I didn't expect death to feel like anything at all.
No fireworks. No cinematic montage. No choir of harps. Just a flat, polite, quiet, the kind of quiet that matches my life, small, a little awkward, and frequently interrupted by my own clumsiness.
Then a voice said, in a tone that sounded like an annoyed librarian and a bored deity had merged:"You died."
I froze. "…God?"
"Yes."
Great. I had hoped for a more elegant afterlife, maybe a tutorial pop-up. Instead, I got cosmic bluntness.
"Can we not talk about how I died?" I asked because dignity is one of those things I always meant to have but never quite learned to keep.
"You tripped between your desk and a chair, dropped your monitor, and hit your head," he said, and somehow the voice was both factual and smug.
I groaned in the dark. If the afterlife has sarcasm, it certainly knows me well.
If you're picturing a tragic origin story, turn that dial down to "comedy of errors." I was twenty-one, undeniably pretty in the textbook way, long legs, narrow waist, the kind of face people told me looked like it could step out of a magazine, and yet I had the social reflexes of a golden retriever that had never been trained.
I had an hourglass figure that made strangers blink and an instinct for walking into things that made them laugh.
Honestly, half the reason my social life failed wasn't just shyness; it was a spectacular talent for saying the wrong thing at the worst possible moment.
Compliment someone's outfit? Trip while doing it, and almost tear it off. Try to make small talk? Forget every word in your vocabulary except "Uh."
Ask someone for directions? Walk the opposite way immediately after. It wasn't just awkwardness. It was a lifestyle. I was a walking, talking hazard zone with decent cheekbones.
What I did have was an unhealthy relationship with strategy games. Give me a map, resources, units, and a timer and I would become unreasonably happy. Resource micro? Flawless. Long-term economic planning? Optimized. Diplomacy? A merciless chessboard. I couldn't flirt to save my life, but I could conquer alternate-history Europe in thirty-seven turns, and I did not feel ashamed of that.
"Also," I added to the void because apparently manners die with the body, "I died a virgin."
"Yes."
He didn't hesitate. Not even a courtesy pause. "Correct."
I pouted at a non-existent ceiling. "That's humiliating."
"It is a fact."
If the cosmic bureaucracy has a sense of irony, they used it on me. Panels of golden light unfolded around the voice, not game menus, not exactly, but something that felt like a divine command centre.
"You will not return as a mortal," he said. "You will be given purpose."
I narrowed whatever brow I retained. "Purpose? Like social purpose? A dating coach? Or, I don't know, at least a job that involves fewer burdens?"
He ignored the sass. "You will be… a country."
"A country?" I repeated, as if the word might shift into something less impossible.
"Germany. Year: 1909. Five years prior to the Great War of your history. You will be fused with the national consciousness."
There are levels of disbelief. First comes the blink. Then the silent laughter. By the time he finished, I had arrived at full, stunned nausea.
"Hold on. You're telling me the reason I never learned to flirt is that the universe wants me to run a geopolitical powerhouse?" I asked.
Logically, none of this made sense. Emotionally, I was halfway between terrified and absurdly curious.
"Your strategic capabilities in your previous life were exceptional," he said simply. "You understand systems, resources, and long-term planning. That makes you a suitable vessel."
"Oh." Right. My entire human personality condensed into a single resume line: Strategy-game expert. Good at calculators. Bad at social life. Lovely.
"Also," I added weakly, "do I at least get to keep the looks?"
"Your physical form will be appropriate to the manifestation option you choose."
Meaning: cosplay-level endorsement, I guessed.
I took a breath, remembered the alternative — oblivion — and found I could not choose nothing. No existence felt worse than my awkward twenty-one years. Even if the universe now intended me for sixty million responsibilities with a side of historical trauma, I would take it.
"I accept," I said. My voice sounded weirdly small.
"Then awaken, Germany."
