I died.
No thunder. No blinding sky-splitter. Just a sharp crack, the sting of ozone on my tongue - and then nothing.
***
I woke up in nowhere.
No sky. No ground. No sense of up or down. I just existed, hanging in a place with no edges and no colour, like a thought that forgot which mind it belonged to.
A void.
Not darkness, not light. A heavy silence poured into my ears and bones until it was the only thing I could hear.
I tried to breathe and only then realised I had nothing to breathe with.
No chest. No hands. No legs. And yet I knew I was seeing, because two figures were suddenly there in front of me, as if they had been waiting long before I arrived.
The first was a god.
No halo, no wings, no choir - just a brutal certainty that this presence was more real than anything I had ever called real.
The second looked almost human.
Almost. A little too tall, a little too still, like a statue that had not decided yet whether to move. A face that should have slipped from memory in an instant, if not for the eyes - dark and flat, like two neat holes punched straight through the world.
Whatever it was, it stood beyond death.
Neither of them spoke.
No welcome. No verdict. Just the three of us in the void and the quiet sense that words would only be a lie here.
They moved at the same time.
The god's blade came out like a stroke of sunrise - raw brightness that cut the void and left behind a thin line that looked less like a wound and more like the beginning of a horizon.
The other sword answered with something colder than metal, an edge that seemed to scrape colour and sound off whatever it passed, like peeling paint from a wall until only nothing remained.
They met once.
One step. One swing. One collision.
The void split along a seam of light and shadow. Their clash spun a spiral through the emptiness, as if someone tried to doodle a new universe in the margin of reality. It lasted shorter than a thought.
And somehow, it lasted longer than memory.
Then the void cracked.
No explosion - just the sudden lurch of an invisible fist closing around me and dragging me down. Emptiness thickened into a tunnel. I fell without a body and still felt pain, sharp and tearing, the kind that makes you want to curl up even when you have nowhere to curl.
Something screamed.
Maybe it was me. Maybe it was the world. Maybe it was that thin line of new horizon snapping in half.
The void folded like torn cloth and spat me out.
Light, sound, heat, weight - everything hit at once. I had lungs again, stuffed with something hot and wet. Pressure crushed me from every side, another force pushed me forward.
Then white burst over everything.
Air ripped into my chest with my first cry.
I lay there, small and shaking, on something soft. Above me hovered a woman's face - sweat-slick, tear-streaked, exhausted and somehow radiant, as if the universe had just apologised and handed her a miracle.
I had never seen her before.
I didn't know her name.
But in that moment, I was her child.