The last email Evan Park sent in his first life was not heroic.
It wasn't even necessary.
It was a tidy little message, the kind that slid into an inbox and disappeared into the daily sludge of corporate breathing. Subject line: RE: Updated figures attached. He attached the spreadsheet. He added two bullet points. He wrote, Let me know if you need anything else, even though he knew no one would.
Then he stared at the "Sent" confirmation like it meant something.
His computer fan whined softly. Fluorescent lights buzzed like trapped insects. Somewhere in the office, the janitor's cart wheels squeaked down the hallway, stopping at each doorway to swallow the trash and spit out a new liner.
He was alone on his floor. The security guard downstairs would be watching a small TV, volume low, eyes on the lobby doors. The rest of the building was dark, except for a few stubborn islands of lit windows where other people who didn't want to go home—or couldn't—made themselves useful.
Useful was a word that could mean anything and nothing, depending on who said it.
Evan leaned back in his chair, listened to the bones in his neck crack, and checked his phone. A weather alert flashed across the screen: HEAVY RAIN. FLOODING POSSIBLE. USE CAUTION.
He sighed, as if the rain had personally scheduled itself to inconvenience him.
A faint reflection of his own face looked back at him from the black glass of his monitor: tired eyes, a haircut that had been maintained by habit rather than vanity, the faintest crease between his brows from years of squinting at tiny numbers.
He wasn't unhappy. That was the strangest part. He also wasn't happy. Most days he just was.
He'd lived his life like he was trying not to spill anything.
No dramatic loves. No bitter enemies. No acts of cruelty that kept him awake at night. No acts of brilliance that made anyone clap. If someone dropped their pen at the office, he picked it up. If someone's workload looked impossible, he asked if they wanted help. He donated to coworkers' fundraising pages when he could. He held doors. He apologized even when he wasn't sure he'd done something wrong.
Normal.
He'd been so normal that sometimes he feared he'd wake up at eighty and realize he'd never done anything that proved he'd actually been there.
He shut down his computer, grabbed his jacket, and stepped into the elevator. The doors closed with a sigh and a soft click, sealing him into a small mirrored box.
His phone buzzed again. A message from his mother: Did you eat?
Evan almost smiled. She'd been sending that text since he moved out. He typed: Yeah. I'm heading home.
He thought about adding a heart emoji. He didn't. That would feel too loud.
The elevator opened into the lobby. The security guard glanced up, nodded. "Late one tonight."
"Yeah," Evan said automatically.
"You be careful. Roads are nasty."
"Thanks."
Outside, rain came down in dense sheets, turning streetlights into smeared halos. Water ran along the curb in eager rivers. The city sounded muffled, as if someone had wrapped it in a blanket and told it to be quiet.
He lifted his collar and walked to the bus stop. His shoes splashed. His breath steamed faintly in the cold.
A woman stood under the awning, scrolling her phone. Two teenagers huddled together, laughing too loudly. A man with a dripping umbrella stared into nothing.
A bus arrived, brakes hissing, doors folding open like a mouth. People filed in. Evan tapped his card, found a seat near the middle, and pulled his phone out again. The window beside him was streaked with water, the outside world wobbling like a distorted painting.
He didn't notice the truck until it was already wrong.
It was a big flatbed, the kind that carried construction beams. The driver should have slowed. The light should have held. The brakes should have responded. There were a thousand little "shoulds" that made up the illusion of safety—rules that people followed because everyone agreed the world would be better if they did.
But the rain ate traction. The flatbed slid as if the road had turned to glass.
The bus driver shouted something. Someone screamed. Metal shrieked. The world tilted.
For a single, stupid moment, Evan thought, I'm going to be late tomorrow.
Then the flatbed hit the bus like a fist.
His body lurched forward. The seatbelt he wasn't wearing offered no argument. His head struck something hard—maybe a pole, maybe a window frame. Pain bloomed bright and immediate, then became distant, as if it belonged to someone else. The sound of shattering glass was strangely beautiful, like ice breaking on a lake.
He tried to breathe. His lungs didn't listen.
His phone skittered across the aisle and vanished.
The bus's interior lights flickered once, twice, and went out. Darkness swallowed the screams.
He tasted iron. He heard water, everywhere—rain, leaking pipes, the hiss of something ruptured.
He wanted to call his mother.
He wanted to stand up and help someone.
His fingers twitched against wet fabric.
A woman's voice was crying a name. A child was wailing. The man with the umbrella was shouting for help.
Evan tried to speak and couldn't find his tongue.
