Rain had a way of turning the university campus into something miserable and beautiful at the same time. Heavy droplets hammered the red-brick sidewalks, hitting with enough force to splatter upward and soak my ankles no matter how quickly I moved. My socks had already surrendered to the elements, and each step produced an unpleasant squelch inside my shoes. With every stride I wondered why I even bothered trying to keep myself dry. It was late, I was tired, and this downpour clearly had a personal vendetta against me.
Despite the storm, I walked with the familiarity of a senior who had spent four years navigating every shortcut and hidden corner of campus. The quickest path home took me under a covered walkway that sliced across the busiest street near the dorms. Normally it was a peaceful journey. Tonight it felt like trekking across a battlefield.
I studied cybersecurity, but my attention span was a mess. My professors would call it distracted brilliance. My friends called it terminal curiosity. I called it normal. Instead of reviewing my project notes like a responsible student, I had gone down a rabbit hole about the human brain’s reaction to imminent death. Not the healthiest reading material when walking alone in the rain at night, so in hindsight I probably jinxed myself.
The article described the fight or flight response in detail. Adrenaline pumping. The world slowing down. Sensory sharpness becoming almost supernatural. The body operating at peak performance. It was all very cool in theory. I imagined myself as someone who would become decisive under pressure, maybe even heroic if the situation called for it.
Those fantasies did not survive contact with reality.
The instant I stepped off the curb into the crosswalk, a pair of blinding headlights tore through the darkness. A university maintenance truck barreled toward me at a speed that definitely ignored the campus speed limit. The driver had his phone held up near his face, completely unaware that a soaked student was standing directly in his path.
I would love to say my instincts kicked in. That my mind sharpened, my muscles tensed, and I dove out of the way in a display of cinematic self-preservation.
I did none of that.
Instead, my brain froze. Completely. My feet forgot how to move. My mouth opened but no sound came out. I stood there in the middle of the road like one of those animals you see in videos titled You will not believe how stupid deer can be.
There was no heroism. No grace. Only the sudden, jarring impact of my existence being forcibly merged with the truck’s silver grill.
My last earthly thought was something along the lines of, Well, that is unfortunate.
Then everything went dark.
A distant humming pulled me back to awareness. There was no sensation of a body at first, only the strange sense of floating in a space without direction. The suffocating weight of rain, pavement, and fear had vanished. Instead, I felt something soft and warm, like drifting in a sunlit ocean. It was peaceful enough that for several seconds I wondered if this was what the afterlife felt like.
Then a voice vibrated through the air around me.
"Well, this is new."
It did not echo. It resonated. The words rippled through the space as if spoken by someone who was not bound by the rules of volume or distance. It felt like the voice was speaking directly into the concept of me rather than my ears.
"What is new" I replied automatically. Or at least I thought I replied. My voice sounded distant, as if it had to cross a dream to reach my own hearing.
"You being here, little one."
My vision returned in a strange wave, like a curtain being pulled back. Shapes formed first, then light, then detail. The peaceful floating sensation evaporated the moment I saw what stood in front of me.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
A being too vast, too immense, too fundamentally wrong for a human mind to process loomed over me. The sight shattered my perception. My eyes could not comprehend the scale, the form, or the presence of the thing before me.
My eyes promptly exploded.
There was no time to flinch. The world burst into a spray of pain so sharp that my thoughts dissolved into raw screaming. I grabbed at my face on instinct, even though my hands felt like they were made of fog rather than flesh.
"Oops, sorry boyo. It has been so long since someone came through, I forgot about those fragile little things. Hold still, let me fix you up."
The warm grandfatherly tone did not match the horrifying experience of having my eyes vaporized. Yet somehow the voice carried a level of kindness that softened the panic clawing at my mind.
A wave of heat washed over me. Not burning heat, but the kind you feel from sunlight after stepping out of a cold shower. My eyes reformed in an instant. The pain evaporated. I choked on a shaky breath and forced myself to open them again, praying that the sight would not kill me a second time.
