You ever have that wonder how it was you fell asleep?
Well this was sort of like that.
After a lifetime of wrongs, i found my short life to be over before it really began, all thanks to the power that is, 'An Act Of God'.
There is no sound where i am now.
No light.
Not even the faint sense of my own breathing almost as if i didnt even need to breath anymore.
Only the awareness that he exists… and that existence feels like it is hanging from a single unraveling thread.
He tries to inhale—realizes he can't.
There is no chest to rise with air, no lungs that burn for oxygen.
He tries to move an arm—there's no response, no limb, no sensation of muscle or skin.
He floats, or falls, or simply is, suspended in something that isn't space because space requires boundaries.
A ripple brushes against him.
Not a breeze—more like the impression of a breeze, as if his mind received a message that his body should have felt something.
That's when it hits him:
He's dead.
The last memory he can grasp is a jumble of impact, noise, and a sudden crush of nothing. Something went wrong—catastrophically wrong—and then everything snapped to black.
Yet another random act of the gods acting against me even as i try to sleep peacefully in my bed.
I tried to speak into the emptiness—nothing comes out.
No voice, no vibration.
Only the echo of intention rebounding inside his own skull.
Panic tries to rise—his mind refuses to allow it. Logic is the one thing he can still rely on.
If I still have consciousness, something wants me to.
The void seems to respond, dark pressure coiling around him like an unseen tide withdrawing farther and farther back.
Something else is coming.
And then—
A faint tremor, like a distant voice without sound, begins to form at the edges of the emptiness.
The faint tremor at the edges of the emptiness grows, and grows—
like a voice without sound.
The moment that impression sharpens into meaning, the void shudders.
A shape pushes out of the darkness. Not emerging from it—forming inside it, as though the void were a skin stretched too thin around something that had always been there.
At first, it has no outline. Only distortion: a glitch, a smear of darkness darker than everything else. Then the smear folds into a silhouette vaguely shaped like a person standing on nothing, made of shadow that devours what little definition the void had.
A voice arrives—not through ears, but directly as comprehension, dropping into his thoughts like cold ink.
"You died."
The i tried to respond—still no body, no mouth—but the being answers the unspoken words.
"Yes. Unexpected. Sudden. Inconvenient."
Its tone is layered, as if multiple speakers are imperfectly synchronized.
The being tilts its head, or the illusion of a head.
"The fault of the gods, tormenting you all your life, would you wish to seek revenge?"
Even before he had agreed it was as if this being already had its answer somehow.
A pulse of something—information, raw and overwhelming—slams into me. Images, symbols, sensations.
Something about a falna without a god.
Access to the divine power without need to be marked as one of the faithful.
A skill shaped like a blade severing the divine tether that protects gods from true death.
It forces the knowledge into him until the void itself trembles.
He reels, disoriented, unable to stop the flood.
"Seven days."
The being's voice cuts clean through the mental noise.
"Kill a god, and you remain. Fail, and your existence ends—no void, no after, no return."
A demand. No mercy. No negotiation.
He formed a single, defiant thought: Why me?
The shadow flickers, edges distorting like a corrupted image.
"Simply because."
The void cracks. A current of force pulls at him violently.
He tries to resist the being's power, but resistance means nothing here.
The contract seals itself with a cold finality that rings like a silent bell.
The void collapses under his feet—
~
In just a moment he went from a feeling of complete nothingness to once more knowing he had a body, to having a need to breath.
Just the sudden reappearance of gravity, ripping him downward through the shredding remains of the void.
Darkness becomes a dizzying swirl, fragments of shadow spiraling like torn cloth around him. Wind roars past his ears for the first time since dying. His senses snap back into existence all at once—touch, cold air, vertigo, the pounding of a heartbeat slamming into his ribs.
Then—
Light.
Blinding sunlight floods his eyes. Heat rushes across his skin. The void behind him evaporates like burnt smoke as color, noise, and movement swallow his vision.
Below—
Stone streets.
Vendors.
Merchants shouting prices.
Adventurers in armor.
A goddess laughing somewhere.
The smell of bread and dust and sweat and life.
All of it rushing up too fast.
He has just enough presence of mind to twist his body before—
CRASH
He slams between two market stalls, splintering crates of fruit and scattering a shower of apples and shouted curses. His elbow hits stone. His vision bursts white. Someone screams. Someone else swears at him in a language he somehow now understands.
The world is real. Loud. Crushing.
And he is lying in the broken debris of two vendors' carts, groaning as startled civilians crowd around.
No time to think. No time to breathe.
Just the realization:
He is in Orario.
An anime world he knew from his previous life, an anime he mocked incessently due to the carefree nature the gods were portrayed with, but now rather than like his old life where the gods were cowards arrogantly throwing power around without risking setting foot upon the land.
Here the gods willingly descended to show the world their inadequecies as they tried to live like mortals only to fail in their charge.
Many falling into the seven sins, sloth, greed, wrath, gluttony, pride, envy, lust.
So many unknowingly tainting themselves and the very world they sought to protect.
But now thanks to that shadowy figure he finally had a chance, the gods were thought to be immortal divine beings but at his hands they were no different than mortals.
And if he wanted to continue living they needed to die.
And the countdown has already begun.