forward without struggle, faces unreadable, their shapes blurring into pale silhouettes. Some were small, children maybe. Others were tall or bent or missing pieces. One soul looked like it had been chewed by something with anger issues.
Duke glanced down at himself. He wasn't exactly a person anymore more like a translucent version of himself, with faint cracks of light running through him.
"Wow," he muttered to no one, "I die once and suddenly I'm DLC content."
If he still had a body, he would've shivered. But souls didn't shiver, apparently.
The air or whatever counted as air here hummed softly. Strange beings drifted above the lines, too ethereal to be human. Their robes were long, flowing like curtains underwater, and their faces were smooth marble masks without eyes or mouths. They gently tapped the souls in line with staff-like rods, guiding them forward.
Duke stared.
"Okay… soul immigration officers. Nice. At least the afterlife has customer service."
He tried to follow the line, but something felt… off. The closer he got to the massive archway ahead, a monumental gate carved from light, the stronger the pressure around him became. Like invisible hands trying to pull things out of him.
Memories.
He felt snippets slip away: his apartment door… the smell of his favorite instant noodles… the face of a reader who once sent him a message saying "Your novel saved my life"…
"No, no, hey wait! I need those! They're mine!"
The pressure increased. His thoughts blurred, the memory of his name flickered.
And then,
The world trembled.
A deep, bone-cracking lurch that made the entire realm pulse like a dying heartbeat.
The robed attendants froze.
The souls in line drifted unevenly.
The glowing river split sideways as if gravity suddenly forgot its job.
"Uh…" Duke whispered. "Is this normal? Because this feels not normal."
A sharp sound tore through the air, a shriek, metallic and ancient, and a long, ragged crack ripped across the sky.
The crack widened.
Behind it was nothing.
Not darkness. Nothing.
Then something moved inside the nothing.
A talon, massive, black, and covered in scales thicker than castle walls burst through the tear. It scraped across the realm's sky, leaving sparks of shattered space behind it. A second claw followed, then the face of a beast Duke didn't even have words for.
It had too many eyes.
Too many horns.
And its jaw stretched sideways instead of down, like a nightmare that broke the rules of geometry.
The soul next to Duke flickered violently in terror.
"Oh hell no," Duke whispered. "Nope. Nope. I'm dead, not hallucinating, why does it have that many eyes?? Pick a number!"
More rifts exploded open. Smaller beasts poured in, some winged like skeletal birds, others slithering like gigantic serpents with human arms. One looked like a lion made of broken mirrors. When it roared, the sound fractured the air.
Souls were sucked in immediately, spiraling into the tears like dust into a vacuum.
The robed guardians raised their staffs, runes spinning wildly around them, trying to stabilize the collapsing realm, but beams of dark energy slammed into them, tearing them apart like paper.
The reincarnation archway flickered, and for the first time, Duke heard something like a system alarm:
[WARNING: Memory Purification Interrupted]
"Oh fantastic," Duke muttered, "I died in a place that crashes. The afterlife needs a software update."
The ground, the glowing path beneath him cracked. A massive fissure opened, pulling souls downwards. Duke dug his translucent fingers into the air, trying to swim backward.
He expected himself to scream.
But instead, a strange, absurd clarity filled him.
"Wow… I really died at the worst possible time, didn't I? I couldn't die tomorrow? Or yesterday? Nope. I had to die during the cosmic apocalypse discount sale."
Something grabbed him from behind, a current, and yanked him away from the collapsing arch.
Memories scattered violently:
His favorite pen.
His mother's voice.
The cheap signboard of the restaurant where he worked part time.
Lines from the novel he never finished.
He tried to grab them, but they fell like sand between fingers he no longer had.
Another crack burst open directly beneath him.
Duke's soul slipped.
He saw one last beast, a giant wolf of molten stone and star-fire, snapping at fleeing souls before the vision was swallowed by darkness.
Then
A blinding flash.
A mechanical voice:
[Dungeon Tower Creation Complete]
[Assigning Floor Boss: F-Rank Tower #3281]
[Species: Beastman Hybrid (Larval)]
[Talent: Fusion]
Duke slammed into solid ground.
His head ached. His back hurt. Everything hurt.
"Mother… of… crap," he groaned. "I reincarnated into body pain? Is that even allowed?"
He pushed himself up, only to freeze.
Claws.
A tail.
Patchy fur.
And… were those ears? Floppy at the edges, twitching like two creatures with their own personalities?
He didn't even have time to process it.
Footsteps echoed at the entrance of the cavern.
Human footsteps.
Duke hissed under his breath.
"Great. I reincarnated five minutes ago and someone's already speedrunning my murder. Beautiful. Love that for me."
He turned to face the tunnel as a shadow approached.
He had no idea the climber entering was someone he should definitely not kill.
He had no idea the beasts that invaded Nirvana Realm were still tearing through dimensions.
He had no idea his Fusion talent would evolve into something the Tower would consider a threat.
He only knew one thing:
He was alive.
He had claws.
And he was in deep, deep trouble.