"I'm dead, aren't I? I feel like I'm just sitting in a void, unable to tell up from down. I'm stressing out so much! I just wanted to go back and replay Kingdom Hearts III after completing my entire Pokédex in Pokémon Sword and Shield. How did I even die? I can't remember."
There's no answer.
There isn't even silence — because silence implies space. This feels like nothing. Like I'm a thought floating without a brain.
I try to move my hands.
I can't feel them.
I try to blink.
I can't feel eyelids.
Panic swells, thick and suffocating.
Okay. Calm down. Think logically. If I'm thinking, then I exist. If I exist, then I'm not completely gone.
Right?
Something shifts.
It starts as a vibration beneath me — except there is no beneath. The void trembles. A low rumble builds, distant but growing. Then heat seeps in.
At first it's faint.
Then it spikes violently.
The darkness turns red.
Pressure slams into me from all sides. Crushing. Suffocating. I'm not floating anymore — I'm trapped.
The rumble becomes a roar.
Wind howls.
Something scrapes against something else with an ear-splitting shriek.
I'm moving.
Fast.
The pressure increases until I'm sure I'm going to be flattened into nothing.
Then—
CRACK.
A sharp fracture splits the darkness.
A thin line of blinding orange light tears across my vision.
I recoil instinctively, though I still don't know what part of me is recoiling.
Another crack branches from it.
The red glow intensifies.
Heat surges in waves.
I can see through the fracture now — fire. Endless fire racing past. The outside of whatever I'm inside is burning.
I twist— and this time something moves.
Limbs.
Long.
Too long.
They bend too easily, like rubber instead of muscle. I stare at them in confusion as more cracks spiderweb across the inner surface.
White.
My arms are white.
Smooth.
No visible fingers — just rounded ends.
What is wrong with my hands?
The roar outside crescendos. Something massive streaks past the widening crack — green light, serpentine, impossibly large.
A beam of emerald energy slices through the sky, obliterating a flaming rock nearby in a violent explosion.
The shockwave rattles the shell around me.
I know that shape.
I've seen it on screen dozens of times.
That's Rayquaza.
Why is Rayquaza attacking meteors?
My stomach drops — or at least I think it does. I don't know if I even have a stomach.
I force myself toward the widening crack and peer through it.
Flaming rocks.
Dozens of them.
They're falling.
We're falling.
I'm inside one of them.
I'm inside a meteor.
Another explosion lights up the sky as Rayquaza tears a different one apart. Fragments scatter like fireworks. The sky looks like the end of the world.
Why isn't it destroying this one?
The meteor jolts violently as if struck by turbulence. The crack splits wider, chunks of molten rock breaking away. Through the gap, I see clouds below — vast, white, and approaching far too quickly.
We're entering the atmosphere.
The outer shell glows bright orange, then white.
The interior grows unbearably hot, yet I don't burn.
That's wrong.
I should be burning.
I press my strange, pale hand against the inner wall. It doesn't feel hot. It doesn't feel like anything. My skin — if it even is skin — doesn't react.
What am I?
The crack rips open another inch. Air screams through the gap. For a split second I glimpse land beneath the clouds — green forests and dark mountains rushing upward.
We're going to crash.
Hard.
"I don't want to die again," I whisper — though I still don't hear my own voice.
The meteor begins to break apart completely now. The structural groan turns into a catastrophic snap. Light floods the interior as the rock casing fractures around me.
I'm no longer fully enclosed.
Wind tears at me.
The remaining shell explodes outward.
And suddenly—
I'm no longer inside the rock.
I'm falling.
Which is already rude, by the way.
One minute: existential void.
Next minute: atmospheric reentry without consent.
The meteor explodes around me like it just rage-quit life, and suddenly I'm free-falling through the sky with absolutely zero tutorial pop-ups explaining what's happening.
Wind screams past me.
I flail.
My arms stretch out way farther than they should.
"Why are my limbs on elastic mode?!" I think hysterically.
I spin. The sky flips upside down. Ground. Sky. Ground. Sky.
This is not how gravity is supposed to work.
Then I notice something even worse.
I'm not burning.
I should be burning.
There is fire everywhere. I literally exited a meteor. People in disaster movies don't survive this. I once watched three documentaries and two YouTube videos about meteor impacts.
None of them ended with "and then the guy just floated down politely."
Which brings me to the second problem.
I'm not falling correctly.
I'm descending, yes.
But not in a "splat into the earth at terminal velocity" way.
More in a "discount balloon losing air slowly" way.
I look at my arm mid-flail.
It flickers.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
The edges blur like bad Wi-Fi signal.
"…Excuse me?"
The roaring wind suddenly gets quieter.
Not because I'm slowing down—
Wait.
I am slowing down.
A lot.
The trees rush up toward me—
And I pass straight through the canopy.
No branches snapping.
No leaves exploding.
I just… phase through a tree like I forgot collision was enabled.
I stare at the branch I just went through.
It's still intact.
"…I did not consent to noclip mode."
I drop the last ten feet and this time I do hit the ground.
There's a soft thump.