What I saw was not the incomprehensible cosmic horror from moments before. Instead, I stared up at what looked like an elven Santa Claus.
Nine feet tall. Pot belly. Long white beard. Twinkling eyes. A robe that shimmered like starlight. Pointed ears twitching as if amused by the mere act of existing. He radiated power, not in a threatening way but like a friendly mountain that could gently stand up and crush cities if it wanted to.
He smiled warmly, as if this were a normal Tuesday evening encounter.
I just stared. My brain struggled to reconcile the scene. One moment I had been a rain-soaked college student walking home, the next I was apparently in a cosmic void having tea-time with a festive demigod.
"Umm, hello, I have a lo-" I began.
I did not even finish the sentence.
He waved a hand, brushing off my confusion with an affectionate laugh that shook the invisible ground beneath us.
"Boy, you are in a place that has no name. A realm both real and imagined. One of my many domains. I know what you are about to ask, so save your breath. Let old Santa tell you a story."
His chuckle thrummed through the air like the sound of distant thunder. It hit me so hard that my vision flickered and I lost consciousness again.
When awareness returned, nothing had changed. The void remained. The elven Santa remained. My confusion remained at a solid one hundred percent.
"About time you are awake, boyo. Finally. Ready to hear the answers of the universe" He spread his arms, the sleeves of his robe rippling with tiny constellations. "Sit, sit, and listen to the little one."
I blinked. There was no chair. Then there was a chair. It appeared beneath me without fanfare, as if it had always existed. I sat because arguing with reality seemed unwise.
He cleared his throat. The sound resembled two tectonic plates grinding together.
"You have been graciously blessed with a second chance at life by the System. Your uneventful mortal existence was cut short ahead of schedule. An administrative mishap, you might say. To balance the scales of karmic equality, the System is granting you a new life."
My thoughts tangled into a knot.
"System."
"Second chance."
"Administrative mishap."
It was too much to process.
He smiled in a way that told me he already knew exactly what I was thinking.
"Yes, yes, you will receive some bonuses. Increased elemental affinity, adaptive potential, maybe a spark of destiny or two. These things happen. Do not thank me, thank the paperwork."
He looked upward, as if someone above the void whispered instructions to him. "Yes, yes, I hear you. I will speed up."
He puffed on an enormous pipe. The smoke curled into swirling scenes. I saw mountains. Cities. Magic. A sky split by colors I had no names for.
"You will be born into a respectable barony on the world of Silara. A land of magic, monsters, and all those little delights you humans call fantasy. The family, the Lorens. Your new father, Lars Loren, is a warrior of terrifying caliber. Self-made, battle-forged, granted his title through conquest. Your mother, Lafiel, is an elven priestess of unexpected lineage. They are expecting a child in about five minutes. The little one’s heart does not beat. That is where you come in. You will give them a spark of life again."
His words lingered in the air like warm mist.
A crack split the darkness above us. The entire void trembled as if struck by a cosmic hammer. The elven Santa looked up and let out a tired sigh.
"Well, boyo, that is my cue. Oh, before I forget, the planet is called Silara. Try not to die early this time. Get strong. Make something of yourself. Come visit if you get the chance."
My body shattered into tiny particles of light. For a moment I felt weightless, peaceful, unburdened. The void around us cracked like glass being punched from the other side.
Something massive forced its way through the rupture. A winged serpent, shaped from living gold, spiraled downward. Its scales glowed like molten metal. Its roar crashed through the void, a sound full of anger and ancient authority.
"Now now, big one," Santa said in the tone of a frustrated grandfather. "That is no way to enter someone’s home."
I barely heard him.
The void collapsed. Light swallowed me. Pressure closed in on all sides.
Heat.
Weight.
Warmth.
A heartbeat.
But not mine.
Oh.
I think I am being born.
What is your Suggested word count per page
