I Died.
I wish I could say it happened in some noble, heroic way.
But the truth?
It was a car accident.
A stupid one.
One moment, I was crossing the street, lost in my phone screen. The next, my ears caught the screech of tires. A wall of metal and headlights slammed into me, and my world went white.
No pain. No time for last words. Just a snap—like a light switch being flicked off.
And then… darkness.
This darkness was pretty confusing; it felt like home, cozy even when I couldn't even sense my own body.
And looks like I'm stuck, for I don't know an indefinite amount of time.
So let's start with an introduction.
I guess you could say my name doesn't matter anymore.
The man I was — the one with deadlines, bills, and a healthy addiction to instant ramen — is gone.
Still, old habits die hard, so… hi. I'm nobody special.
Before you ask — no, I wasn't some ex-military prodigy or martial arts champion. My only fight was with my alarm clock every morning, and I lost most of those.
A government slave with a 9-to-5.
That was me.My glorious routine consisted of: wake up late, curse the snooze button, drag myself into an overcrowded train, type things nobody reads, eat lunch that tasted like recycled cardboard, pretend to work until five, then go home and scroll through the internet until my eyes burned.
Rinse, repeat.
I wasn't the protagonist of anything. I was the faceless extra you see in the background of someone else's movie, sipping coffee with dead eyes.
So yeah… dying like that? Totally in character.
As for family, well, that's a whole can of worms altogether.
Mom was… nice, in that polite, emotionally distant way. She made great soup, worked two jobs, and treated affection like a monthly allowance you had to earn. Dad was a ghost—alive, but gone. Divorce papers when I was ten, postcards on birthdays until I turned fifteen, and then radio silence.
Siblings? None. Which meant I got the full privilege of being both the golden child and the disappointment rolled into one convenient package.
Friends? A few. We bonded over memes, cheap beer, and mutual hatred for our bosses. Nobody who'd deliver a heartfelt speech at my funeral, though. If there even was one.
So yeah. I lived a life so ordinary it would make beige paint look exciting.
And now here I am. Dead. Floating in a darkness so deep it made space look like a neon billboard.
I wish I could say panic hit me, that I screamed or prayed. But after the first few minutes—or hours, or centuries, who knows—panic kind of… ran out of steam.
As for regrets, that can be arranged, because no matter who says "People can die with a smile, with no regrets," they're lying through their teeth.
Because the ones saying those words are the living ones, who hadn't experienced death. Yet.
Like, imagine, a newly purchased game, "God of War: Ragnarok", sitting on your desk while you went out to get cola and snacks for your weekend binge.
What? Everyone has their priorities, okay.
Mine was gaming, and before you ask, was I good?
Ahem!
Let's say I was passionate.
Not "Esports pro" passionate — more like "stay-up-until-4-a.m.-because-the-boss-fight-music-slaps-too-hard" passionate. I'd sink hours into games until my eyes went bloodshot, then drag myself to work like a zombie, powered solely by instant coffee and spite.
So yeah… when I say I was hyped for God of War: Ragnarok, I mean hyped. Controller cleaned, TV polished, snacks lined up in military formation — I had a plan.
I even deleted my Reddit account to keep spoilers away. I wanted to thoroughly rape— I mean, obliterate that game's story myself, without some random username like "KratosDidNothingWrong69" dropping the ending in my lap.
And then… I didn't even get to play it.
The universe must have found that hilarious.
"Look at this idiot," it probably said. "Let's smack him with a truck before he even presses Start Game."
Hilarious.
So, yeah. I died. And now I'm here—wherever here is.
The darkness isn't… nothing. It's warm, heavy, almost like it's watching. There's no body, no heartbeat, no breath, but I feel something. Like a drumbeat in the void, slow and patient, waiting for me to notice.
The longer I float, the louder it gets.
Thump.
Thump.
Not my heart. Bigger. Deeper. Like something ancient is trying to sync with me.
And then—
"Found you."
The voice is a growl wrapped in thunder. My thoughts freeze.
I try to speak, but there's no mouth, no sound.
"You don't belong here, mortal."
Mortal? Past tense, thank you very much. Pretty sure I'm just cosmic dust at this point.
"No… not mortal. Not anymore."
The drumbeat becomes a roar. The darkness peels away, and in its place—light. Blinding, golden light that feels like molten fire pouring into my skull.
The light is wrong.It's not warm like the sun, not gentle like a bedside lamp.It's alive.
