As I lay in my hospital bed, taking what I know is my last breath, my life flashes through my mind.
I think first of my early childhood with my dad. We grew up wealthy—twelve-car-garage, mansion wealthy—but he was, to put it nicely, an asshole. A narcissist and a borderline sociopath who believed his own lies. If he had a bad day at work, he'd ground me for some inane reason. I was never the right son for him. He wanted a jock, a football-and-lacrosse superstar who was perfectly fit and got all the girls.
I wasn't bad looking. I was even handsome, something I didn't realize until much later because of him. But instead of the son he imagined, he got an anime-loving kid carrying a bit of teenage body fat. So what did he do? He made me run laps until I threw up and then run more. Or he'd "play" football with me, telling me to go long for a throw, then farther, and farther, claiming we were just playing—not trying to make me lose weight.
He made sure I knew I wasn't the kid he wanted.
When he grounded me, he'd make me sit facing a wall with no phone, no computer, not even a book. Hours of staring at blank paint. My mind drifted into worlds I built in my head, which is where my love of fantasy came from. Sometimes I'd be grounded for months. My routine was just: wake up, go to school, come home, face the wall, go to bed.
In that forced escapism and childhood trauma, I learned things too. I loved learning how things worked, how history shaped tools and technologies—from hammer and anvil blacksmithing to blast furnaces. Human ingenuity amazed me. I loved fantasy, anime, sci-fi. I escaped to galaxies far far away in my mind.
I started learning martial arts at a young age. Kendo, Jujitsu, Karate—I dove into all of it because anime turned into a full Japanese obsession for a while. I even wanted to be Sasuke from Naruto, which is a secret I probably should've taken to my grave. But martial arts came naturally to me. By my teens, I'd earned a serious number of black belts, then moved on to MMA with a focus on Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, and wrestling.
By the time I graduated high school, I was good. Really good.
My dad wanted me to attend a college near home so he could keep controlling me. When I gathered the courage to say I'd pay for school myself so I could go to one far away, he beat me up for it—tackled me, stole my car keys so I couldn't leave. I walked off anyway. He chased me down with his car and nearly ran me over. He'd lost it completely, shouting things like "I'm your god. I make the decisions."
So I left. And I did the only thing I could think of: I joined the military.
I threw my anger and frustration into it. I became a Navy SEAL and specialized in high-risk missions—direct action, reconnaissance, counterterrorism. Four years of living on the edge, behind enemy lines, rescuing hostages and capturing high-value targets.
After that, I decided I'd done my duty. I left the military and tried to live my own life for the first time. Which meant college. I chased a double major in computer and mechanical engineering, with a programming minor, because I'd always been a tinkerer. To pay for school I did whatever physical labor jobs I could get: construction, plumbing, even off-the-books electrical work.
Four years passed. I kept MMA training to burn off the leftover military restlessness. I graduated but the housing bubble had collapsed, and no one was hiring. So I stayed in school and got a master's degree.
Outside of all that, I was a geek. I played a lot of games, read a lot of books and watched a lot of movies—especially fantasy ones like Lord of the Rings and my all-time favorite, The Elder Scrolls. I played Oblivion, Skyrim, and even went back to Morrowind. I joined a D&D group and became a dungeon master, absorbing every scrap of lore I could find.
Six months after finishing my degree, still being told I had "no experience," I finally joined a company Netflix as it shifted from mailing DVDs to streaming. It paid well, even if I didn't love the work. So I invested in my hobbies, throwing myself into martial arts again—this time Wing Chun and Bajiquan. I moved on from my Japanese phase into a Chinese one, diving deep into their martial arts, history, and culture. I binge-read wuxia and xianxia novels until the tropes started looping.
I also joined the SCA, the Society for Creative Anachronism. We researched pre-seventeenth-century arts and culture, then dressed up in armor and beat each other with rattan or hard plastic swords. Hundreds—sometimes thousands—of us in mock battles. Honestly, it was more fun than black ops ever was.
The SCA also taught me about tailoring, brewing, armoring, archery, cooking, heraldry, metalwork, calligraphy, woodworking—everything. My favorite was smithing. As an engineer, working iron on an anvil felt like coming home. I learned Western and Eastern techniques: forging, quenching, pattern welding, forge welding, shaping. I loved making weapons.
Eventually I retired from my job. I got bored, went back to school again, and earned a degree in the history of science and technology. I was older now, easing away from high-impact martial arts and went into Tai Chi, Baguazhang, and even yoga.
I read constantly. Lore from everywhere—World of Warcraft, Skyrim, anything that caught my interest. I moved to the northern tundra of Canada, living off the grid with Starlink for internet connection. That lasted until I got seriously sick and had to be helicoptered back to civilization.
Lying in this hospital bed, I realized something. I had everything except what mattered: my health and a meaningful relationship. I had no wife, no kids, no family nearby. The few friends I had were gone. I'd dated after the military, but I always ended things before they got serious. Later, I switched to flings. Eventually I stopped trying at all. My relationship with my dad had broken that part of me, and I pushed everyone away.
Now here I am, alone, with only doctors and nurses checking in.
If I could do it again, I'd build real relationships. Family. Friends. A partner. Something that mattered.
That's when I heard it—a voice. Old, timeless, harsh, almost guttural. The kind of voice I'd imagine a dragon might have.
"Would you really be willing to do it all again," it asked, "as another person, in another world?"
Clearly I was losing my mind, but I answered. Who else was there to talk to? "A second chance to build a meaningful life would be more than I could ask for."
The voice grew stronger, more… not human. "Very well. I, Akatosh, with the help of Magnus and Sithis, will summon your soul from across the Void to Aurbis, known to you as the Elder Scrolls universe. Prepare yourself for the journey. But first, you must perish."
Before I could process the names, the voice shouted, "RII VAAZ."
Wait. That was the Essence Tear shout from Skyrim. This day had officially become the strangest one of my life, but also one of the most interesting ones. A voice in my head pretending to be Akatosh and using the Thu'um? I'm certainly going mad. Though he didn't even use the full soul-tear shout. Curious. Rii Vaaz Zol kills the target, tears out their soul, then raises them as a zombie. He only used the first two words. How weak, a Dragon God should easily be able to use the full shout.
And then everything went black.
My last thought was, Shit… am I actually dying?