This burns, what the hell is happening?
The man gasped, his sight flickering back to life. Agony surged through him, intensifying with every passing second, radiating from every corner of his body like wildfire.
The ground rushed up into view just as consciousness flickered back, his body limp, sprawled across the cold concrete. In a gut-wrenching flash, he realized he'd plummeted from a skyscraper above, though not a single memory explained why, or how, he'd ended up there.
His legs refused to respond, limbs locked in place by the brutal toll of the fall. Craning his neck upward, he froze, the towering monolith looming impossibly, a silent giant bearing witness to a mystery he couldn't recall.
Then came the storm inside, waves of searing heat and icy chills tearing through him as dizziness clawed at his mind. Pain pulsed with every heartbeat, forcing his eyes shut again and again, fluttering like dying sparks in the aftermath of catastrophe.
Scorching, no, freezing, wait, both at once? How is that even possible?
Heat surged and shivered over his flesh in erratic pulses, as though opposing seasons waged war upon his body with each passing breath. Suddenly, he seized his temples, fingers digging into taut skin as a white-hot lance of agony split his thoughts.
A guttural spasm wracked him, he doubled forward, coughing in jagged convulsions, and crimson spray arced through the air, splattering the unyielding concrete below.
Trembling, he reached behind his head and withdrew his hand slick with something jagged, something wrong, slivers of bone, pale and splintered, clinging to his blood-slick fingers.
Then his gaze dropped, and there it lay, a patch of glistening grey matter smeared across the floor in unnervingly straight-edged segments, arranged like a deliberate mosaic, cold and grotesque against the stark pavement.
This can't be happening… no way
When the man glanced around, he had noticed a pool of blood spreading beneath him, as if it had seeped up from the ground below. Miraculously, he was still breathing, alive against all odds.
He'd come to recognize this kind of pain, this raw edge of survival. With half his skull pressed into cold concrete, the nausea made sense, but why, then, did warmth spread through him? Only a sliver of his brain touched the ground, yet something pulsed beneath the wreckage.
Every few seconds, a siren screamed in his left ear, the right one gone, silenced by the building's brutal collapse. Around the man, boots pounded the debris as police and medics swarmed the scene, closing in.
How am I even still alive in this state? Help me please.
The man's plea was no mere cry for help, it was just a desperate, breathless summons for urgent healing, a cry teetering on the edge of expiration.
Then, in an instant, a searing, otherworldly glow split his sight, sharp and electric as a lightning strike frozen mid-air, pulsing with a brilliance that defied nature.
Just before he lost consciousness, a window appeared in his field of view, resembling a menu from a video game. The message it displayed puzzled him; it seemed to be both a question and a quest rolled into one.
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(!)NOTICE
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You got about fifteen seconds to choose before your heart shuts off. Do you want a second life?
YES/NO?
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This left the man confused, but in an instant, he understood it was a decision between life and death. He knew exactly what to choose, picking the wrong path would mean his end, rendering the entire life he had meaningless.
"YES, I CHOOSE YES, LET ME LIVE!" The man cried out.
Suddenly, a blinding light filled his vision, and the searing pain from the fall had disappeared. Whatever had just occurred was only the beginning of what lay ahead. And at that very moment, the Man had passed away.