Mundane, Ordinary, Unexciting and Pitiful.
Those were the only fitting words Alexis Wright could use to describe his current life.
He wasn't poor, starving or even struggling by any means. He was just.....extremely bored.
Born with a mind that devoured information like a glutton, Alexis was quickly crowned a genius before he even reached high school.
His ability to absorb and understand concepts quickly placed him above his peers...no, he was even above those known as geniuses.
He was known as the genius among geniuses and with that title came his love for innovation.
But the world had no place for him.
While others his age were wasting time chasing wealth, women, or fleeting pleasures, Alexis buried himself in metallurgy, chemistry, and engineering.
He saw beauty where no one else even cared to look, inside the microscopic lattice of steel, in the crystalline imperfections of alloys, in the way fire and pressure could coax raw ore into something magnificent.
He dreamed of stronger, lighter metals. He envisioned civilizations built on steel bridges that never rusted, towers that touched the heavens, and weapons that could change the very nature of war.
Yet no one cared.
To governments, he was too young.
To corporations, he was too unprofitable.
To colleagues, he was too idealistic.
And so, his brilliance was shackled. He spent his days locked inside a lab funded not for discovery but for paperwork, reports, and soulless patents that would be shelved and eventually forgotten.
It was suffocating.
Even now, as he sat alone under the cold fluorescent lights of the research wing, Alexis felt like a prisoner chained to mediocrity. His colleagues had long gone home.
Only he remained, scribbling equations no one had asked him to write, experimenting with samples that had already been discarded.
His only other sense of relief was teaching.
If he couldn't convince corporations or governments to care about his work, then at the very least, he could shape young minds.
At just twenty-four, Alexis Wright stood at the front of university lecture halls as one of the youngest professors in material science and engineering.
Well, that and what he was currently up to.
His eyes gleamed as the furnace roared to life. Within its belly lay his latest experiment—a blend of carbon, tungsten, and iron, treated at temperatures no company policy would ever approve. The alloy shimmered faintly, glowing with untapped potential.
If his calculations were correct, this single ingot could surpass every known standard of steel. Stronger, lighter, resistant to corrosion, and perhaps… just perhaps… the foundation for an entirely new era of engineering.
Alexis smiled bitterly.
"This is it… and no one will ever know."
The monitor beside him suddenly switched to red and the alarms started blaring. Pressure was building far too quickly.
"No, no, no...." Alexis repeated as he rushed towards the valve. "According to my calculations, everything was supposed to be stable, what's going on now."
He tried turning the valve but that's when he noticed that it was slightly bent. A detail that can be missed if not closely paid attention to.
Someone tampered with it... The thought crossed his mind since there was no way else that would've happened since he made sure none of the heat met the valve.
Pushing the thought of who to blame away from his mind, he spun the valve only for it to get stuck halfway.
But that wasn't his only way of making sure the excess pressure was released. He moved towards a certain console at the other end of the lab before he started tapping on the keyboard.
His fingers danced across the keys, overriding safety protocols, attempting to manually vent the chamber.
He had to make sure the building pressure would be let out, else, the explosion that would be caused would cover the entire block the lab was on.
But he quickly realized that even if he managed to release the pressure manually, the alloy itself was unstable. A miscalculation and everything would explode.
Too late, he thought.
Soon after, the first wave of flames spilled out the chamber and into the lab. Done with the first console, he rushed to the second, his hand outstretched to tap the enter key.
But before he could reach it, the explosion came. Alexis's brain didn't have a moment to understand what happened when the flames hit him.
Pain, unlike any he had felt before, tore through his skin. And it wasn't a quick one either.
He could feel everything, his skin melting from his bones, his nerves being set on fire and the pain from every single organs that caught flames.
Alexis screamed in agony, hopping...no begging for death to claim him and after what felt like an eternity, it did.
Alexis Wright, engineering and material science genius drew his last breath, claimed from this world.
But death wasn't the end.
__________
In a place unseen by any mortal eye or touched by any mortal presence was a stream made of beautiful glowing lights[1].
Looking closely, one would notice that these glowing lights were in the shape of orbs.
This was the reincarnation stream. A stream where the souls of mortals come after death and is cleansed before allowing it to be reincarnated again in an endless cycle.
The space in this place was torn open as a beam of light with a humanoid shape walked through.
None of the being's features were visible as it was all hidden behind the bright light that enveloped it.
It threaded slowly towards the endless river of souls. When it reached the edge of the river, the figure extended a hand. Its light glowed brighter, illuminating symbols etched into the very fabric of the void and runic circles that were older than stars themselves.
A voice, neither male nor female, whispered from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
"Alexis Wright… your death was not meant to be so soon."
The runes guarding the stream pulsed violently at the sound of the name, as though rejecting the interference.
The humanoid being tilted its head, ignoring the protest of the cosmic current and with a sweep of its arm, a single orb of light was torn free from the flow.
This was the soul of none other than Alexis Wright.
The being brought the soul closer to its face, observing the slight flickering of the orb.
The runes along the stream shuddered violently, their glow suddenly getting brighter and clashing with the being's light. A voice rose from the current of souls.
"Interference is forbidden. This soul belongs to the cycle." It warned.
But the being only raised its hand higher, shielding Alexis's soul from the current.
"The cycle would waste him. This one… was born to shape worlds. And his story is not finished."
With the slightest movements of his fingers, another tear in space appeared and the being calmly pushed Alexis's soul through.
"Go continue your story young Alexis," the being said, "I'm curious to see how much you'll elevate that world."
And with that, Alexis's story in another world began... Which world?
He'd just have to find out when he finally wakes up.
[1] Yep, it's the same stream but in a different dimension