I Wake Up as Land
Sensations crashed into me. Not with the tiny, single-sense clarity of being one person, but as a thunderstorm of millions of small things: the cold shock of rivers racing through lowlands, the slow, stubborn resistance of mountains, the restless clatter of trains like nervous fingers across nerves. Cities lit up like constellations in my mind. Factories breathed. Soldiers marched. Politicians argued. A mother rocked a baby and I felt it like a gentle pulse.
It was beautiful, and it was terrifying: the entire nation's life, all at once, expanding and contracting within me.
The Nation Control Plane unfolded like the inside of a cathedral made of light and maps. This was not a joke UI. This was precise, sober, and enormous.
" NATION CONTROL PLANE — GERMAN EMPIRE — 1909 "
The chamber is vast — a vaulted space of light and shifting cartographic formations. Each panel is an organ; each organ keeps the body alive.
WAR COUNCIL INTERFACE
A three-dimensional map of Europe floats in the center. Armies show as silver phantoms; fleets as dark silhouettes. Railways glow like arteries. Subsections include Order of Battle, Operational Readiness, Doctrinal Pathways, and Command Influence — a readout of how cooperative or stubborn each general and admiral is. I cannot command directly; I can only nudge, persuade, and influence. Human resistance matters.
DEVELOPMENT DIRECTORATE
Industrial complexes rotate in perfect schematic diagrams: coal, steel, chemical labs, rail lines and ports. Subsections list Industrial Output, Agricultural Stability, Infrastructure Matrix, and Technological Research Paths — chemistry, engineering, medicine, early signals and encryption. Changes here are slow but foundational.
DIPLOMATIC STRATEGUM
An intricate web of tension lines links countries. Colors show trust and rancor. Subsections indicate Current Relations, Alliance Tendencies, Foreign Influence Channels, and Covert Leverage. Diplomatic nudges are subtle and carry risk if overused.
INTERNAL STABILITY MATRIX
A colossal ring holds glass tablets etched with social groups — workers, aristocrats, peasants, intellectuals. Public Opinion, Political Factions, Economic Pressure Index, and National Unity Score live here; when unrest spikes, red fractures spider across the glass.
SPECIAL PANEL — SEALED PROTOCOL
Far from the hub, bordered by silence, stands a black obelisk. Runic circuitry glows faintly beneath its surface. One line of text blinks softly:
" ACCESS RESTRICTED — CONDITION UNKNOWN ".
When the country's trajectory shifts, the obelisk stirs, as if measuring destiny itself. It is a destiny switch, far more than a button. It is locked for reasons unknown — a sleeping engine that may wake only when some threshold of history is crossed.
The panels hummed with potential. Every panel felt sacred, like the engine room of reality itself.
And then, a prick of, well, embarrassment.
Because for all the grandeur of being a nation, being a human had its perks I had not fully appreciated until they were gone, the ability to feel individual breath, the warm ridiculousness of a hot beverage, the solitude of a single bed. I had been mortal, messy, and small. Now I was large, connected, and responsible for the clumsy human I once had been.
Manifestation Options — The Rules, Fine Print, and Cosmic Threats
Another set of rules hissed into view.
Manifestation Options:
• Human Form — I may condense into a human body and walk the mortal world. No supernatural powers. Cannot reveal I am Germany. (you get a German look)
Violation = instant annihilation of the soul-state.
• Spirit Form — I may wander unseen and powerless, able to observe but not interfere.
Both options felt like a trap and a chance. Human form would give me eyes and ears on the ground; spirit form, a safer but impotent vantage.
I didn't like silence. I liked to act. So I picked human form.
I Fall Into a Human Body (Literally)
Light tore. Consciousness compressed. I hit the ground with a force that made me appreciate gravity in a new way. Cold air punched my lungs. Snow tickled my eyelashes. I was solid and ridiculous and utterly human.
I looked down. My body was hourglass, still fashionable even under divine repurpose, narrow at the waist, hips curving, a strong posture rooted in practicality rather than display. Long hair whipped across my face. Breath fogged. Boots sunk into snow.
I flexed my fingers like someone testing an unfamiliar instrument. For a half-second, I considered the vanity of checking a reflection, then remembered there was no mirror and, more pressingly, that I had a country to run.
