"Where the hell am I?"
That was the first thing I said when I opened my eyes. Not the most eloquent start to what I would later understand was my second life, but honestly, given the circumstances, I think it was pretty reasonable.
I was standing — barely — in the middle of absolutely nothing.
And I mean nothing. Not the poetic kind of nothing that people describe when they're being dramatic about empty fields or quiet nights. I mean genuinely, completely, disturbingly nothing. No trees. No buildings. No horizon that made any logical sense. Just an endless stretch of pale, whitish-grey ground in every direction, flat as a sheet of paper, and above it a sky with no sun, no clouds, and no stars — just a sourceless, diffused light that illuminated everything and came from nowhere.
The silence was the worst part.
It wasn't peaceful silence. It was the kind of silence that makes you feel like the world has stopped and forgotten to tell you.
"Why can't I remember anything?" I muttered, pressing my palms against my head. "I shouldn't be here. But where is here? Why isn't there a single living thing around me?"
My voice echoed slightly — which made no sense given there was nothing for sound to bounce off — and then disappeared, swallowed by the emptiness.
I tried to get my legs working and that's when the second problem announced itself.
My hands.
I looked down and stared for a solid five seconds before my brain produced a response.
"Where did the hair on my fingers go?"
I know. Not my finest observation. But it was the detail that broke through first — the absence of the fine dark hair that had always been on my knuckles, replaced by smooth, pale, almost luminous skin that looked nothing like my own. I raised both hands in front of my face and turned them over slowly.
These were not my hands.
They were too smooth. Too perfect. Too elegant. Like the hands of someone who had never done a hard day of physical work in their life, which was deeply offensive considering I had climbed the Himalayas.
The Himalayas.
The memory arrived like a fist — sharp and sudden and just incomplete enough to be maddening. I had been on a trip. I remembered the summit — the flag, the cold, the foreigners I'd met on the way down. The meal at base camp, some local dish I would have killed to remember the name of. The journey home. The road. And then—
A wall.
Complete, total, infuriating blankness.
My first theory — and I'm a little embarrassed about this one — was my friends.
"Those idiots spiked my juice again, didn't they?" I said out loud, to no one. "I swear, the day I get my hands on them — what do they even gain from this? What is the end goal of the prank? Is it funny? Does it feel good? Do they lie awake at night thinking yes, we have achieved something meaningful?"
The rant helped for approximately four seconds. Then a quieter, less comfortable thought slipped in through the back.
I wasn't with my friends.
I was alone.
I was on my way home from the mountains.
And now I'm here. I stood very still.
Did I die?
The question arrived gently, which somehow made it worse. I would have preferred it to arrive loudly — something I could argue against, push back on, dismiss with logic. Instead it just settled into the center of my chest like a stone dropped into still water, and sat there.
"Did I… die?"
I said it out loud because saying things out loud had always helped me process them.
It did not help this time.
What followed was, I will freely admit, not my proudest moment. I screamed. I ran in random directions across a ground that made no sound under my feet. I fell to my knees and slammed my fists against that pale, featureless surface and demanded answers from a sky that had no sun and no interest in my questions. I called out for people by name — friends, family, anyone — and heard nothing back except the faint, mocking echo of my own voice.
I cried. Loudly. Messily. In a way that would have horrified everyone who had ever described me as composed.
I thought about my parents. That was the moment it truly fell apart — not the strange body, not the impossible landscape, not even the word died — but my parents. My mother, who called every Sunday without fail. My father, who had never once said he was proud of me directly but showed it in a hundred quiet ways that I had always pretended not to notice.
What would they do?
The thought destroyed me, and I let it, because there was no one around to see it and sometimes destruction is necessary before you can build something new.
Eventually, the way these things always do, it stopped. Not because anything had been resolved. Just because my body ran out of the energy required to sustain that level of falling apart.
I sat on the pale ground, breathing.
And slowly, stubbornly, the part of me that had always been practical began to reassemble itself.
Okay, I thought. You've cried. Well done. Now think.
I looked at my strange hands again. Then at the ground. Then at the sky.
None of it fit into any framework I could construct from real-world logic. So I stopped trying to use real-world logic.
What does this look like, if you take away every assumption you came in with?
That's when I felt the ring.
I don't know how I hadn't noticed it before — maybe the panic had drowned out everything subtle — but it was there on my right ring finger, cool and solid and real. Its surface was covered in patterns I had no words for, designs that twisted into each other with a precision that felt deliberate and ancient simultaneously.
I looked at it. And on instinct — just a flicker of intent, like a question directed inward — something responded.
A screen appeared in front of my eyes.
Translucent. Blue-tinted. Glowing softly.
I fell backward onto my hands and just stared at it.
Rows of rectangular boxes, each containing a floating object. Gold coins in stacks. Platinum. Thick paper bills that felt like currency when I reached out and touched one — rigid, dense, real. Weapons. Blades. Rods. Arrows. Things I couldn't name.
I tapped one of the boxes.
A knife appeared in my hand.
I stared at it for a very long time.
"…This feels like some Harry Potter shit," I said slowly.
And then, because I am apparently someone who arrives at life-altering realizations in the most inconvenient sequence possible, a far more important thought landed directly on top of that one.
I scrolled through the boxes — weapons, coins, supplies — and near the bottom, something different. A letter. Thick parchment, almost glowing, clearly waiting.
I took it. Unfolded it. Read it.
Read it again.
The parchment crinkled as my grip tightened.
"For real?" My voice had gone very quiet, which in my experience is always more dangerous than when it goes loud. "Out of every world. Every story. Every possible place I could have ended up."
I looked up at the sky that had no sun and addressed it directly.
"I never asked you for anything. Not once. Not a single prayer. Is that why? Is this what happens when you live a decent life and stay out of trouble and work hard and climb a mountain like a normal person on holiday?"
My voice broke on the last word.
The tears came again — quieter this time, more resigned than desperate.
I sat with them for a while, the letter in my lap, the knife beside me, the ring on my finger.
Then I said the only thing left to say.
"Why in this messed up world… why me?"
The silence, as always, had absolutely nothing useful to offer.