Darkness swallowed my vision as my body started shutting down.
First sight went. Then hearing. Taste followed, then smell. One by one, like someone flipping switches in a dark control room until nothing remained except me—or whatever was left of me—drifting in cold, empty nothing.
My thoughts moved like they were wading through mud, sluggish and heavy, as if my brain was down to its final flicker of power.
God, my head hurt.
I tried to hold onto anything solid before it all slipped away. A name. A face. Some memory that actually carried weight. But everything felt like smoke; the harder I grabbed, the faster it dissolved.
One thing stuck, at least.
Male. Seventeen.
That was the sum total.
Who the hell was I?
What happened?
What was my name?
The questions spun uselessly inside my skull, but no answers came. Everything else had already leaked out.
My parents… were they all right? Did they even know?
A laugh bubbled up—or at least I think it did. It came out cracked and hollow, the kind you make when reality has become so absurd that crying would feel dishonest.
Because when I tried to picture them, nothing came.
I could see the rough shape of their bodies, the way they stood, the familiar outlines… but their faces?
Just blank white ovals. Nothing there.
The horror of it was quiet. Clinical, almost.
Time lost all meaning. A second might have been a decade. A decade might have been nothing. There was no hunger, no real pain—just this slow, patient erosion.
Eventually I gave up fighting it.
What was the point? If I couldn't even remember who I was, what exactly was I trying to save?
So I let go.
And strangely… the void felt warm.
Soft. Almost comforting.
Like sinking into the thickest blanket in the world.
I curled into it, ready for the longest sleep imaginable.
Then—
"Don't lose yourself yet, kid."
A voice smashed into my head like a door being kicked in, yanking me back from the edge.
"You're almost there. Hold on just a little longer. We're nearly at the next layer."
Next layer? What the hell did that even—
The voice cut in before the question fully formed.
"I'm a god of this stretch of reality. Your soul slipped the normal current and drifted into my domain. I caught you."
It paused, giving the silence room to feel important.
"There's a lot to explain, but not here. Not yet. For now… I'll give back the pieces I managed to salvage while they were spilling out of you."
Something approached. Heavy. Intentional.
I couldn't see or hear it, but I felt the weight.
My soul reached for it the way a drowning man grabs a rope.
The energy hit.
And just like that—
A name.
Ray.
Ver.
Ray Ver.
British.
Seventeen years old, perpetually tired, perpetually online.
Late-night anime binges that started at 11 p.m. and somehow ended at 6 a.m. with dry eyes and an existential crisis about whether Subaru from Re:Zero deserved better.
Grinding ranked matches in whatever shooter or MOBA was trending that season—screaming at teammates in voice chat, then immediately feeling bad about it.
Pickup basketball on cracked outdoor courts during summer, pretending I was actually good enough to go pro even though I knew deep down I'd top out at decent sixth man on a school team at best.
Tiny, stupid, gloriously ordinary fragments.
They felt almost pathetic next to the enormity of being dead.
But they were mine.
Relief crashed through me so hard it hurt more than the headache ever had.
That was it, though? Really?
A name, a nationality, a handful of hobbies?
No childhood home. No first kiss. No last words I might have said before everything went black.
Just… this?
I was grateful. Furious. Confused. All at once.
"Hey, uh… Mr. God Voice?" I tried.
Silence.
Gone.
Like it had never been there at all.
Cosmic hit-and-run. Typical.
Still, I clung to those scraps like they were the only things keeping me from dissolving completely. Because one truth had crystallised in the chaos:
If I'd let myself fall asleep in that warm dark, I wouldn't have woken up.
Not ever.
Then light appeared ahead.
White.
Blinding.
Completely illogical, considering I shouldn't have had eyes or a brain or anything capable of registering photons.
The light spread anyway.
Sensation slammed back into me like someone had hit unmute on reality.
Sound roared in—crashing waves against rock, wind through trees, distant thunder I couldn't place.
Awareness sharpened to a painful edge.
And then—
[System initialising…]
[Welcome, Host, to the Evolution System.]
[Current state unstable. Standard greeting protocol bypassed.]
[You have died.]
I snapped awake in pure white.
No horizon. No floor. No ceiling. Just endless sterile nothing, like the loading screen of a game that forgot to render the map.
