I was sinking into a dense darkness, a darkness with no bottom, as if I were falling into it endlessly. There was no pain, no sound, only a heavy feeling of erasure, as if my very existence was being slowly wiped away.
Then—
A light appeared.
It was neither warm nor reassuring, but sharp, violent, as if an invisible hand had suddenly reached into my depths and grabbed me, pulling me forcibly upward.
Air rushed into my chest with force, and I instantly woke with a sharp gasp that tore through my throat.
My eyes flew open wide, and my body trembled violently, as if I had just emerged from underwater after a long drowning.
I looked around, confused.
The sky.
The same grayish-blue sky…
The same clouds moving slowly in an unsettling way, as if breathing above my head.
Before I could say anything, memories exploded in my head all at once.
The monster.
Its massive body approaching.
Its empty gaze.
Then its teeth.
Those teeth sinking into my body.
The pain.
It was not an ordinary recollection, but a sensation returning to my body despite it no longer being there. My chest constricted violently, my throat tightened, as if the air was no longer enough. I remembered the way it had all ended… how I had failed, how I had begged, how I died.
A violent, involuntary shiver overtook me, and my teeth chattered. My heart began to race madly, unnaturally fast, as if my chest could no longer contain it. I couldn't control myself, bent over suddenly, and emptied my stomach immediately. My body rejected the memory, and my mind collapsed under its weight.
My breaths scattered, sharp and broken, as if I were suffocating despite the air.
I raised my hands in front of me.
They trembled violently.
I stared at them for long seconds, then began frantically feeling my body, running my hands over my chest, my shoulders, my arms, my neck… searching for any trace, any wound, any evidence of what had happened.
I found nothing.
My skin was perfectly intact.
Clean…
As if everything I had gone through had not been real.
Only then did a desperate thought creep into my mind, a thought I clung to like someone holding onto a straw:
This must be a dream… right?
But my head was spinning violently, as if thoughts were colliding inside it endlessly. I felt like I was about to explode. I grabbed my head with both hands, tugged at my hair, pressed on my temples madly, as if trying to tear consciousness itself apart.
"Wake up… wake up… wake up!"
I screamed it repeatedly, in a hoarse, desperate voice, hitting my face with my fists unconsciously. The blows were random, harsh, one after another, until I tasted metal in my mouth.
Blood began to run down my face.
But I…
did not wake up.
The pain was real.
The blood was warm.
And the sky… was still there, unchanged.
At that moment, I stopped.
I slowly lowered my hands, panting, looked at my blood-stained palms, then down at the ground beneath me, and raised my gaze again to the same gray sky.
And in that moment, the realization crept into me slowly, lethally, a realization I could not escape:
This is not a dream.
And it never was.
What happened…
happened for real.
Long seconds passed before my body gradually began to calm. The tremor did not disappear completely, but it lessened, as if my body had regained its ability to obey after an uncontrollable panic. My breathing became slower, still irregular, but manageable. My heart was still beating fast, but the initial madness began to fade.
Only then… did I start to think.
A possibility crept into my mind that I did not want, one I tried to push away the moment it appeared, as if merely thinking about it would make it real:
Had… I moved to another world?
That ridiculous thought—or so I wanted to believe—a thought that belonged only in games, novels, and comics. Those worlds where the hero dies and then wakes up in a strange place, to begin a "new adventure."
But my heart tightened.
No.
I did not want this.
I did not feel excitement.
I did not feel curiosity.
I did not feel anything resembling the beginning of a story.
All I felt was a blatant, instinctive refusal, as if a deep part of me screamed: this is not what I want. I did not ask for a new world, nor a second chance…
I just wanted… to live my life.
Or at least… to die once and for all, and have it be over.
I looked around again, trying to find anything that would prove I was wrong, that there was a simpler explanation, a logical one. But the place was silent, static, unlike a dream or hallucination…
I took a deep breath, or at least tried to. The air entered my chest easily, but it gave me no reassurance.
I sat on the ground slowly, fearing my legs would betray me if I remained standing.
I tried to cling to logic.
Maybe this is a type of hallucination.
Maybe my mind could not handle what happened and created an alternate reality.
Maybe I am still in the hospital, unconscious, and all of this is just a final reflection before I wake.
But even as I considered these possibilities, I knew… they were weak.
Because I remembered everything painfully clearly.
I remembered death.
And I remembered what came after.
I tightened my fists unconsciously. I felt a silent anger building inside, an aimless rage. Why me? Why is this happening to me? I was no hero, no special person, not seeking some higher meaning. I was ordinary, with an ordinary life, and an ending that was supposed to be ordinary as well…
So what am I doing here, then?
When that monster killed me, I was supposed to die. A clear, indisputable end. I had felt death, lived it moment by moment, and it was neither illusion nor imagination.
Yet… here I am.
That question pressed on my head again, annoyingly insistent. If I truly died, my return could not be a coincidence. There must be a reason, even if I do not understand it yet.
A possibility crept into my mind that I was not ready to accept, a heavy possibility, almost suffocating me just by thinking about it:
Do I have some ability… an ability to come back from death?