Ravi's last coherent thought before the truck hit him was that he'd forgotten to cancel his streaming subscription.
Typical. Even in death, his first instinct was to worry about wasted money.
The screech of tires, the horrifying blare of a horn that sounded way too close, and then—impact. It should have been agonizing. A symphony of breaking bones and ruptured organs followed by sweet, sweet oblivion.
Instead, he felt a weird, floating sensation. Like someone had swapped his spine with a pool noodle.
When he opened his eyes, he was staring up at a violet sky.
"What the—"
Two moons hung overhead. Moons. Plural. One was a pale, pockmarked silver orb, the other a smaller, blood-orange satellite trailing faint wisps of light.
He sat up, expecting a jolt of pain that never came. He patted himself down. No blood. No mangled limbs. His cheap t-shirt and worn jeans were intact. He felt... fine. Better than fine, actually. The usual aches in his back and knees from his warehouse job were gone.
He was sitting in a field of grass, except the grass was a vibrant blue-green, and it glowed with a soft, internal light. The trees in the distance weren't oaks or pines; their trunks spiraled upward like colossal strands of DNA.
This definitely wasn't the intersection of 5th and Main.
"Okay," he muttered to the deer-like creature with six legs drinking from a nearby stream. "So I'm dead, and this is either heaven, hell, or a really, really weird coma dream."
The deer-dragon-thing looked up at him. It had way too many eyes.
Ravi decided not to make eye contact. Best not to provoke the multi-eyed space Bambi.
He pushed himself to his feet. The movement felt wrong. Too easy. He felt light, impossibly so, as if gravity had decided to take a lunch break. He took a step, and the ground beneath his foot crunched. Looking down, he saw he'd partially crushed a fist-sized rock into the soil just by shifting his weight.
Weird. That rock must have been brittle.
A deep, guttural growl ripped through the air, sending the space Bambi darting into the spiral woods.
Ravi froze. The sound came from a thicket of shimmering red bushes to his left. Something big was in there. Very big and very angry.
He did what any sensible, pathetically weak human would do in that situation. He backed away slowly. His Earth-life had been a testament to his own fragility. He'd once pulled a muscle trying to open a pickle jar. A fight with whatever was making that noise was not on the agenda.
It burst from the foliage.
It was a wolf. A wolf the size of a damn smart car, with matted black fur, burning red eyes, and teeth like a row of daggers. Saliva dripped from its jowls, sizzling as it hit the glowing grass.
It locked its predatory gaze on him. The only available prey.
Ravi's brain blue-screened. Run, it screamed. But his legs were rooted to the spot, paralyzed by the sheer predator-prey terror hardwired into human DNA.
The massive wolf lunged. A black blur of muscle and fury.
He threw his arms up in a useless attempt to shield his face, squeezing his eyes shut. So this is it. Killed by a truck, resurrected, then eaten by a demon dog. My life is a cosmic joke.
A crushing force hit his forearms. He braced for the feeling of his bones turning to powder.
Thump.
It felt like a golden retriever had enthusiastically jumped on him. He stumbled back a single step.
He opened his eyes. The giant wolf was shaking its head, looking confused. Its fangs were clamped firmly around his arm, but Ravi felt nothing. No pain. Not even pressure. It was like a toddler biting him with gummy, toothless jaws.
The wolf seemed to be having a much worse time. It let go, whining, and shook its head again as if its teeth hurt.
What is going on?
Before he could process the absurdity, a flash of silver shot past him.
"Get away from him, you foul beast!" a woman's voice commanded.
A figure landed between Ravi and the confused wolf. She was tall, clad in gleaming silver plate armor that hugged an athletic frame. A cascade of long, silver hair whipped around her as she brandished a greatsword that looked heavy enough to be a car axle.
She was, in a word, stunning. Like something straight out of a video game's character creation screen.
The wolf, having recovered from its dental problems, seemed to recognize a real threat. It snarled, baring its blood-stained teeth at the woman.
"Stay back!" she yelled over her shoulder at Ravi, not even glancing at him. "I'll handle this!"
The wolf sprang at her. She met its charge with a fluid grace that defied the bulky armor she wore. Her greatsword carved a shimmering arc through the air.
There was a sickening schlick sound.
The wolf's massive body fell to the ground in two neat, separate halves. Guts and black blood spilled onto the glowing grass, steaming in the cool air.
She stood over the carcass, sword point down, chest heaving slightly. A splatter of black blood marred one of her silver gauntlets. She flicked her blade to the side, cleaning it with a single, practiced motion.
Only then did she turn to face him. Her eyes were a piercing shade of icy blue, and they were wide with concern. "Are you alright? Did it bite you?"
She rushed over, her armor clanking softly. She grabbed his arm—the same one the wolf had just tried to chew off—and examined it.
"I... think I'm okay," Ravi stammered, his mind still trying to catch up with the last thirty seconds.
"You're lucky," she said, her tone softening from a warrior's command to genuine relief. "The bite of a Shadowfang Direwolf is laced with a paralytic necrotoxin. If its fangs had broken your skin..." She shuddered. "You must have been terrified. You were just standing there."
I wasn't standing, I was calculating the statistical unlikelihood of my current situation. But he couldn't say that.
"Yeah," he lied, trying to look appropriately shaken. "Froze up. Guess I'm not cut out for this kind of thing."
"Few are," she said with a small, reassuring smile. "It's a good thing I was on patrol." She finally let go of his arm. Her grip had been strong, yet when she touched him, it felt oddly delicate, like a child's.
Everything here felt like that. Fragile. The rock, the wolf's bite, her grasp. It was like the entire world was made of Styrofoam, and he was the only one made of solid steel.
A sudden, dizzying thought hit him. What if he wasn't weak here? Earth's atmosphere has a certain pressure, right? A certain density. It presses down on you, constantly. Your body adapts to it, builds strength just to exist. What if… what if this world's atmosphere was thinner? Lower pressure?
Could it be that simple? A simple matter of physics? Could the body he always saw as laughably weak be, by the standards of this place, a fortress?
"You're bleeding!" the silver-haired warrior exclaimed, snapping him out of his thoughts.
"What?" Ravi looked down. A small trickle of red ran down his hand.
She pointed. "Your knuckles. You must have scraped them when you fell."
He looked at his hand. He hadn't fallen. The blood was from the knuckles he'd accidentally scraped against the inside of the wolf's teeth when it bit him. His skin had literally been stronger than its fangs.
He played along, clenching his hand. "Oh. Right. Must have. Didn't even feel it."
"The adrenaline, I'm sure," she nodded sagely. "My name is Lyanna Stormforge. What's yours?"
"Ravi." Just Ravi. No last name felt right in a place with a woman named 'Stormforge'.
"Well, Ravi," Lyanna said, sheathing her greatsword with a satisfying clang. "It's not safe for a civilian to be wandering outside the city walls alone. Let's get you back to Aethelgard. You look like you could use a stiff drink and a warm meal."
She offered him a path to safety. A way to get his bearings. And a way to start understanding this bizarre new reality.
He gave her a sheepish smile, forcing the weakness he'd felt his entire life back onto his face like a comfortable mask. It was the only role he knew how to play. For now, it seemed like the safest one.
If his theory was right, the single greatest secret in this world was currently hiding behind the excuse of a scraped knuckle and a terrified expression.
"Yeah," he said, his voice laced with manufactured relief. "That sounds great. Thank you, Lyanna. You saved my life."
The lie rolled off his tongue far easier than it should have.