"Hello again…."
It was a cough more than a sentence. My throat was parched. My muscles hurt. My brain? A jumble of déjà vu and existential terror.
I sat up in the blue-hued nothingness, surrounded by the standard fare — silence, radiant waves of light, and the creepy sense that the universe itself is taunting me soundlessly from the darkness.
My hands shook, not because of pain — pain is routine now — but because of the burden of something heavier.
Memory.
Flickers. Flashes.
Fire.
Again.
"How many times now…?" I groaned, hauling myself upright. My knees creaked like a worn library book, and I blinked at the glowing waves overhead, listlessly floating through the blackness.
And then I remembered.
".Nine hundred and ninety-nine."
I laughed.
It wasn't funny.
It wasn't even sane.
It was the sort of laugh you produce when the ridiculousness of your existence has finally triumphed in the argument.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine times I've died. And each time, I've wound up here.
No manual. No radiating quest indicator. No millennia-old prophecy that states, "Hey Rhaizen, good job dying, now do it again but in style!"
Just. this place.
This nothing.
These waves.
They drift like rivers of light and memory. Always changing. Always observing. Always… present. I don't know if they exist or if I've broken so hard that I'm attributing consciousness to glowing sky-water.
And every time, one of these pesky waves picks me. Or perhaps I pick it. I'm not quite sure anymore. It's more like a bad date with destiny on Tinder.
Each wave sends me somewhere new — a different world, a different time.
I've saved empires.
Ruined kingdoms.
Married a demon queen once. Died fifteen minutes later when her father turned out to be a volcano dragon with abandonment issues.
You'd think I'd be numb to it all by now.
But every death leaves a mark. Not on the body. The body resets. Always fresh. Always clean.
It's my soul that's rotting.
I forget it all. Every cycle. Faces are a blur. Names disappear. Only pieces remain.
A child taking my hand.
A city burning.
A woman crying my name as if it meant something.
But this time… something's different. I can tell.
Like tension in the air before a storm.
Like this place is… hesitating.
A golden wave hung close by — unlike the normal shimmering blue ones. It throbbed gently, almost like a heartbeat.
What, no welcome sign for the 999th time?" I growled. "No cake? No balloons? I swear to God if I don't get a coupon for a free session of therapy after all this…"
Silence.
Of course.
They never reply.
I rose, pushing imaginary dust from a body not my own just moments before. My gaze pinned to that shining wave. It seemed… definite. Like the creak of a door swinging open at the far end of a long, horrific corridor.
A new world awaits.
But this time, I know something I didn't previously.
This… may be the last.
And that frightens me more than any death has ever done.
"…Does it ever stop?"
I extended my hand, heart unshaken, mind broken.
The wave of gold brushed against my skin like a sigh.
And the nothingness shattered.
Once more.