The truck didn't honk.
That was what Elias Carter would remember, in the milliseconds before impact—the absence of warning. No screech of brakes. No desperate blare of horn. Just the hiss of rain against asphalt and the blinding glare of headlights that seemed to swell like a dying star.
He was twenty-six years old.
He had a gym membership he'd used twice, a Netflix queue he'd never clear, and a rent payment due in three days that would now, apparently, never be his problem.
The impact didn't hurt.
That was the strange part.
There was pressure—immense, all-consuming pressure—and then the sensation of flying. Weightlessness. The rain on his face felt distant, like someone else's memory.
Then the darkness came.
Not sleep. Not unconsciousness.
Void.
Elias floated in an abyss without dimension. No up. No down. No body to feel the absence of sensation. He tried to scream, but he had no throat. Tried to flail, but he had no limbs.
Time lost meaning.
He might have been there for seconds.
He might have been there for millennia.
Thought itself became difficult—like trying to hold water in cupped hands, his consciousness kept slipping away, dissolving into the endless dark.
Then came the voice.
It didn't speak so much as impress itself upon him. Cold. Mechanical. Absolute.
[Soul signature detected.]
[Scanning...]
[Compatible vessel identified.]
Elias tried to respond. Tried to form words, thoughts, anything.
[Transmigration protocol initiated.]
[Host: Elias Carter]
[Status: Deceased]
[Cause: Traumatic physical termination]
[Destination: Alternate dimensional plane]
[System assignment: INFINITE EVOLUTION]
Wait, Elias thought, the word crystallizing with desperate clarity. Wait, I didn't agree to—
[Transfer commencing.]
[3...]
[2...]
[1...]
The void shattered.
Not metaphorically. Literally shattered—fragments of absolute darkness breaking apart like glass, revealing something beyond. Something else.
Elias fell through the cracks in reality.
And he screamed.