Caelus Ven died on a Tuesday.
Not in glory. Not in defiance. Just in the crosswalk outside a shut-down convenience store, with a half-eaten energy bar in one hand and a crumpled manuscript in the other.
Rain hadn't even bothered to fall. No thunder cracked. No mourners wept.
A delivery truck came around the corner too fast. No honk. No brake. Just one loud, wet sound.
His body skidded once. Then again.
And then the world moved on.
The streetlights hummed. The wind whispered down the empty street. His cracked phone screen blinked one last time with an unread email:
Subject: Re: Trial by Universe Submission ResponseBody: Not what we're looking for. Good luck.
Caelus had told himself it didn't matter. That no one read his stories anyway. That the world didn't need another deadbeat writer in it. That fading quietly was almost poetic.
But in the second his brain should've gone dark, something strange happened.
Time stopped.
Across the planet, bodies vanished in a flash of white. Cars jerked empty into barriers. Planes fell from the sky. The world gasped, then vanished.
But Caelus's body didn't disappear.
He had already died.
Somewhere deep in the invisible machinery behind existence, something hesitated.
And then a voice, cold and synthetic, laced with dust and static, spoke inside a place that wasn't quite his mind.
Error: Subject status – DeceasedError: Host body not viable. Consciousness decoupled.Attempting restoration…Memory sync detected: Literary Thread 000183 – "Trial by Universe"Emergency class allocation: ARCHIVIST (Unranked)Welcome back, Reader.
Caelus opened his eyes.
There was no sky.
Only black.
He floated in a lightless void. His body looked intact, but it didn't feel like flesh. His hands were weightless. His breath didn't fog. His heart made no sound.
A soft chime rang out in the dark, followed by another message.
Tutorial Phase 1: Initiation Scenario – BeginObjective: Survive.
In the distance, a door appeared. Standing upright in nothing. Cracked open, just enough to tempt.
Somewhere behind it, something screamed.
Caelus didn't know where he was. Or why he was alive. Or what kind of mistake had dragged him into this place.
But he knew one thing.
This wasn't his story anymore.
Someone else had written it.
And he was going to find out who.