Darkness.
Not quiet. Not peaceful. Simply absent.
A void where thoughts floated like dust motes, drifting and unanchored.
Did I fall asleep? I asked myself.
Then I coughed wildly and painfully, almost retching out my insides. It felt like something had been in my lungs, but in the next moment, I could breathe just fine.
But there was a smell, and it lingered.
Smoke. Burning ink. Shouting. Alarms. I remembered the heat on my back as I grabbed a stack of rare manuscripts - the ones I wasn't even supposed to touch, the ones that hadn't been scanned yet.
The fire would have swallowed everything.
It wasn't just because they were rare, but because I loved, and had loved, stories of all kinds. I had read and watched so much, and the idea that they would disappear into smoke was something I couldn't bear.
Had I made it out?
I could still feel the leather and paper of the books in my hands.
There was no heat anymore. Was I in a hospital, or outside without realizing I had escaped?
I opened my eyes, and I was standing in a library.
But not my library.
I was in awe. This place dwarfed every building I had ever seen. Shelves rose higher than any skyscrapers and disappeared into a dark fog above. Chandeliers hung in the air, attached to nothing but air.
Strange, I thought at first, and when I stared at them for too long they burned my eyes with the cold light they radiated.
Still, I moved, drawn to books like a moth to flame.
One shelf - or rather, the lowest row you could reach without a crane or a giant ladder or an escalator - held a massive book wrapped in dark-green leather.
Curiosity nudged me. Libraries tended to do that to me. There was always something irresistible about books.
I reached out. The book fell open with a soft groan.
The words didn't wait for me to read them. They rose off the page, glowing symbols twisting into tiny lights that swirled above the paper. They formed a window, a curtain pulled aside.
I looked inside.
A city I had never seen stretched beneath a sky choked with floating metal shapes - spaceships? Buildings? It was hard to tell. People in strange clothes marched in perfect lines while towering screens blared orders in a language I didn't understand. It felt like a military parade.
It all felt disturbingly sci-fi.
A woman with silver across her shaved scalp locked eyes with me. No - she was seeing through me. She didn't know I was watching.
A shock shot up my arm, and the book slammed itself shut, as if I wasn't allowed to look.
"Curious," a voice muttered.
I flinched and raised my hands, ready to confront it, dropping the imaginary paper I had been carrying.
An old man sat at a desk that looked as if it had been carved from six stacked oak trunks and then shaped into furniture. He was buried beneath books - no, completely entombed.
His beard was absurdly long, pooling on the floor, and he was hunched over terribly, like L from Death Note.
When I had sat at my computer, I sometimes caught myself in the same classic shrimp posture.
His quill scratched against parchment. "Mortals don't usually wander in here by mistake."
"I- mh… sorry," I stammered. "Where exactly was… this?" I gestured around.
He finally looked up. And his eyes - there was space in them. Stars. Nebulae. Entire histories fizzing behind his irises.
"You," he said, pointing the quill at me in a grand gesture, "were supposed to be dead."
My heart - if it was even still here - stopped. I wasn't going to question how it worked. "Dead?"
He nodded impatiently. "Yes, yes. Perished in a fire while trying to rescue valuable tomes. Admirable, but ultimately futile. You should be in the proper afterlife queue right now, but somehow you slipped into my library instead." He scowled. "Paperwork must be a nightmare today."
I swallowed, my spit tasting like ashes. "And who were you?"
That perked him up. He rose, books fluttering open around him like startled birds.
"I am Geshich. God of Stories. Archivist of All That Has Been Told and Editor of All That Will Be." He beamed. "Some once called me Bragi. Others Thoth. Mnemosyne, on occasion. I go through names like mortals go through socks."
I opened my mouth to speak, but he waved dismissively, as if my words weren't worth his attention.
"Anyway, I should send you off to the great beyond. You've taken up enough of my divine shelf space."
A thought struck me. If this wasn't heaven… or hell… then what in god's name was waiting for me outside this room? My mind conjured an image of that proper afterlife queue.