It surges through me like a tidal wave, flooding every corner of my nonexistent body. My thoughts scatter like leaves in a storm. It's not just light—it's emotion, raw and searing.
Rage.
Not the petty kind you feel when someone cuts you off in traffic. Not even the white-hot kind that makes you slam a controller after losing to the same boss for the tenth time.
This… this is primordial. Rage so pure it has weight, shape, gravity. It burns, not on the skin—because I don't have any—but in the core of whatever I am now.
"You feel it, don't you?" the voice growls again.
I don't hear it so much as feel it scrape along my mind like claws on stone.
"What… are you?" I think—or maybe I just will the question into existence.
The answer isn't words. It's a vision.
A man—no, a titan of a man—standing against a sky that's tearing apart. His skin glows with molten lines. Six arms sprout from his back, each swinging with the force to shatter mountains. His roar shakes the heavens. His enemies aren't men or beasts—they're gods, and they bleed before him.
The vision slams into me, then dissolves, leaving behind one truth.
"That power… is yours."
The drumbeat I heard earlier? Now it's a war drum, pounding in sync with the fury blazing through me. It feels right, like it's always been there, buried under a lifetime of desk jobs and instant noodles.
"But power alone is nothing without will," the voice continues. "You will awaken in a realm not your own. Gods will fear you. Fates will hunt you. Rage will guide you—but only if you master it before it consumes you."
"Wait—realm? What realm? And why me?"
The darkness shudders. For the first time, I feel… amusement.
"Because you were chosen… and because fate is already changing."
The golden light flares brighter, swallowing what's left of the void.
Somewhere far away, I hear the howl of wind, the crunch of snow underfoot, and the distant, echoing roar of something massive. The light pushes harder, and I feel the first sensations of weight, heat, and—
Pain.
My lungs seize as air—burning, sharp—rips into them. My eyes snap open to a sky the color of blood. something sting my face. My hands—rough, calloused, and huge—are clenched into fists, steaming with faint golden heat.
I'm lying half-buried in ashes.
They're not the soft kind from a fireplace. These cling, gritty and hot, like the ground itself is smoldering. The air is a furnace, every breath dragging embers down my throat. My skin prickles with heat that should be cooking me alive, but somehow… it doesn't.
I push up, coughing.
The sky is wrong. It's the deep, bruised red of an open wound, streaked with rivers of black smoke. Far above, something moves — a slow, crawling silhouette, massive enough to blot out the horizon for seconds at a time.
And before I could even begin arranging my thoughts—
The space ahead of me doesn't split — it rips.
Like a seam in the world being pulled apart by invisible claws.
Through it bursts a nightmare.
A dragon the size of a mountain, its body a writhing mass of scales blacker than midnight and veins glowing with molten fire. Its wings aren't feather or flesh but shredded shadows, trailing streams of smoke that curl into the sky. And its eyes…Gods, its eyes are pits of hunger.
The thing screams, a sound that turns the air into knives and makes the ground quake beneath me.
I freeze. Not because I'm afraid — well, okay, maybe a little — but because I know in my bones this thing isn't just alive. It's ancient. Older than mountains, older than the sun overhead.
And I am very, very small.
The dragon's head sweeps across the landscape, tasting the air. Its nostrils flare, and those burning eyes lock onto me.
Oh. Good. I'm special.
The instant its gaze hits me, my skin crawls. Something deep inside me stirs — not the same molten wrath from before, but something colder, heavier, like chains rattling in the dark.
The war drum in my chest slams once, hard enough to make me stagger.
And the dragon hesitates.
Its head tilts. It lets out a low rumble that I can feel more than hear, like it's sniffing at an old scar. Then, without warning, it surges forward.
"...Oh, hell no."
Instinct takes over. I run.
The ash-covered ground crunches under my feet, each step sending up little clouds of heat that bite at my ankles. My legs feel heavier than they should, like I'm wearing weights — but also stronger, faster. Every stride is a little more than human.
A shadow falls over me.
I don't look. Looking is for people who don't mind dying distracted. Instead, I throw myself sideways just as a column of fire slams into the ground where I stood.
The blast hurls me like a ragdoll. I hit the ground hard, roll, and come up coughing black smoke. My ears are ringing, my skin prickling with that strange not-quite-burn.
But before I could even get back on my feet.
Rows of sharp teeth caught me, pure unadulterated pain shot through me as the dragon's jaws clamped around my torso.
The last thing I saw before losing consciousness was a massive yew tree.
***
p*treon.com/SuryaPutra_Karna01
Put 'a' instead of '*'