I was plunging into a dense darkness, a darkness without a bottom, as if I were falling into it endlessly. There was no pain, no sound—just a heavy sense of erasure, as if my very existence was being slowly wiped away.
Then—
A light appeared.
It was neither warm nor comforting, but sharp, violent, as if an invisible hand had suddenly reached into my depths and forcefully pulled me upward.
Air rushed into my chest with force, and I immediately woke with a sharp gasp that tore through my throat.
My eyes flew open, and my body shook violently, as if I had just emerged from underwater after a long drowning.
I looked around in confusion.
The sky.
The same grayish-blue sky…
The same clouds moving with that unsettling, slow rhythm, as if they were breathing above my head.
Before I could say anything, memories exploded in my mind all at once.
The monster.
Its massive body approaching.
Its empty gaze.
Then its teeth.
Those teeth sinking into my body.
The pain.
It wasn't an ordinary memory, but a sensation that returned to my body even though it no longer existed. My chest constricted violently, my throat tightened, as if the air itself wasn't enough. I remembered how it had all ended… how I had been helpless, how I had begged, how I had died.
A violent, involuntary shiver overtook me until my teeth chattered. My heart began to pound wildly, at an unnatural pace, as if my chest could no longer contain it. I couldn't control myself, and suddenly bent over, emptying my stomach immediately. My body rejected the memory, and my mind collapsed under its weight.
My breaths scattered—sharp and broken—as if I were suffocating despite the air.
I raised my hands in front of me.
They were shaking violently.
I stared at them for long seconds, then began frantically feeling my body, running my hands over my chest, shoulders, arms, neck… searching for any mark, any wound, any proof of what had happened.
I found nothing.
My skin was completely intact.
Clean…
As if everything I had gone through had never been real.
Only then did a desperate thought creep into my mind, one I clung to like a drowning person to a straw:
This must be a dream… right?
But my head spun violently, as if thoughts were colliding endlessly inside it. I felt on the verge of exploding. I grabbed my head with both hands, pulled at my hair, pressed my temples madly, as if trying to tear my own consciousness apart.
"Wake… wake… wake!"
I screamed it repeatedly, in a hoarse, desperate voice, hitting my face with my fists unconsciously. The blows were random, harsh, one after another, until I tasted metal in my mouth.
Blood began to run down my face.
But I…
didn't wake up.
The pain was real.
The blood was warm.
And the sky… was still there, unchanged.
Then I stopped.
I lowered my hands slowly, panting, looking at my bloodied palms, then at the ground beneath me, and lifted my gaze again to the same gray sky.
And in that moment, awareness crept into me slowly, lethally, an awareness I could not escape:
This is not a dream.
And it never was.
What happened…
happened for real.
Long seconds passed before my body began to calm gradually. The trembling didn't disappear entirely, but it lessened, as if my body had regained its ability to obey after a panic attack that had spiraled out of control. My breaths became slower, still irregular, but manageable. My heart still pounded fast, but the initial frenzy began to fade.
Only then… did I begin to think.
A possibility crept into my mind that I didn't want, one I tried to push away as soon as it appeared, as if merely thinking it could make it true:
Had… I been transported to another world?
That ridiculous thought—or so I wanted to believe—the thought that only belongs in games, novels, and comics. Those worlds where the hero dies and then wakes up in a strange place to begin a "new adventure."
But my heart tightened.
No.
I didn't want this.
I didn't feel excitement.
I didn't feel curiosity.
I didn't feel anything resembling the beginning of a story.
All I felt was an instinctive, outright refusal, as if some deep part of me was screaming: This is not what I want. I didn't ask for a new world, nor a second chance…
I just wanted… to live my life.
Or at least… to die once, and have it be over.
I looked around again, trying to find anything to prove I was wrong, that there was a simpler explanation, a logical one. But the place was silent, motionless, neither dreamlike nor hallucinatory…
I took a deep breath, or tried to at least. Air entered my chest easily, yet gave me no reassurance.
I sat on the ground slowly, fearing my legs would betray me if I stayed standing.
I tried to cling to logic.
Maybe this is some kind of hallucination.
Maybe my mind couldn't handle what happened and created an alternate reality.
Maybe I'm still in the hospital, unconscious, and all of this is just a final reflection before I wake up.
But even as I considered these possibilities, I knew… they were weak.
Because I remembered everything with painful clarity.
I remembered death.
And I remembered what came after.
I tightened my fists unconsciously. I felt a silent anger building inside me, a directionless rage. Why me? Why is this happening to me? I wasn't a hero, nor a special person, nor searching for a greater meaning. I was an ordinary person, with an ordinary life, and an ending that was supposed to be ordinary too…
So what am I doing here then?
When that monster killed me, I was supposed to die. A clear, undeniable end. I felt death, experienced it moment by moment, and it wasn't an illusion or imagination.
And yet… here I am.
The question pressed on my mind again with an annoying insistence. If I truly had died, then my return cannot be a coincidence. There is a reason, even if I don't understand it yet.
A possibility crept into my mind that I wasn't ready to accept, one so heavy it almost suffocated me just to think about it:
Do I have some ability… an ability to come back from death?