Died.
Yeah.
That tracked.
A weak, wheezing laugh escaped me. Apparently my brain's default setting for existential terror was still terrible humour.
The god. The drift. The memory fragments.
It all pointed to one very familiar genre conclusion.
I cleared my throat theatrically, because if I was going to be delusional, I might as well commit.
"Uh… greetings, heavenly committee. Thanks for accepting my questionable soul into paradise. Looking forward to the eternal Wi-Fi and unlimited cloud storage for my questionable browser history."
Silence.
Then—
[Host current mental state: Delusional.]
[Proceeding anyway. Opening Tree of Being.]
[Loading evolution options.]
.
.
.
[Four viable paths detected.]
.
.
.
[Displaying…]
[1. Earthworm]
[2. Bluebuzzle Ant]
[3. Aenyx Gecko]
[4. Cannibalistic Spider]
I stared.
Definitely not heaven.
My many thousands of hours spent mainlining isekai light novels, manhwa, and trash-tier anime had prepared me for exactly this moment.
Starter selection screen.
Except instead of cute fox spirit, dragon-blooded swordsman, or overpowered slime, I got:
Dirt tube.
Corporate drone bug.
Wall lizard with dragon kink.
Sibling-eating nightmare fuel.
"Fantastic," I muttered. "The universe really rolled out the red carpet for me."
[System requires selection. Host appears distressed. Understandable.]
"Hey, System," I said, forcing calm into my voice even though I felt like screaming. "Any chance of descriptions before I doom myself to a lifetime of eating literal shit?"
[System can provide. Host omitted polite request.]
I stared into the endless white.
"You're actually doing this."
No reply.
I exhaled through teeth I wasn't even sure I still had.
"Pretty please with sugar on top."
[System appreciates the courtesy.]
Passive-aggressive manners as character development arc. My life—lives?—were officially a comedy.
[Loading details.]
.
.
.
[Earthworm: Common soil-dweller of the Alteen region. Minimal physical capability. Sustains itself on decaying organic matter and… waste products.]
"Hard pass."
Next.
[Bluebuzzle Ant: Small colonial insect native to the Forest of Eldegar and surrounding Alteen zones. Dedicated to colony labour and queen support. Highly social. Extremely replaceable.]
Teamwork. Community. Also: eternal wage-slave energy.
No.
Next.
[Aenyx Gecko: Resilient lizard native to the volcanic zones and basalt cliffs of the Alteen region, as well as the deeper, more sheltered reaches of the Forest of Eldegar. Modest in size and largely non-aggressive, it survives through caution rather than strength. Possesses above-average heat tolerance compared to similar creatures. Rarely encountered due to its reclusive nature, but generally considered harmless.]
I actually paused.
Heat-proof. Wall-crawling.
That wasn't garbage-tier.
That was sleeper pick. The kind of choice speedrunners discover three years later and go "wait, this was broken the whole time?"
Still due diligence needed to be taken.
I looked at my last option.
[Cannibalistic Spider: Cave and crevice dweller. Females produce clutches of several hundred to over a thousand eggs. Hatchlings frequently engage in sibling consumption to accelerate early growth and secure nutrients. Individually fragile. Compensates with fast-acting neurotoxic venom and exceptionally durable silk webbing.]
Brutal. Edgy. Very "I'm going to evolve into an eldritch horror and eat the world" protagonist energy.
But the whole "day-one family genocide" starter pack?
That was an instant deal-breaker.
I wasn't about to begin my second life by speedrunning the betrayal of everyone who shared a womb-space with me.
I took a long, steadying breath.
"System. I'll take the Aenyx Gecko."
...
"…please."
[Request acknowledged. Commencing soul transfer to Aenyx Gecko vessel… 40%… 65%… 87%… 100%. Transfer complete.]
The white space smeared like wet paint.
Thoughts thickened.
They slowed and sank.
Right before the dark rolled in again, a final cluster of questions burned bright and stubborn.
Why did that god bother fishing me out?
Why was my soul loose in the cosmic current to begin with?
What the hell even is this Evolution System?
Darkness came again.
Softer this time.
I didn't fight.
Tomorrow, I told myself as consciousness slipped away like sand through fingers.
I'll figure it out tomorrow.