There was no warning for me.
The moment I finished reading the text, I felt a sharp tug in my navel, the first pain I had felt in what may have been centuries—and I find myself no longer floating.
An invisible, crushing energy wrapped itself around my body, and forced me to fall. It pulled me away from the darkness and pushed me down with what I could only imagine the gravity—gravity! That's what the energy was called—on Jupiter was like.
A soundless scream left me as I plummeted.
There was no wind, no resistance, no inertia to stop me or command my body to follow its laws. For the first time in so very long I felt an emotion, one which had clung to me in death and followed my existed into the afterlife.
Fear.
Primordial. Instinctual. Fear.
Before my very eyes, through the reflectionless black of this domain, I was able to perceive what lurked within the darkness.
Too many eyes, too many teeth, too many limbs, too many of everything! I couldn't comprehend it. I couldn't understand it. The mere glimpse of it was too much. Too much.Too much!
Another, soundless scream disappeared into the darkness, but I didn't notice. My mind, already fractured by death and the perpetual rest of the afterlife began to crack, fracture, splinter into a million different shards that once made me whole.
I broke before I could even comprehend it, and when I did, it was already too late.
A crazed, unhinged laugh escaped from me, soundless as my screams but engraved in my fragmenting soul as I fell directly into the maw of this eldritch abomination.
The last thing I saw, as its too many teeth turned my bones to dust, and rend my flesh into nothing, was the darkness which had once let me slumber. It took what remained of me and brought me to my second death.
[-][===][-]
I woke up with a lurch. Though, it was fair to say that I blindly scrambled to sit up on my knees with whirling limbs. I felt almost like a new-born relearning how to use my arms and legs.
My hands dug into the ground beneath me—sand—holding onto anything I could before my chest heaved and I leaned forward. I coughed, feeling something rise through my throat.
I wish that I could say that I had spit it all out. But, well, I have a terrible gag reflex. The moment I was sure I wouldn't throw up over myself; I let it all out. Except, where I had been expecting sick or vomit, instead, I was met with a familiar taste of water.
Gallons, and I do mean this literally, of ocean water came spilling out of my mouth. Though, it was also safe to say that it was being violently ejected out of me. Unfortunately, it was soon joined by my own vomit too.
The sand beneath me, once a pleasant gold, was now darkened and stained with a mixture of water and vomit. Once I was finally done spluttering and coughing, I was quick to look away.
Things to do with vomit left me feeling wheezy, okay? It's not my fault, I felt like this, it was just a grim sight to see and smell…
Wait a minute.
"I'm alive!?" I looked down at my hands, genuinely fascinated with the fact that I could not only see them, but feel them.
I thought I had died! But I did die, didn't I?
Almost as if my thoughts were some sleeper agent's activation code, a familiar translucent black screen appeared before my very eyes.
[-][===][-]
|| [Your body has perished. But your soul has survived. Similarly, this Avatar you are inhabiting lost his soul, but his body survived. Do be grateful, user] ||
[-][===][-]
"I'm sorry, but did you just say this Avatar?" I questioned, not even bothered by the fact that a nearly invisible box was talking to me. After the darkness, and the…and the thing which had devoured me, this barely counted as weird to me.
In response to my question, the translucent screen widened and grew in both length and width. It flashed once, before showing me an image of…me?
"What?" I leaned closer, startled but not as shocked as I should have felt. Something was undoubtedly wrong with my mind, but right now, it was my body which took my full attention.
I reached up to touch my cheek, smearing some sand on it, and watched as the image before me did the exact same thing. I realised then, that this wasn't some picture but a mirror of all things.
My skin, once gaunt and itchy and bruised, was pale, smooth and clear. My lips, once thin were now full. My teeth looked perfectly health, with two fangs on both my upper and lower jaw. A strange thing, considering I distinctly remember losing at least three of my teeth.
My cheek bones were high, my jaw was sharp, sculptured even where it had once been low and hollow. My eyes, once a dull cerulean that I had inherited from my mother, were now a vibrant shade of crimson red.
Similarly, my hair, which was once a long greasy and tangled nest of dirty blonde hair which I kept in a bun, was now a long, flowing silky mane of crimson red that framed my face and fell to my lower back.
"What the hell?" My throat constricted, and I nearly fell back from the surprise of hearing my voice. There was even a difference to my voice! Gone was the scratchy, crass tone that I was used to.
Instead, my voice was like velvet, smooth and rich and entirely unfit for the street urchin that I was. Really, I sounded almost like an aristocrat, you know, one of those wealthy ponce's you'd hear on the radio or see on TV.
I had a feeling I knew what had happened to me, but just to be sure, I asked. "Did I…was I forced to go through reincarnation?"
The System of Alloys, as it called itself, shifted again to display a new message.
[-][===][-]
|| [Indeed, you have user!] ||
|| [Congratulations] ||
[-][===][-]
Yeah…I didn't feel much like celebrating. This all felt entirely too alike to some stories I had read as a child. Stories, which I never thought I'd have to live through.
'Screw it. In for a penny, in for a pound.'
"System, show me my stats?" It seemed to be the right thing to say, because the screen shifted once more to display a set of information that looked both familiar, and unlike anything I had read before.