Endless lines stretching into nothing, souls stripped of names, stamped like paperwork and filed into oblivion.
"No!" The word burst out of me. "I don't want to die. No - not yet."
He squinted suspiciously. "Did you, by chance, have any astonishing sagas from your mortal life? Epic romance? Betrayal? Legendary feats? Drama?" There was hope in his voice.
My chest tightened, scrunching up like discarded paper, until I couldn't breathe. I wasn't ready to become a footnote. I had never fallen in love, never traveled, never done anything except shelve the lives other people wrote.
I felt small. Embarrassed. "No," I said. "I worked in a library. I shelved and re-shelved. I checked barcodes. Sometimes I fed the stray cats that lingered behind my house."
His hopeful look crumpled. The stars in his eyes swirled and collapsed into black holes until there was only darkness. "How terribly… mundane."
He sighed, already bored of me. "Then there's no reason to bend narrative rules on your behalf. Off you go - "
"I'll bring you stories!" I shouted. My knees hit the polished floor. "Just… give me a second chance. Just give me something. I'll find epic stories to tell about myself. Just - please - don't send me off to die."
There was silence. A terrible, long silence.
My heart raced and nearly burst with anticipation.
Geshich made a long, droning noise. He arched one of his cosmic eyebrows and waited.
He looked at me like I was some rare misprinted book, deciding whether to keep it for its worth or burn it because it was worthless.
Finally… he smiled.
"Very well, very well. Some good epics begin with a nobody. Not everybody has to be a somebody at first." He snapped his fingers.
Light erupted - blinding, swirling, pulling me apart like ink dissolving in water. Pages spun around me, blank but waiting to be written.
His final words echoed as I seemed to fall into the unknown:
"Let us start your story anew, mortal. But you must promise me. Give me interesting things, or your second chance will be cut short."
Everything turned white.
I drowned in light.
It flooded every sense at once - too loud to hear, too bright to see. My thoughts became tangled threads, fraying at the edges. A fire still crackled behind my memory - the roar of collapsing shelves - the smell of burning leather…
Then I inhaled.
I gasped, choked, and flailed. It was all too much, and I cried out - weak. My voice broke from me in a raw, shrill cry I couldn't control.
I was being held. Wrapped. Lifted.
I felt hands - huge compared to me - supporting me. Voices rumbled nearby, vague and thunderous, as if my ears were filled with water.
The room was warm, flickering with light, but I couldn't see where it came from. It wasn't electric. Torches? Lanterns?
My vision finally sharpened.
A woman with gentle eyes lay exhausted on a straw-stuffed mattress. Her hair, dark and damp with sweat, clung to her cheeks. She reached out, and I was placed against her chest.
Her warmth surrounded me. Her heartbeat was unsteady but grounding, and all the panic I had felt earlier softened - if only a little.
A man - thin, gentle-looking, clean-shaven - smiled and touched her arm.
I tried to speak, but only a hiccupping wail came out. My tongue felt too big for my mouth. My lips refused to form words.
I had died.
That truth crushed down on me again.
Oh my god. I was dead. I was dead. I had died.
Okay. Breathe. I was alive. This wasn't just a delusion. Things were real - or they felt very real.
Focus.
This was a second chance.
Instead of seeing things so bleakly, I should see the positives. Things were sensational, amazing, beautiful even.
Life Is Beautiful. It's a Wonderful Life. Life Itself. A Matter of Life and Death. Another Life. End of Life. The Good Life. For the Love of Life.
Who was I to complain? I had gotten what I wanted - another chance. And there was no way I was going to squander it.
Someone lifted me briefly and wrapped me tighter in a wool blanket. She looked down at me with a big, bright smile, though she was clearly exhausted.
The man placed a hand on his chin and said something that made the woman laugh.
She paused, then whispered something softly.
I couldn't understand what they were saying - not at all - but I could see the emotion of the words in their faces.
I clenched my tiny fingers around the blanket.
I was alive.