There was no dramatic montage. No light at the end of a tunnel. No floating feeling of peace.
Just a sudden, simple understanding, as calm as a receipt: This is it.
Then everything went blank, like a computer screen losing power.
—
When Evan woke again, he was sitting in a chair that did not belong to any place he knew.
It was padded, gray, and uncomfortable in a way that suggested the designer had never sat in it for more than five minutes. The air smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and paper. A low hum vibrated in the walls, the kind of sound you stopped noticing after a while.
He blinked.
He was in a waiting room.
It looked like every waiting room he'd ever suffered through—hospital lobbies, government offices, DMV lines—except this one was too clean. Too evenly lit. The ceiling lights were soft and shadowless. The walls were a pale color that refused to commit to being white or beige. Rows of chairs lined the room. A water dispenser stood in the corner with paper cups stacked neatly beside it. A ficus plant sat in a pot, its leaves perfect and plastic.
There were no windows.
There were no clocks.
A counter sat at the far end of the room with a small opening in the glass, like a bank teller station. Behind it, a woman in a navy blazer and a perfectly neutral expression typed on a keyboard that made no sound.
On the wall above her was a digital display: NOW SERVING: 03871
Evan looked down at his hands.
They were his hands. But also not. They looked… cleaner. Less bruised, less tired. The scars he'd collected over the years—the tiny ones, the ones you forgot existed until you caught them in the light—were gone. His nails were trimmed. His knuckles weren't dry.
He touched his face. No blood. No swelling. No pain.
His heart thumped steadily.
A laugh crawled up his throat, but it didn't make it out. It turned into a shallow breath.
People sat around him. Dozens. Maybe more. Some stared at the floor. Some whispered in low voices. Some sat perfectly still like statues, eyes wide, hands clenched in their laps.
A man across the aisle rocked back and forth, muttering, "No, no, no," over and over.
A teenager stared at his hands like he was trying to remember how fingers worked.
An old woman sipped water with deliberate calm, as if she'd done this before.
Evan swallowed. His mouth wasn't dry. He didn't feel hungry. He didn't feel cold. He didn't feel anything except a rising pressure in his chest, like a question that had nowhere to go.
He stood up slowly, half expecting his legs to shake. They didn't. He walked to the counter.
The woman behind the glass didn't look up.
There was a sign on the counter: PLEASE TAKE A NUMBER AND BE SEATED.
Below it, in smaller print: ARGUMENTS WILL NOT CHANGE YOUR PLACE IN LINE.
Evan stared at the sign.
"Excuse me," he said.
The woman's fingers paused. She looked up with eyes that were neither kind nor cruel—just present.
"Yes?"
"Where am I?"
The woman blinked once. "Waiting Room."
"I… I can see that." His voice sounded steadier than he felt. "Waiting for what?"
"For your turn."
"For—" Evan stopped, because even saying it felt ridiculous. "Am I dead?"
The woman's expression didn't change. "Yes."
Evan waited for the weight of that word to crush him.
Instead it sat in his chest like a stone that had been there all along.
He looked back at the chairs, the people, the silent display. "This is… the afterlife?"
"This is a processing area."
"Processing," Evan repeated, tasting the word. "Like paperwork."
"Yes."
He almost laughed again, but it would have come out wrong.
"How did I die?"
"Accident."
"Can I—" His throat tightened. "Can I contact my family?"
"No."
"Can I—can I see them?"
"No."
"Will they be okay?"
The woman studied him for a moment, as if deciding how much effort he deserved. "They will continue."
That answer was so simple, so bureaucratic, that he felt something crack inside him.
He wanted anger. He wanted grief. He wanted anything sharp enough to make this real.
Instead, he nodded because that was what he did.
"What happens when it's my turn?" Evan asked.
"You will be assessed," she said. "Then you will be assigned."
"Assigned to what?"
The woman's eyes flicked toward the display, then back. "Next placement."
"Reincarnation?"
"Yes."
His breath caught. Something in him—some stubborn, childish part—had always wondered, in secret, what happened after death. He'd never expected… this.
He turned his head to look at the people again. "Do we have to wait long?"
The woman's mouth almost twitched, like she was holding back a sigh. "Time is not measured here as you understand it."
Of course it wasn't.
Evan looked back at the sign. PLEASE TAKE A NUMBER.
He reached for the small dispenser beside it. A slip of paper slid out with a soft whisper.
04126
He stared at it. Four digits away from being served.
That seemed… manageable. Almost reasonable.
He went back to his seat, paper in hand, and sat down.
The waiting room hummed.
