Somewhere in the dark but yet weirdly vibrant cosmos, where the blackness pulsed with an undercurrent of impossible hues, where the void itself seemed to breathe with faint, electric whispers.
"What a way to go out!!!" Akasha said aloud, his voice cracking with a wild, edge as he thought of how he had utterly got destroyed by the goons after punching their leader, the memory of fists and spiked bats raining down like a brutal storm still echoing in his skull.
"But now where am I and what is going on?" he demanded, his eyes straining wide as he looked around and saw nothing but darkness and weird flashing colors that streaked and bled across the expanse like living lightning trapped in ink.
Suddenly he felt a strong suction force towards those flashing colors, a relentless, invisible grip that yanked at his very core with terrifying power. Not even having the time to react, let alone let out any screams that clawed up his throat, he found himself speeding at inhumane limits, the cosmos blurring into a tunnel of screaming velocity.
*whiss*
"What the hell was that?!" Akasha yelled, his voice raw and ragged while he tried to find any hint of what is going on, his hands flailing through the nothingness. Now if before he was in darkness and seeing those weird colors flashing with erratic, hypnotic rhythm, then now he is now in..... a much deeper darkness, an abyss so complete it swallowed even the source of light.
"Literally what's going on with all this weird nonsense that's been going on in my life," Akasha said, his tone heavy with exhaustion and bewilderment while sitting or floating in complete darkness that pressed against his skin like cold, wet silk.
"First, my weird but yet complete shit of 21 years of life. I grew up an orphan, completely alone, usually kids left at the orphanage finds themselves adopted into a home whether a loving one or a complete shit of one, the kind of homes that smelled of warm bread or stale regret."
"But me? HAHA, what bullshit that was. From making no friends in the orphanage, where every laugh felt like it belonged to someone else, to being kicked out at the tender age of 10, I found myself out on the street wondering what to do next, the pavement hard and unforgiving under my bare feet. After living 6 years out on the street, where the nights tasted of rust and hunger, I finally made the age to start working, but to my divine luck, no job, literally none, wanted to hire me, their eyes sliding over me like I was already a ghost."
"At first, I always wondered why me? Why couldn't I have the things as others, the simple warmth of a hand to hold or a roof that didn't leak? But after living on my own for so long, with the wind as my only companion, I adopted the 'fuck it' mentality. Meaning so what if I don't have the things of others or so what if my life is shit. If I am not allowed to be then 'fuck it', if no one likes my existence then 'fuck it', the words becoming my armor against the endless gray."
"With that mentality I kept my sanity throughout my loneliness, a fragile thread woven from defiance. Struggling I found myself drawn to the smaller things in life and learning to enjoy nature more, the way sunlight fractured through cracked glass or how rain carried the scent of distant soil.
I often found myself sitting in some field with small amounts of stolen food, the crusts hard but precious, trying to understand nature, its quiet pulse beneath the chaos. Ha, crazy right? Me useless, exiled from all of humanity, found himself trying to understand something so mysterious, its secrets whispering in the rustle of leaves.
Maybe it is crazy but that's always where I found my peace, a stillness that tasted almost like hope. Aside from reading stolen or thrown away fantasy novels, their pages warped by rain but alive with worlds that didn't reject me..."
"Okay seriously what the hell is going on?!!!" Akasha's voice cracked again, the words hurled into the void like stones into a bottomless well.
Ding!
[Hello, Akasha!]
*Silence*
Ding!
[Akasha, are you there?]
"Seriously, what the fuck is going on and what the hell is up with your voice?" Akasha said, his gaze locking onto a floating panel in front of him, its edges glowing with an otherworldly shimmer that cut through the dark like a blade.
Ding!
[Fufufu~, what's wrong with my voice?] the seductive voice said, smooth and warm as melted honey dripping over velvet.
"You know what? Fuck it, what's going on here? What are you, some type of system?" Akasha demanded, his confusion sharpening into a blade of its own.
Ding!
[Well, you have just finished your final trial before your birth.]
Ding!
[And no, I am not a system, I am a spirit connected to your very existence.]
"First, stop dinging every time you speak, clearly it is not needed, Secondly, what do you mean birth... didn't I just die, my body was just stomped into the asphalt. Also, it would've been cooler if I had some super OP system," Akasha said while being slightly confused but not totally confused, the words tasting both foreign and familiar on his tongue.
'Well, I guess I'm being transmigrated according to all the novels I read. After everything I've dealt with this is easy!' Akasha thought while waiting for an answer, his pulse steadying into a wary calm.
[Okay Akasha, you are correct but incorrect. Your evolution has been going on for a long time... Since the beginning of time to be exact, back when the very first spark danced in the void...] She said before continuing.
[Well, it would be incorrect to be called an evolution because you have yet to evolve... in simpler terms, in about an hour you be born for the first time, like actual born. So technically, you are not transmigrating at all.... but being born.]
"Umm, okay I guess?" Akasha said while internally thinking 'Fuck it', the phrase a reflex now, a shield against the impossible.
[....]
[To be brief, your last 21 years of life has been nothing, but an illusion cast by your mother, woven from starlight and will. The reason for your terrible life was kind of purposeful; every bruise and hunger pang a deliberate stroke. The illusion was set to begin automatically when you entered the last 21 years of incubation before your birth, a cocoon of crafted suffering. Your mother wanted you to understand the lesser things in life before seeing all things that are great, the vast and the radiant!]
"SAY WHAT?!!!!"