Awareness returned without permission.
There was no moment of waking, no breath drawn in shock, no eyes opening to darkness. One instant there had been nothing, a complete and gentle absence. The next, there was knowing.
He existed.
The realization came without words at first. It was not a thought but a state, a quiet certainty that something remained when it should not have. He did not feel weight or position. There was no up or down. No sense of time passing in any familiar way.
He tried to move.
The attempt did not fail. It simply did not apply.
There was no body to obey the intention. No limbs to command. No lungs to fill. The concept of movement felt distant, like a habit carried over from a life that no longer matched the present conditions.
He waited for panic.
It did not come.
What arrived instead was confusion, slow and thick, wrapping around his awareness. He searched for edges, for boundaries that could define where he ended and something else began. He found none.
Fragments drifted through him.
A ceiling fan. A stopped blade. The sound of it humming before silence claimed it.
A hallway floor, cool against his side.
A message on a phone screen.
Are you still waiting for your first chance?
The fragments did not play in order. They surfaced, lingered briefly, then slipped away, replaced by others. Faces appeared without names. Voices without sound. Emotions detached from context.
Regret returned with them.
Not sharp, not overwhelming, but persistent. It sat within his awareness like sediment, impossible to separate from the rest of him. It felt familiar. Anchoring.
I was never wanted.
The thought echoed without a voice, without language even. It was simply known.
Then something else joined it.
Warmth.
At first it was faint, barely distinguishable from the background of his awareness. A subtle presence that did not belong to memory. It did not originate from any direction. It did not spread. It simply existed alongside him.
The warmth was not comfort.
It was attention.
He became aware of being noticed.
The sensation carried no eyes, no shape, no intention he could understand. Yet the certainty of observation settled over him, undeniable. He was not alone in this formless state. Something else occupied the same space, or perhaps occupied him.
His awareness tightened, drawing inward despite lacking a physical center.
What are you?
The question formed instinctively, carried by habit rather than sound. There was no reply.
Instead, the warmth intensified.
It pressed against his awareness in a way that felt invasive without being painful. Information brushed against him, not as words but as impressions. Measurements taken without instruments. Evaluations performed without judgment.
He was being assessed.
The realization stirred something uneasy within him. A reflexive discomfort born from a lifetime of being watched only long enough to be dismissed. He braced himself for rejection, even here.
More fragments surfaced.
A résumé left unfinished.
Couples crossing a street.
A smile that had never been followed by a second glance.
The warmth lingered, unchanging.
Time lost meaning. Or perhaps it never applied here.
Without a body, there was no heartbeat to mark seconds. No breath to divide moments. His awareness drifted through the fragments, occasionally snagging on one before being carried onward.
He noticed something strange.
The memories no longer hurt the way they once had.
The regret remained, but it felt distant, like an old scar rather than an open wound. The warmth seemed to soften the edges of everything it touched. Even the thought of his final moment, of collapsing alone on a hallway floor, no longer carried the same weight.
That frightened him.
He did not want to forget.
The idea of fading again, this time without even regret to prove he had existed, sent a ripple through his awareness. The warmth reacted to it, pulsing once, as if acknowledging the disturbance.
More impressions followed.
Numbers without values.
Paths branching, then collapsing.
Thresholds.
The concepts were incomplete, unfinished, brushing past him without settling. He tried to grasp them, to impose structure, but his awareness slid through them like mist.
He felt small.
Not insignificant, but limited. Defined by absence rather than presence. A point of awareness suspended in something vast and uncaring.
Then the warmth shifted.
It drew closer, though distance still did not apply. The sensation of being observed sharpened, focus narrowing. The assessments deepened. Something probed the core of his awareness, skimming over regret, memory, self perception.
It lingered on a single idea.
Never chosen.
The warmth reacted again, stronger this time. Not approval. Not pity. Recognition.
The concept resonated outward, triggering a cascade of impressions. Structures forming and dissolving. Systems aligning briefly before slipping apart. A sense of compatibility tested and retested.
He felt stretched.
Not physically, but conceptually. As if his awareness was being compared against something larger, his shape pressed against a mold that almost fit.
Almost.
The warmth withdrew slightly.
Cold rushed in to fill the absence, not a temperature but a lack of attention. The sudden distance left him unsteady. He drifted, awareness scattering, fragments slipping further apart.
Was this it.
A temporary acknowledgment before oblivion.
The thought carried no accusation. Only resignation.
The warmth returned.
This time, it did not press or probe. It enveloped.
The sensation changed, becoming deeper, heavier. Layers of impressions folded over one another. He felt something anchor to him, or perhaps him anchoring to it.
A transition.
He sensed movement at last, though not in any direction he could name. The surrounding nothingness shifted, thinning, giving way to something denser. Possibility condensed into structure.
The warmth pulsed rhythmically now, steady and deliberate.
With it came a new sensation.
Resistance.
For the first time since regaining awareness, he encountered a boundary. Not a wall, not a surface, but a limit. Something he could not pass through without changing.
The fragments quieted.
Memories receded, settling into the background. Regret dimmed, not erased but contained. His awareness sharpened, pulled forward by the warmth.
Pressure built.
The boundary pressed back.
He felt himself stretch again, thinner now, awareness elongating toward the resistance. The sensation was not painful, but it was intense, demanding focus.
The warmth surged.
Something gave.
A crack appeared in the boundary, not visible but undeniable. Through it seeped sensation.
Weight.
Direction.
Form.
The concepts rushed toward him, overwhelming after so long without them. He sensed a container waiting on the other side, incomplete but ready to be filled.
Fear flickered for the first time since death.
Not fear of pain.
Fear of becoming.
The warmth did not retreat.
It pushed.
The boundary widened.
And as his awareness began to spill forward, drawn into something new, a final impression struck him with sudden clarity.
This was not an ending.
It was a selection.
Then the darkness fractured.
And something on the other side opened its eyes.