The grape was perfect. Statistically, molecularly perfect.
It burst against Jack Miller's tongue with a mathematically optimized balance of tartness and sugar, the kind of flavor profile that would make a mortal king weep with joy.
Jack just sighed and swallowed it without chewing.
"Another one, Lord Miller?"
The voice was silk wrapped in velvet. Jack cracked one eye open. Hovering to his left was Solara, a six-winged seraph with curves that defied gravity and a golden silk robe that defied structural engineering. She held another glistening purple sphere to his lips, her expression one of breathless adoration.
On his right, Lume—a cherubic beauty with hair like spun moonlight—was currently massaging his forearm with oils that smelled like crushed starlight.
"No more grapes, Solara," Jack grumbled, waving her hand away. "And Lume, you're rubbing that spot like you're trying to sand down a table leg. Ease up."
Lume gasped softly, her wings fluttering in distress. "Forgive me, Great Architect. Is the pressure insufficient? Should I summon the nectar of the high heavens?"
"I don't want nectar," Jack muttered, shifting his weight on the reclined lounge chair. "I want a lukewarm beer. I want a pizza that's ninety percent grease and burns the roof of my mouth. I want... imperfection."
He looked up. The sky above wasn't a sky. It was a render.
A soft gradient of peach and gold drifted lazily overhead—a sunset stuck on a loop. It was a high-resolution texture map smeared across the dome of his personal dimension. The "Geezers"—the two cosmic entities who ran the multiverse—called this a reward. A Sanctuary for the Savior, they'd said.
To Jack, it was just a breakroom with a really high budget.
He sat up, the movement causing Lume to scramble back with a squeak. He grabbed his glass—crystal, filled with amber liquid over perfectly cubed ice—and stared out at the ocean.
The water was placid, a mirror of turquoise glass. Suddenly, the surface broke. A massive, shadowy ridge erupted from the depths—a Leviathan the size of a mountain range, covered in eyes that burned with eldritch madness. It shrieked, a sound that would shatter a human soul.
Jack didn't blink. He just raised his glass. "Morning, Fluffy. Keep it down, will you? I'm trying to be miserable in peace."
The Leviathan gurgled an apology and sank back beneath the waves.
"One trillion years," Jack whispered to the ice cubes.
He ran a hand through his hair, feeling the weight of the memories. He had been an ordinary construction worker once. Then he died. Then came the Abyss. Then came the Spirit Realm. Then came the job offer he couldn't refuse: Fix the Universe.
He had spent eons patching reality, debugging corrupted star systems, and sweeping up after the "Old Geezers" whenever they got into a divine argument and accidentally deleted a galaxy.
"They think this is a vacation," Jack said, his voice flat. "They think if they throw enough supermodels and perfect fruit at me, I'll forget that I'm basically a glorified janitor with a nuclear arsenal."
Solara leaned in, pressing a soft hand to his shoulder. "Lord Miller, you seem... burdened. Shall we dance? Or perhaps I could sing the Song of Creation?"
"Hard pass," Jack said, standing up. The wooden deck creaked—a sound he had personally programmed in because he missed the noise of cheap materials.
He walked to the edge of the platform. He didn't miss the power. He didn't miss the worship.
He missed the grind.
He missed the adrenaline of a toxic Call of Duty lobby at 3 AM. He missed the panic of realizing he was late for a shift. He missed the smell of diesel and wet concrete. He missed uncertainty.
Here, everything was scripted. The weather was always mild. The food was always safe. The women were always willing. It was a paradise carved from wax.
"I'm going crazy," he muttered, leaning over the railing. "I swear, if I have to spend another millennium being fanned by celestial supermodels, I'm going to punch a hole in reality just to feel something break."
He closed his eyes, reaching out with his senses—not the mortal ones, but the other ones. The ones that stretched past the fake sky. He felt the hum of the cosmos. The chaotic, messy, beautiful machinery of the multiverse churning outside his golden cage.
He had spent the last few centuries looking for a crack in the wall. A structural weakness in the dimension the Geezers had built for him.
There.
A tiny fluctuation. A vibration in the Abyss that didn't match the standard frequency. It was faint, like a hairline fracture in a load-bearing beam.
Jack's lips curled into a smile. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of a man who had just found a loose brick in a prison wall.
Just as the words left his mouth, the sky broke.
It didn't crack like glass; it tore like cheap fabric. The peach-gold gradient ripped open, exposing the raw, static-filled void of the space between dimensions. The calm ocean instantly boiled, and the Leviathan surfaced again, this time shivering in abject terror.