Evan tried to think of his life, as if reviewing it would prepare him for whatever "assessment" meant. The memories came in ordinary flashes: the smell of instant coffee at his desk, the weight of grocery bags cutting into his fingers, the way his father's voice sounded when he called him "kiddo" even after he was thirty.
There were no great sins. No great triumphs.
Just a long string of days.
And yet, sitting there, he began to feel something unfamiliar: fear that his days had been too small to matter.
The display changed with a soft chime.
NOW SERVING: 03872
A man stood up from the back row like he'd been shocked. He walked toward a door he hadn't noticed until that moment—plain, gray, with no handle. As he approached, it opened on its own, revealing a hallway of the same colorless light.
He hesitated, then stepped through. The door shut behind him without a sound.
No one else reacted.
People waited.
Evan looked down at his number again. 04126.
He did math automatically. That was what he was good at.
Four hundred and fifty-four people ahead of him.
In a place without time.
He exhaled slowly.
He didn't know how long he sat. It could have been minutes. It could have been a year. He dozed without sleeping. He watched the ficus plant. He listened to snippets of whispered conversations.
"I was on a plane—"
"I didn't even get to say goodbye—"
"I don't want to go back—"
He learned quickly that panic accomplished nothing. The display ticked upward at its own pace, indifferent to prayer and pleading.
At some point, Evan's number felt less like a place in line and more like a label.
A way to reduce him into something manageable.
Normal.
Again.
When the display finally chirped and flashed NOW SERVING: 04126, his stomach clenched hard enough to make him think he was alive.
The door opened.
Evan stood. His legs carried him forward on their own.
As he approached, the woman behind the counter slid a folder through the opening in the glass.
The folder was thick, the paper inside crisp. Evan's name was printed on the cover in neat block letters.
He froze.
Seeing his name written like that—official, final—made this feel real in a way the accident hadn't.
He took the folder with both hands. The paper was warm, as if it had been held recently.
"Proceed," the woman said, already looking past him.
Evan walked through the door.
—
On the other side was not heaven or hell.
It was an office.
A small one. A desk. Two chairs. A filing cabinet. A potted plant. The walls were the same uncommitted beige. The light was the same flat comfort.
Behind the desk sat a man in a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He wore no tie, as if ties were optional in the afterlife.
He looked up and smiled in a way that was polite without being warm. "Good morning," he said.
"It's… morning?" Evan asked automatically.
The man's smile widened a fraction, like he'd heard that joke a thousand times. "A greeting," he said. "Sit, please."
Evan sat.
The man opened the folder and flipped through pages with practiced speed.
"You have lived," the man said, as if reading from a script, "an adequate life."
The words hit harder than an insult.
"Adequate," Evan repeated, voice tight.
"Yes," the man said calmly. "No excessive harm. No exceptional contribution. Minimal deviation from baseline expectations."
Baseline.
The word scraped something raw.
"I worked," Evan said, and hated how defensive he sounded. "I took care of my family. I—"
"I am not accusing," the man said. "I am categorizing. It is my function."
Evan swallowed. "What's the assessment?"
The man folded his hands. "Ownership."
"Ownership of… what?"
"Your life," the man said simply. "Did you live it, or did it happen to you?"
Evan blinked. "I—"
"Answer honestly," the man added, and his eyes sharpened slightly. "It is not optional."
Honesty. There was that word again, like a nail waiting to be hammered.
Evan looked down at his hands, at the folder, at the neat paperwork that contained him.
Did he own his life?
He thought about the mornings he woke before his alarm. The way he walked the same route to work. The way he said yes because no felt like trouble. The way he let days stack like papers on a desk.
"I didn't… steer much," he admitted. "I didn't chase big dreams. I didn't do anything that people would call important."
"And yet," the man said, tilting his head, "you helped. Frequently."
Evan frowned. "That's… not special."
"It is," the man said. He tapped the folder lightly. "In a baseline life, most do not."
Baseline life.
Evan's skin prickled. "What do you mean, baseline?"
The man flipped a page. "Some lives function as calibration. Statistical averages. Reference points."
"You're saying my life was… a test?" Evan's voice rose before he could stop it. "A simulation?"
The man didn't flinch. "A measurement. Your choices were observed."
"That's—" Evan swallowed hard. "That's insane."
The man's gaze remained steady. "Insanity is a concept that belongs to biological brains under stress," he said mildly. "You are no longer biological. You are currently a record."
A record.
Evan felt suddenly small.
"So what," he said, forcing the words through his throat, "I was an experiment, and now you just… send me somewhere else?"
