Death comes in many forms, and it arrives with a single goal in mind—to take what was always owed to it. I had spent the better part of my life fighting death in a long, pointless battle. In the beginning, I hoped I could truly beat it, but after a certain point I simply gave up and started wishing it would claim me.
"Why was my fate so cruel?" I asked myself, though I never expected an answer. I had no family, no money, no worth. My name was as empty as my existence. For the first—and likely last—time, I was certain one of my wishes would be granted: that death would finally come and release me from this endless pain.
If I had to reflect on the things I enjoyed in life, only two came to mind: video games and books. They might seem basic, but when life is as unforgiving as mine, having even the most common interests feels like a blessing. Most of my time was spent reading stories about people like me—broken, alone, hopeless—only for them to die and awaken in another world with a second chance, transformed into some overpowered main character.
The games I played told similar tales. Start at level one, weak and insignificant, then slowly grow stronger until you could defeat the final boss. Thinking back on all those stories, all those meteoric rises from nothing to greatness, only reminded me how impossible such a path would be for someone like me. I was a worthless individual even God had given up on. Death was the only thing I could hope for. In every sense, I was truly and utterly pathetic.
A rough cough tore through my chest, and when I looked down there was a dark, heavy pool of blood in my hands. I reached weakly toward the desk and pressed the button to call the nurse. As I waited, I turned my eyes to the window.
The sky was a vast, endless blue—like a blank canvas untouched but full of possibilities.
It was almost funny.
For someone like me, possibility had always felt like a distant dream.
Five minutes later, the nurse arrived. She checked me over, gave me my daily medicine, and left just as quickly as she had come. Once she was gone, I grabbed my phone and pulled up the latest chapter of some random slop webnovel, clearly thrown together to imitate a better story.
I still enjoyed these poorly written, slapped-together novels—they were entertaining in their own way. It was interesting to watch people try to imitate something they could never truly reach.
The story I was currently reading was a mix of a tower-type webnovel and an academy one—two settings so hard to combine that I couldn't begin to imagine why the author even tried. The main character was painfully generic, solving every problem with his fists and building a harem—just the usual tower and academy tropes. But if there was one thing that stood out, it was the lore behind the tower and the gods that existed within it.
There was a group in the story called the Twelve Primordials, gods born from primordial light and darkness who built the tower and trapped the other gods—those worshiped by humans—inside it. Another part of the story that caught my attention was the dispute between the Primordials themselves, which eventually split them into two factions of six, leading to an inevitable war where all of them were killed.
But since this was a generic tower story, there was an even deeper meaning behind their deaths: the imprisonment of some vague evil gods, who were themselves just goons serving an even bigger evil god. The main character's goal was to climb the tower with his friends, meet the gods, make them stronger, and surpass the Twelve Primordials. The story was so basic it actually made someone as hollow as me laugh at how simple yet funny it could be. As I continued reading, the chapter numbers increased and the comments decreased until I was the only one commenting anymore. Then one day, out of nowhere, I reached a page that simply said The End.
I was shocked that I had read such a horrible piece of fiction for so long—long enough to reach its ending. I was also sad that the last thing I had to occupy myself before my own end had disappeared. It was nearly time to get my medicine, so I reached to call the nurse.
Then a sharp, violent pain tore through my body, and I collapsed onto the floor. Blood spewed from my mouth as I desperately reached for the button, fingers trembling, vision fading. I knew this was my end, yet I didn't want to die pathetically on the floor without putting up a fight. Deep down, a part of me still wanted to persevere and keep going—even if my life was worthless, even if God had given up on me, even if my future was bleak.
But fate was a cruel mistress, and that mistress had no interest in the existence that was me.
My vision blurred slowly, the world losing focus. The last thing I saw before my eyes finally closed was a strange, ghostly shade of black drifting in the pool of blood beneath me. And just like that… I was gone.
Or at least, that's what I thought.
Was death supposed to be warm? Was I supposed to see a light in what should have been my eternal rest? As I drifted in that strange warmth, I began to hear a voice—distant at first, then clearer—telling me to move toward the light and regain that which was lost. But whenever the voice tried to speak a name, the sound broke apart, as if the world itself refused to let it be spoken.
Drawn forward by instinct or fate, I crawled toward the light. The warmth grew brighter, sharper, until it swallowed everything.
And then—
I opened my eyes to see a ceiling I didn't recognize.
It seemed I had been reincarnated.
As for where… or what… I had no idea.