CHAPTER 1: THE END OF THE FIRST
The truck came faster than the thinking that tries to name it.
Keel had time for the small, useless reckonings: the sun in his face, the coffee still warm in his hand, the sandwich he'd meant to finish between stops.
He had time to think of late rent, of a message he hadn't replied to, of how stupid it was that the crosswalk light blinked one second before his life did.
Then the world narrowed to metal and a bright, wrong hurt that burned everything else into white.
There was no pain after the impact the way the movies promise.
There was a pressure — like someone closing a palm around him from all sides — and then a clarity so clean it felt like the memory of thought.
Sound thinned to a single, steady thing, and Keel understood everything you can understand when the human body has folded away.
He opened his eyes into void.
It was not darkness. It was not light, exactly.
It was an absence that allowed thought to lay itself down flat and see its own seams.
He was surprised by how ordinary he felt.
The body that had been smashed and should have been flayed open was only a recall, and recall made room for other things.
"You didn't expect this," a voice said.
It came without a shape, and then a shape arranged itself in the space — not a person so much as a posture that carried the sense of one.
She was not what Keel had imagined a goddess would be: no thunder, no blinding halo.
She was a woman who had stopped trying to be astonishing because she already was.
Her eyes held a patience like a clock that had watched centuries unfold and decided to remain neutral.
"You died," she said.
"That's the blunt part. The rest is marginalia."
Keel tasted blood and coffee in a place where he could not bleed.
He tried to ask a question and found the want of one simpler: Why me?
"You asked for meaning once," she said.
"Quietly. You didn't notice you were asking aloud."
There was the faintest smile in her voice — no cruelty, only an interest.
He had been nobody important.
He had been twenty-eight, late to everything except exhaustion.
He had been tired of living small and careful, of making choices that only postponed discomfort.
He had not expected anything metaphysical.
The fact that he was having a metaphysical conversation did not feel like a consolation.
"What is this?" he managed.
"A hinge," she said.
"A seat between worlds. You fall through what you were, come out what you will be. There are terms."
She spoke the terms like a registrar calling names.
Keel listened because in the absence of gravity you do not waste the time given to you.
"You will be given a life that is not your previous life," she said.
"You will be born in another world — Verandil — and you will remember.
Remembering will be patchwork: flashes, tastes, names that do not fit.
"What do you want?"
"To see what you do with a second chance."
She said the words without melodrama. "To give you a capacity. It is called Adaptive Habitation."
The phrase sat in the air like a tool placed on a table.
"What does it do?" Keel asked.
"It is simple."
The goddess's voice sharpened into exactness. "When you are exposed to an experience, and you repeat it or endure it, your body and mind adapt in measurable, lasting ways relevant to that experience.
Repetition turns resistance into facility; exposure reduces harm; practice compounds into improvement.
It is not instantaneous omniscience. It is a mechanism. It requires contact. It requires time.
But it is strong."
Her hand — or the idea of a hand — traced a line that became visible, a thin band of light.
"But the benefit or upset depending on how you choose to view it is: no trade-offs."
Strength will not come at the cost of your mind.
Speed will not steal your durability, etcetera.
There are injuries, risks, and limits, albeit minimal: overwhelming exposure can still break you.
Keel pictured bargain-basement pacts, everything-for-everything, and for a second he wanted to argue about loopholes.
She anticipated the thought.
"You will remember Earth," she said.
"That is why you asked, if only in the low way humans ask for pattern from chaos.
The memory will be fragmentary.
Use it or ignore it.
You will be born ordinary.
You will wake to your gift at eighteen.
Until then, there will be no manifest evidence of it.
Live. Learn.
Not knowing will be part of the test."
"Eighteen," Keel repeated.
The number sounded both arbitrary and fateful.
"Eighteen is a hinge that exists in this frame.
You will be given the mechanics; you will be given the option to act.
You will still have to act."
"That's it?" he asked.
"If—if I become better at things I repeatedly do, that sounds… helpful.
But why me?"
"Because I felt like it, lol...", she muttered.
"Ahem, as I said before, you asked for meaning with a particular kind of honesty," she said.
"And because some patterns are better observed by someone who has seen the other side."
Her voice softened. "Also because it will be interesting."
Keel laughed — it was a thin sound that felt ridiculous in the quiet void.
"Do I get anything else? A talisman? A mark?"
"Only memory and your gift," she said.
"You will be born into a small village called Harlow's Bend."
The goddess paused as if checking a list.
"One more thing: there are institutions in Verandil called Guilds.
Ranks are how the world measures tested competence.
Your gift does not grant rank.
You will still be judged by deeds and evaluation."
She folded that last line like a hinge closing.
"I will place your memory in your new body.
Make an effort not to waste it."
A light like a coin dropped into one of his palms.
It was not a thing he could punch or keep.
It was a promise — and then the promise became softer, like the last page of a book turned.