"You are eligible for reincarnation," the man said, as if that was generous. "With conditions."
"What conditions?"
The man slid a single sheet of paper across the desk. At the top, in bold print:
REINCARNATION CONTRACT — SPECIAL CLAUSE ATTACHED
Below that was a line of text that made Evan's heart thud:
CLAUSE 1: SUBJECT MUST LIVE AN HONEST LIFE.
Evan stared at it.
"Honest," he said slowly. "As in… don't lie?"
The man's smile returned—faint, almost amused. "As in do not distort reality for your convenience," he said. "Do not speak falsehood knowingly. Do not sign your name to what you know is untrue."
"But everyone lies," Evan said, and heard how pathetic it sounded. "Little lies. To be polite. To survive."
The man's eyes didn't soften. "Then you will learn to survive without them."
A laugh, sharp and humorless, escaped Evan. "Why?"
The man closed the folder. "Because your baseline life produced an anomaly," he said. "You were ordinary. Yet you generated repeated micro-deviations through small acts of unobserved assistance."
Evan stared. "I… helped people."
"Yes," the man said, as if reading weather. "You acted as if the person in front of you mattered, even when it cost you nothing and gained you no status. You did it without audience."
Evan didn't know what to say to that.
He thought of the time he stayed late to help a coworker finish a report because she looked like she might cry. He thought of the time he walked an elderly neighbor's groceries up three flights because the elevator was broken. He thought of the time he quietly covered a coworker's mistake so she wouldn't get fired.
He hadn't done those things to be good.
He'd done them because… what else would you do?
"Why does that matter?" Evan asked, voice quieter.
The man's gaze flicked to the contract. "Honesty stabilizes," he said. "In worlds where power and truth are… flexible, an honest anchor is valuable."
Anchor.
A useful word.
Evan stared at the contract again. "What if I refuse?"
The man's expression remained polite. "Then you will be assigned by standard procedure," he said. "You will not receive selection privileges."
"Selection privileges," Evan repeated, and the absurdity of it made his head spin. "So I can choose where I reincarnate?"
"Within parameters," the man said. "Place. Time. Circumstance. Not specifics such as 'wealth' or 'invincibility.'"
He should have asked for something grand. A world of magic where he could be strong. A time where he could start over with knowledge and advantage.
Instead, a simple image rose in Evan's mind: a small house. Warm light. A table with food. A family. A quiet life that didn't end in a bus full of screaming strangers.
"I want…" Evan swallowed. "I want somewhere simple."
The man studied him like a specimen. "Define simple."
"A village," Evan said, surprising himself with how certain it felt. "A place where people know each other. Where my work means something real. Where… I can go home at night and it's home."
The man's pen hovered over a form. "Mana is present in most worlds," he said, as if mentioning climate. "Are you aware?"
"Mana," Evan repeated. "Magic?"
"A resource," the man said. "Distributed unevenly. Some are born with it. Some are not."
Evan thought of his own life, where talent and privilege had also been distributed unevenly, just with different names.
"Will I have it?" Evan asked before he could stop himself.
The man's smile was thin. "You may request," he said, "but you will not be granted advantages that contradict your pattern."
Pattern.
Baseline.
Normal.
Evan exhaled. "Then…" He looked at the contract again. "Then I'll be born without it."
The pen scratched softly. "Noted."
Evan's mouth went dry despite the fact his body didn't need water. "And the honesty clause—how does it work?"
The man slid the contract closer. "Sign," he said. "You will understand immediately."
Evan stared at the line for his signature.
In his old life, he'd signed documents without reading them. Terms of service. Employment contracts. Loan agreements. Little clicks of consent that shaped his future without him noticing.
This time, the paper felt heavy.
He picked up the pen.
His hand didn't shake.
Evan signed.
The moment the pen lifted, something invisible snapped into place inside his chest.
It wasn't pain exactly. It was… pressure. Like a band tightening around his ribs. Like a hand settling over his throat.
He tried to say, This is fine.
His lips parted.
No sound came out.
Evan's eyes widened.
The man watched without sympathy. "Attempted falsehood," he said. "Your system rejected it."
Evan swallowed, throat tight. He tried again, carefully: "This is… happening."
His voice worked.
He tested more words, feeling the boundary like a tongue probing a sore tooth.
He could speak truths.
He could speak uncertainty.
But the shape of a lie—any lie—caught in his throat like a fishbone.
Panic surged. "How am I supposed to survive?"
The man's gaze didn't move. "Honestly."
"That's not an answer."