Two figures descended. They didn't fly; gravity simply decided it didn't apply to them.
To the left was a figure draped in robes of absolute zero—a darkness so profound it made the shadows look bright. His eyes were collapsing stars, his presence radiating a gravitational pressure that made Jack's soul itch.
To the right was his counterpart, wrapped in white and gold that was frankly painful to look at. He glowed with a self-righteous luminosity that screamed, I am the Manager, and I would like a word.
Solara and Lume immediately dropped to their knees, foreheads pressed into the deck, wings trembling.
Jack didn't kneel. He didn't even put his drink down. He just groaned, a long, guttural sound of pure annoyance.
"Oh, look," Jack deadpanned, checking an imaginary watch on his wrist. "Upper Management is here. What is it this time? Did you delete another galaxy again? Because I'm not fixing it. Not anymore."
The figure in black—let's call him The Void—landed silently. "Jack Miller. Your restlessness has been noted. It's just that your work is far better and faster than most of the Architects we have."
The figure in white—The Light—drifted down beside him. "We offered you paradise. A reward commensurate with your trillion years of service. We would've considered your frustrations if it were not for your ungratefulness."
Jack laughed. It was a dry, rusty sound. "Ungrateful? You kidnapped a construction worker, threw him into the Abyss for five hundred billion years, then made him the cosmic janitor for another billion. I've cleaned up your messes, fixed your physics engines, and suppressed eldritch horrors while you two played chess with timelines. This isn't a reward. It's a golden cage."
The two entities exchanged a look. A silent conversation passed between them in a nanosecond—a debate that would have taken mortals a century to parse.
"We have a proposition," The Void intoned, his voice echoing from everywhere at once.
"Pass," Jack said immediately.
"You haven't heard it," The Light chided.
"I don't need to. It involves me doing work. It involves me being 'The Symbol of Creation and Destruction.' It involves me wearing a robe and working for all eternity. Hard pass." Jack walked over to his lounge chair and flopped back down, closing his eyes. "Get off my lawn."
"We offer you... retirement," The Void said.
Jack's eyes snapped open.
The word hung in the air, heavier than a collapsing star.
"Define retirement," Jack said slowly, sitting up.
The Light smiled, a beatific expression that made Jack want to punch him. "Rebirth. A mortal body. A mortal life. In a world of sword and sorcery—Astraeon. You will live as one of them. You will age. You will eat bad food. You will struggle."
"And what's the catch?" Jack asked, narrowing his eyes. "There's always a catch with you parasites."
"After you die," The Void said, a cruel smirk touching his lips, "your vacation ends. You return to us. You will accept the mantle of the Symbol of Creation and Destruction. Forever."
Jack stared at them. They were gambling. They knew how fragile mortals were. They expected him to last maybe eighty years—a blink of an eye to them—before dragging him back to the office. Though, this new world was a bit too tempting to pass up. He read a lot of manga and watched a lot of anime, wishing, how he liked to be Isekaid.
But Jack Miller was a man who had survived the Abyss with nothing but a wrench and a bad attitude.
"I have conditions," Jack said, standing up to face them.
"Speak," The Light commanded.
"I keep my memories," Jack said, his voice hard as diamond. "All of them. I'm not starting over as a drooling idiot. I want my experience. I want my knowledge."
"That risks universal stability," The Light argued. "A mortal mind cannot hold a trillion years of cosmic data."
"My mind can," Jack snapped. "I built half the containment protocols you use. Don't lecture me on stability. Take it or leave it."
The two entities whispered again. The air hummed with the vibration of their discourse. Finally, they turned back.
"Agreed," The Void said. "But your cosmic authority will be stripped. You will be mortal. Frail. Weak."
Jack scoffed. "I was born weak. I'll manage."
"Then it is decided," The Light said, raising a hand.
The world began to dissolve. The sakura tree turned into data streams. The ocean evaporated into mist. The angels faded away, their terrified faces the last things to go.
Jack felt his body—his perfect, immortal, indestructible body—begin to unravel. He felt the cold grip of mortality seizing his chest.
He grinned. A feral, dangerous grin.
"I'm never seeing you two again," Jack promised, flipping at the creators of the universe.
The Old Geezers merely smirked, their forms blurring as reality collapsed.
Oh, we'll see about that, their voices echoed in his mind. We included a parting gift. Just in case.
Jack frowned. "Wait, what—"
Before he could ask about the fine print, the floor dropped out.
Jack Miller fell. Down, down, down, out of paradise and into the mud.
He was free.
Or so he thought.