The first thing I saw after death was light.
Not heaven.
Not fire.
Just… light.
When it cleared, I found myself standing at the gates of a city I had never seen.
Towers gleamed silver.
Banners rippled gold.
The air buzzed with voices.
And a crowd — endless and loud — was cheering for me.
"Hero! Hero! Our savior has arrived!"
Before I could speak, someone pressed a crown into my hands.
Armor clanged onto my shoulders.
A sword, polished and heavy, was forced into my grip.
At the center of it all, a king knelt.
Forehead low, voice trembling.
"Defeat the Demon Lord," he said, "and peace will return to our lands."
---
It was the kind of scene I had only seen in stories.
A second life.
A grand destiny.
The chance to be… important.
I should have been overjoyed.
But something inside me twisted.
It felt… rehearsed.
---
As I walked through the streets, people smiled and shouted.
Cheered, clapped, threw flowers into the air.
Every gesture was perfect.
Too perfect.
The baker by the stall — apron dusted in flour — smiled warmly as I passed.
Minutes later, when I glanced back, she was still smiling.
Same lips.
Same eyes.
Unblinking.
The soldier by the gate shouted:
"Our hero has come! The kingdom is saved!"
Later, when I passed him again…
The exact same words.
Same voice.
Same tone.
A broken record.
---
I gripped the sword tighter.
Maybe I was imagining things.
Maybe this was just how a new world felt.
After all… wasn't this what I wanted?
A world that needed me.
A role only I could play.
I almost convinced myself.
Almost.
---
Then it happened.
The sky… flickered.
For one breath, the blue shattered with thin white cracks.
Like glass under pressure.
Like a mirror about to break.
And then it was gone.
The crowd never noticed.
The king kept bowing.
The baker kept smiling.
The soldier repeated his line.
No one saw it.
Only me.
---
I lowered the crown in my hands.
The cheers felt distant now, muffled, like noise behind glass.
Because I knew what I saw.
The world wasn't whole.
It was broken.
And that crack…
was just the beginning.