"It is the only one you will receive," the man said. He rose, went to a cabinet, and pulled out a small stamped card. He placed it on the desk. On it was printed a single sentence:
REMEMBER: HONESTY IS NOT KINDNESS.
Evan stared at it.
The man sat again. "You will be reincarnated as requested," he said. "Rural. Lower-class. Stable family unit. Mana absent."
Evan's stomach clenched. "War?" he asked suddenly, because war was always what found poor boys.
The man's pause was brief. "Conflict exists," he said. "As it does in most worlds."
Evan's heart hammered. "Will I be drafted?"
The man's eyes met his. "That is not within your selection privileges."
Of course.
Evan wanted to argue. To negotiate. To beg.
But begging would be dishonest if he pretended he deserved more.
He exhaled slowly, forcing his panic into a smaller space.
"I just want to go back to my family," Evan said, and the truth of it made his eyes burn. "I want… this time, I want to make it home."
The man nodded once, like he'd recorded the statement. "Then live," he said. "And do not lie to yourself about what it costs."
The room seemed to tilt.
The edges of Evan's vision softened.
He felt something pull at him—not like a hand, but like gravity suddenly remembering him.
The man's voice sounded distant. "Processing complete," he said. "Placement initiated."
The office faded.
The waiting room faded.
The last thing Evan saw was the stamped card on the desk:
HONESTY IS NOT KINDNESS.
Then darkness folded over him like a blanket.
—
Sound returned before light.
Muffled voices. The rasp of breath. A woman's strained groan.
Warmth pressed against him from all sides. He couldn't move. He couldn't think in words the way he used to. His thoughts were shapes, sensations, instincts.
He tried to inhale and was rewarded with air that tasted like smoke and herbs.
A sharp slap of cold shocked him. He reacted with the only thing he could do.
He cried.
The sound was thin and raw and alive.
Voices erupted around him.
"It's a boy," someone said, breathless.
"Hold him up, I can't see—"
"Hush, hush, let him breathe."
Something rough wrapped around him. Cloth. Wool. A blanket that smelled like soap and sweat and earth.
He blinked and saw light for the first time—not fluorescent, not shadowless, but warm and trembling, cast by candles and a hearth fire. The ceiling above was wood. The walls were rough stone. Shadows moved like living things.
A woman's face hovered over him, sweat-damp hair stuck to her forehead. Her eyes were red with pain and relief. When she looked at him, her expression cracked open in a way no office had ever allowed.
"My son," she whispered, and her voice trembled as if she couldn't trust joy to stay.
Behind her, a man stood bracing himself against a beam, his face pale, his lips tinged slightly blue. He was trying to smile, but he coughed—deep, wet, ugly—and had to turn away, pressing a cloth to his mouth.
Evan—no, not Evan, not anymore—felt something in his chest tighten.
Not the contract pressure. Something older. Something primal.
Father.
The midwife—a broad woman with practiced hands—held a small glass vial near his tiny fist. Inside was a thread of something like smoke, silver and faint.
She watched.
She waited.
The thread did not stir.
Her brows drew together.
She looked at the mother, then at the coughing man.
"No spark," the midwife said quietly.
The words landed like a stone.
The mother's smile faltered for a heartbeat, then she gathered him closer as if her arms could argue with fate.
The father's coughing fit eased. He looked back, eyes damp, and forced his voice to steady. "Healthy?" he asked.
The midwife hesitated—just enough for the world to show its teeth—then nodded. "Healthy," she said. "Strong lungs."
The father exhaled like he'd been holding his breath for years. "That's enough," he whispered.
In the newborn haze, a memory surfaced like a bubble rising from deep water:
CLAUSE 1: SUBJECT MUST LIVE AN HONEST LIFE.
The pressure in his chest pulsed once, as if acknowledging the new world.
As if reminding him:
Here, too, rules would be written on the inside of his bones.
His mother pressed her lips to his forehead.
Outside, beyond the stone walls of the tiny house, wind howled across fields he had never seen.
And far away—too far for anyone in this room to hear—men in armor sharpened blades and stamped papers and counted boys.
The newborn cried again, louder this time.
Not because he was afraid.
Because somewhere deep inside, an old promise had followed him across death:
Survive.
Go home.
And do it without lies.
The candlelight flickered.
His father coughed again, quieter, like he was trying to hide it.
And the midwife, still watching the unmoving mana-thread in her vial, murmured under her breath, almost too softly to hear:
"Poor little Hollow."
He didn't know the word yet.
But his contract did.
And it tightened—just a little—as if the world had already begun asking its first question.
Would he be honest enough to live?