In a pretty much normal day, our protagonist, Atlas Goodwill, sat through one of the most boring classes in history.
His desk was in the back corner of the class, next to a window. The teacher droned on about a war none of the students cared about, his voice more a lullaby than a lecture.
Atlas's chin rested on his palm, his half-lidded eyes drifting outside where the sunlight touched the leaves. Everything felt painfully ordinary—until it wasn't.
A sharp sting jolted him. It burned in his chest, just above his heart, like a needle driven straight into flesh. His hand instinctively clutched at the spot, knuckles shaking.
Then came the tears. Not the kind of quiet, invisible tears a bored student might shed out of frustration, but thick streaks of red, sliding hot and metallic down his cheeks. A single pair of bloody tears fell, staining his desk in two perfect droplets.
His body seized. Breath failed. His vision blurred. In the next moment, Atlas Goodwill collapsed forward, his forehead striking the wooden desk with a sickening thud that cut through the silence of the classroom.
The sound snapped everyone awake. Chairs screeched against the floor. Gasps filled the air.
"Atlas?!" someone cried from the front.
"What the hell—?!" another voice broke, high and panicked.
"Blood—he's bleeding! Someone call an ambulance!"
"No, no, no… please get up! Don't just sit there!"
The teacher stumbled forward, papers flying from his hands. "Everyone back! Give him space—Atlas, can you hear me? Stay with us! Stay with me, boy!"
The chaos, the fear, the chorus of desperate voices—they were the last things Atlas heard.
Then, silence.
Before a second even passed, Atlas' eyes opened. He immediately touched himself, his face, chest, heart—he felt the need to clarify whether he was dead or alive.
"Greetings, Mortal." The feminine voice pulled Atlas out of his thoughts, snapping him awake.
He finally took note of his surroundings, which were no longer the dull classroom he had been in. Instead, he found himself in an extremely luxurious office. He turned toward the source of the voice.
It was a divinely beautiful woman. Her hair shimmered white, yet not blandly—it carried the sheen of moonlight.
Her eyes, cold and unyielding, carried the weight of inevitability itself. Atlas could not help but fall into deep admiration of her beauty, the kind that demanded reverence rather than affection.
He regained his composure and forced himself to stand, realizing only then that he had been kneeling without even thinking. His body seemed to instinctively recognize her authority.
The woman's gaze sharpened. "I am the Goddess of Fate," she said simply, her tone clipped, as if the introduction itself was a matter of inconvenience. "You are here because a mistake was made."
Atlas froze. "A… mistake?"
"Yes," she continued, brushing a strand of moonlit hair behind her ear, though her eyes never left him. "One of my subordinates—the Goddess of Life—tampered where she should not have. A miscalculation. An accident."
The way she spoke the words, they carried no weight of apology. If anything, she sounded irritated, as though his death were more of a bureaucratic error than a tragedy. "And so, you died before your appointed time."
Atlas felt his chest tighten—not from pain this time, but from rage. His life, ripped away, dismissed as some clerical error of the divine. The indifference in her voice poured salt into the wound. He wanted to scream at her, demand an explanation, demand justice, demand something.
But as he met her eyes, his words died in his throat. Something deep within him understood—if he were to speak out of turn, if he even allowed his anger to take shape in sound, she would erase him. Not kill him, not punish him. Erase him, as if he had never been born.
He clenched his fists at his sides, his nails digging into his palms. The feeling of inferiority was suffocating. He hated it. He hated her. He hated himself for being too afraid to speak. His silence was an ember of defiance, but only he would ever know it.
The Goddess of Fate, unaffected by his inner turmoil, simply folded her hands atop her desk, her expression one of mild annoyance. "Now, let me decide what to do with you. This sure is an inconvenience."
The Goddess of Fate's eyes narrowed with a calculating glint. "Since your death was the result of incompetence not your own, I will provide you compensation. You shall be reincarnated into a higher plane than that dull little world you left behind. Consider it… a correction."
Atlas' heart jumped at the words. Reincarnation? A higher world? The thrill surged through him like a dream pulled straight out of his favorite novels, comics, and anime.
Even as anger lingered in the pit of his stomach, excitement swallowed it whole. This was the kind of chance protagonists were handed, the very thing he had daydreamed about while trapped in ordinary classes.
But her next words unsettled him.
"As an apology gift, you will receive a drop of my divine blood."
Atlas froze, his delight soured by confusion and unease. Her… blood? The thought twisted his stomach. He didn't dare voice his discomfort—he could already imagine how quickly his existence might be snuffed out if he so much as frowned too obviously.
The Goddess did not wait for his reaction. "Open your mouth." Her tone carried no room for hesitation.
Atlas obeyed instantly, fear tightening every muscle in his body. The goddess raised her hand, extending a flawless finger. From the tip bloomed a bead of crimson unlike any he had seen—it glowed faintly, as though the universe itself condensed into liquid form. With a casual flick, the droplet broke free and descended toward him.
The moment it touched his tongue, heat and purity exploded inside Atlas's eyes, which widened as his entire being quivered. He felt as though his very soul had been scrubbed clean, freed of stains he never knew were there.
And yet, that wasn't all. Beneath the sensation of purification lurked something deeper, something vast and terrifying, something he couldn't comprehend. It was as though the blood carried more than blessing—it carried inevitability, a mark from Fate herself. He could sense it, but not name it.
Atlas swallowed, his throat dry, his fists trembling. Rage flickered again as he realized he had been forced into this—her blood inside him, unasked for. And yet, the power he felt surging within explained why she considered a single drop to be a worthy gift. He hated her arrogance. He hated his weakness.
Still, he kept his mouth shut.
The Goddess leaned back in her chair, clearly unbothered. With a sarcastic tone, "Good. Now you may begin anew. Try not to die so prematurely this time."