She opened her eyes, but there was no sky above her. No ceiling, no ground. Only a boundless void, painted in shifting hues of black and violet. It was silent, but not empty. The stillness wrapped around her like a heavy blanket, pressing in from every side. Her body felt weightless, not quite real. She glanced down and saw only the faint outline of herself, as if she were made of smoke and fading light.
Then it hit her.
The crash. The rain. The blood.
Her hand flew to her side, but there was no pain now, no wound. Just memory. Her breathing hitched.
"I can't die," she said, voice shaking. "I can't. I need to know they're okay. My mom, my dad please." Tears blurred her vision. She hugged herself tightly, curling inward as the emptiness around her seemed to stretch.
A calm, unfeeling voice broke the silence. "They are safe. You succeeded."
She froze. The voice hadn't come from anywhere in particular, as if it existed inside her head and outside it all at once.
"Stop crying," the voice said. Not cruelly, but with a quiet firmness, as if it simply didn't see the need for it.
She wiped her face with shaking hands. "What… where am I? Who are you?"
"I am The Witness," the voice replied. "I observe the multiverse. I watch each thread of possibility, each story that unfolds across countless worlds. And now, I have chosen you."
She blinked, the weight of the words struggling to settle in her mind. "Chosen me? For what?"
"To become my new Wanderer," The Witness said. "Your soul will traverse the worlds you once knew through fiction. You will live again. Inside the stories you read, the shows you watched. An Observer no more."
She stared into the swirling dark, uncertain whether she should be afraid or grateful. "Then what am I supposed to do?"
"You will change them. Save those who were meant to die. Defy the endings carved in ink and script. Heal what was broken."
She tried to take that in, struggling to steady herself. "Why me?"
There was a pause, long enough to feel like eternity.
"Because when faced with death, you chose life, but not your own. You gave yours to save theirs."
She looked down at her hands again. They no longer trembled.
"So," she whispered, "what happens now?"
The void shimmered. The Witness answered simply:
"You will be more powerful. You threw your life into the fire to preserve others. Now, I will throw you into countless others—for the same reason. And when you save them only then will you see your family again."