Jordan opened his eyes and found white in every direction, his body transparent, colors bleeding through him that he didn't have names for, which was a strange thing to notice right after getting shot in the head.
He'd expected something when he died, pearly gates maybe, or fire if the universe had a sense of humor, but not an endless white void that stretched in every direction with nothing in it.
Nothing moved. His mind drifted back to the pavement, the gunshot, his body stopping all at once. Twenty-two years, and somehow the ten seconds he spent running toward a door with a bullet in his ear were the best ones, just his legs and the air and the ground moving under him because stopping was never going to be the thing he chose.
He thought about the store. About crawling toward the door while everyone else sat against the wall waiting for someone else to handle it. Waiting hadn't protected any of them, and if this void was suggesting something was coming, he wasn't repeating that approach.
He needed strength, not the kind that kept your head down and got you through the week, but the kind that meant nobody could put you in a position like that again. Wishing for infinite power was how you got cursed in every story he'd ever heard, and he had no idea what rules governed whatever came next. A system felt like trading one set of instructions for another. Power copying was useless if the next world ran on bloodlines or technology or something he couldn't picture from here.
He needed something that worked anywhere he ended up and grew with him and couldn't be taken away, which ruled out most of what he'd seen in stories.
The sprint came back to him. Pure movement, just legs and air and ground, and he'd felt more alive in those ten seconds than in years of keeping his head down and his eyes on the pavement and his hood up so nobody had to look at him if they didn't want to. He wanted that, to fight and get stronger from the fighting itself, every win and every loss building into something that actually belonged to him and couldn't be reassigned or revoked or just quietly taken while he wasn't looking. No shortcuts, no parts to juggle, just him and whatever stood in front of him and the distance closing between them.
The void pulsed and Jordan felt it somewhere in the place where his chest used to be, which was strange enough that he went still.
He blinked faster.
The void rippled, purple and gold and red and shades without names, the space around him breathing, pressure building against him or inside him until he couldn't locate the difference, and then the blast threw him backward and his edges came apart.
Not his body. His soul, every piece of it scattering into the light while he screamed with nothing to scream with, his consciousness fraying outward across distances he had no scale for, stars igniting, space folding, galaxies spinning into being, light pressing against him like standing inside something vast and indifferent, and then nothing.
When he woke he was still moving, carried forward by something he hadn't chosen, the white completely gone.
Eight universes hung around him at distances he couldn't measure, different sizes, different colors bleeding from their edges, one pulsing with heat that made his awareness contract, another cold enough that even the thought of it felt like it would freeze something permanent. He'd spent twenty-two years in a world that had already decided what he was before he opened his mouth, and whatever came next, it wasn't going to be that.
Whatever was carrying him started slowing down until it stopped completely.
The smallest one pulled at him like it already knew who he was, so he stopped fighting it and let it pull.
Stars streaked past. Something that wasn't wind rushed through him, pulling at whatever held him together, and below him a planet came into focus, massive, mountains scraping the upper atmosphere, oceans stretching beyond any horizon he could find. Dragons moved across it in every direction, hundreds, thousands, flying and sleeping and hunting across a world built entirely to their scale. He'd spent his whole life being too much for every room he walked into and somehow he'd ended up here
His soul fell toward a castle at the planet's peak and passed through stone like it wasn't there, through hallways, into a room where a dragon slept, and slammed into the dragon's body with an impact that knocked the breath out of him despite having none to lose.
When he opened his eyes energy moved through his chest like a shockwave, rolling outward through the room and the walls and the planet and into space beyond it, stretching him thin across a distance his mind couldn't hold, his hands tingling and his chest aching. Then it collapsed back and was gone, and the body around him felt entirely too small for what had just passed through it.
Black scales covered arms that weren't his arms, a tail curled against the bed, and where his fingers should have been there were claws, which was a lot to process before breakfast. Then his body started changing on its own, the tail retracting smooth as a muscle, scales pulling back into skin, limbs shortening as bones ground themselves into a new shape, and he lay there and let it happen because what else was he going to do about it.
When it stopped, he had hands. A human body, maybe five years old, the palms smooth and unmarked like they'd never done a thing.
The door burst open.
A woman carrying a tray of towels stopped in the doorway and the tray hit the floor with a crash that made him flinch. She covered her mouth, turned, and ran.
"THE PRINCE IS AWAKE!" Her voice carried down the hall and kept going. "THE PRINCE IS AWAKE!"
One way to greet a person.
Heavy footsteps, and then two figures filled the doorway. The woman was tall with dark hair and golden eyes that caught the light like metal, one hand pressed to her mouth, tears running freely, the kind of crying that had been waiting a long time to happen. The man beside her was broader, horns curving back from his temples, eyes wet but jaw set, someone who'd decided a long time ago that holding it together was his job and hadn't stopped since.
The man stepped forward and looked at him the way people look at something they weren't sure they'd ever see again.In disbelief
"Welcome to the world of the living, Kaos."