Chương 1: Thunder

Mark had a rule about storms: watch them from inside with a hot cup of coffee in his hands, preferably while someone else was getting wet. He'd broken it three minutes earlier. The rain hit immediately. Cold, indifferent, exactly as he expected. Running would have meant admitting he hadn't known this was coming, and he had. The alternative was another thirty minutes pretending to care about work he had hated for a long time.

Behind him, through the glass doors, Andrew was organizing the Friday pilgrimage to The White Hart. The usual crowd was already gathering, coats on and voices louder than they'd been all week. Mark kept walking. Six months into the job, lunches with them had quietly become a thing of the past, and nobody seemed to notice. That wasn't entirely fair. Andrew still asked sometimes. Mark usually said no. His old university group chat was still muted on his phone.

Sometimes he opened it, saw who had married, moved abroad, changed careers, or simply seemed to have continued living, then closed it again without writing anything. Back at university, he'd had real friends. Plans too. A sense that life was heading somewhere. What had happened to him? He hadn't exactly chosen this quiet, shrinking existence. Most of the time, he'd simply failed to choose anything at all until the shape of his days settled around him like sediment. By the second block, Mark was shivering.

Cold had a way of waking old aches, and he'd spent years learning which pains mattered and which ones only wanted attention. This was just weather. By the third block, the rain had given him that particular clarity that only came when things were already bad enough that there was no point worrying about them. Monday. He'd hand in his resignation then. The realization should have been terrifying. Instead, it brought an odd sense of lightness. He'd survived worse things than a bad career. Much worse.

Whatever came next, he could survive that too. The metro station came into view. Lightning struck without warning. He never heard the thunder. What was that? Where was he? Why couldn't he see anything? Had he gone blind? Why couldn't he feel his body? Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Panic crept into his thoughts. Then a voice spoke.

"So, what do we have here? Oh? You aren't drifting." Mark wasn't sure where the voice was coming from. He wasn't even sure he was hearing it. He tried to speak and found he couldn't. All that remained were thoughts. Was he dead? Was this what death looked like?

"Oh, no, no, no. Merely a stop. Beyond it lies peace... wonderfully quiet, I might add." Silence stretched.

"Yes. There is no need to suffer. In the Void, there is no pain, no sorrow, no despair." The Void... It sounded appealing, and some part of him knew the Voice wasn't lying. Maybe death isn't so terrible. Life can be so very painful. Being alone wasn't new. It had begun years earlier, when two police officers soaked by the rain had appeared at his door. By the time he ended up in the hospital, loneliness had already become familiar.

There, he had watched some patients surrender long before the end while others fought for every extra day. He remembered the smell of disinfectant that never quite left the corridors, the endless hum of fluorescent lights, and nights spent staring at the IV line taped to his own arm while sleep refused to come. He had spent enough time in those rooms to learn that wanting to live and knowing how to live were two very different things.

During those long nights, he'd promised himself that if he ever got the chance to live a normal life, he wouldn't waste it. He hadn't lived up to that promise. But neither had he forgotten it. After everything he'd fought through, letting go now was unthinkable. He wanted to live. He wanted another chance. No, he needed it.

"Oh, what stubbornness... what resolve." A quiet sigh followed.

"Well. That does make things rather more complicated." Another pause.

"Very well, very well. You have the right to choose. By Fate's reckoning, you still had quite some time before death, had it not been for my tiny little mistake." Mistake? Somehow, that offended him more than dying.

"I will grant your wish, though I cannot say you won't come to regret it. Nor will I grant you the mercy of forgetting. You should remember that this time, you chose your own fate. But where to put you? Your own world? Or perhaps…?" A quiet chuckle followed.

"Now that could be interesting. Erador... with those insufferable clowns and their grand opinions of themselves. Perhaps I'll throw in a little gift. We shall see whether you make use of it. Farewell, little soul." Before he could respond, something began pulling him in an unknown direction. His consciousness started to dissolve, but at the very last moment, he had the strange sensation of being watched. Not by the Voice. By something else. As though his existence had been noticed.

Then, faint and distant, the Voice returned one last time.

"Oh, and one more thing. They tend to react rather poorly to people like you. Do try not to die too quickly. It would be such a waste of my gift. It should pair nicely with that ridiculous little System of theirs." Then silence. Then cold. Then pain. Good, he thought through the haze. Pain means being alive. Somewhere in the distance, at long last, thunder rolled.