When I first walked — awkward, tentative steps that felt like learning to stand again — I almost laughed at the cosmic irony. The universe had handed me strategic genius and kept my clumsy legacy for comedic seasoning. I nearly slipped on the ice two seconds later. Old habits die hard.
Then a spike of pain tore through me, not physical, but national: a pressure that rolled under my skin like a fever. Somewhere in the Empire, something had ruptured: a labour strike, maybe; a diplomatic incident, maybe; a military snafu, maybe. Whatever it was, it hummed with consequence.
Before panic could bloom, I took stock. I could feel everything, in the sense that every life's minor ache and joy pooled into a common sea in me. A factory worker's sigh felt like a grounding weight. A soldier lacing boots tightened my resolve. A child's laughter warmed like sunlight on stone.
This was no sterile control game. This was a living organism, and I had to learn how to be its conscience and its hands.
A Moment of Bitter Comedy
If someone had asked me, in life, to write the perfect set-up for a farce: it would be this. A clumsy, socially inept twenty-one-year-old who dies tripping over a monitor, becomes a nation, and then—on waking in a chic human body with an hourglass shape and a tendency to fall—is immediately hit with the first crisis of the state. The script practically wrote itself.
"Okay," I said aloud to an indifferent set of mountains and the most dramatic cathedral of light, "I may have died awkward, inexperienced, and socially incompetent. But if that's what it takes to keep existing, then fine. I'll be the most strategic, least-casualty-possible Germany that ever existed."
Honestly, part of me expected a montage: me studying military manuals, reading diplomatic dispatches, learning rail logistics in a hands-on crash course. Instead I got the cold realization that real governments have messy people with messy priorities and that my influence would be subtle and rare.
What I Know and What I Don't,
I had hours logged in strategy games, a brain good at systems, and zero experience with real human manipulation.
That combination felt like a superpower in a children's cartoon and like an unplaytested cheat code in reality. I could run and optimize supply chains in my sleep, but I couldn't yet convince an obstinate general to change plans.
Also, I would almost certainly die a virgin again, because destiny has a foul sense of humour. I grumbled about it to the empty air and got no consolation. Some things the divine panel could not fix.
The obelisk at the back of the Plane pulsed like a living thing. It felt both like a promise and a threat. It felt like the "boss" level in a game that showed up only when you'd made enough choices to force it awake. I could push on the edges of the world, nudge a few decisions, build rail lines, fund research, and attempt to influence ministers and generals, but the obelisk watched, patient and unreadable.
If I wanted to touch it… I would have to survive five years of history first.
That thought packed both terror and an odd thrill. I'd always wanted stakes; the universe had finally delivered them.
I drew in a breath of cold mountain air and felt two heartbeats: one small, human, and frantic; the other vast, slow, and inevitable. Somewhere under my new feet, men argued in dim rooms.
Somewhere else, a woman soothed her child. A soldier polished a rifle. An engineer measured a rail gauge. Their lives were my responsibility now.
"Okay," I whispered, straightening my coat against the wind. "If you gave me strategy, you gave me the tools.
If you gave me the looks, at least I can walk into a room without people thinking I don't belong. If you kept my clumsiness… well, that's material for later."
I wouldn't be a perfect saviour. I would be clumsy, loud in my thoughts, sometimes painfully awkward, and very likely to blush at the wrong moment. But I had time — five years until the world burned, if I let it, and a catalogue of strategy-game instincts that had never once failed me in a digital war. Real blood and real consequences awaited. The stakes were terrible and hilarious in equal measure.
My first mission was not to fix everything at once. It was to find the source of that national pain and learn how to influence the people who could act for me. My human form would be my eyes. My Plane would be my planning room. The Special Panel would wait, dark and dangerous, like a secret between the world and me.
I tightened my gloves, turned my face into the wind, and nearly slipped on a patch of ice. The mountains laughed. I laughed back, a little hysterically, and then I started walking.
History did not know it yet, but it was about to get very awkward.