Death
An unending cycle of life that all living beings must come to terms with.
Starting with the first breath since childbirth and ending with a single raspy cough before closing your eyes and staring off into eternal darkness, hoping for salvation, which everyone believed to exist.
If only it could end, the need for death to be feared, and the intoxicating allure of prolonging your life while disregarding others.
It's something that one can't desire in this world.
Since it didn't exist in the first place...
***
Colorless clouds passed in my view, drifting along the careless wind like a herd of free sheep without a master.
The ashen sky hid them on its surface, like a dirty canvas that reminded one of the world before and after.
No sound came from above, like the sound was taken away alongside the color, and left everything behind on a dull, gray palette of white grass and carved stone.
A sigh escaped my lips, managing to sound even more lifeless than the quiet surroundings of this strange world.
'Is this how death feels?'
If so, then it wasn't as great as I expected.
Maybe the end was different for some; the amount of sins in my name was more than I could count, not that anyone ever bothered to count each week they missed church or cursed someone on the street.
"Don't you get bored with sitting here?"
Someone called out from behind, or maybe it was above? Both could be applied to the person whose body was covered in nothing but thick white fog.
His body was neither tall nor short, something in between, since his height kept shifting alongside his physique, which was that of a tall man this time.
Licking my dry lips, I looked back at the colorless sky, trying to shift my mind somewhere else.
"You're the one who spends most of his time here."
The figure had no response to that argument.
It simply stood at the side and eventually sat down on the clean grass, feeling it with its foggy palm that dispersed the moment it passed through a flower.
We stayed like this for a while, watching our surroundings shift under the odorless wind while taking in the feeling of emptiness inside our chests.
His head soon turned to me, or maybe it looked that way since it had no distinguishable shape.
"Don't you want me to at least shape you into something nicer? I can do that if you just ask."
Two white dots that blended into the fog turned to my stomach, which had a gaping hole inside it.
Strangely enough, it didn't hurt at all.
The feeling reminded me of something I couldn't yet pinpoint with my jumbled thoughts.
Maybe it was because of how close I felt to that mysterious wound, or perhaps it was due to the last memories that reminded me of who I was before dying, that made me keep this look.
'If only I listened to my parents...'
Regret filled my mind like poison; each feeling was the same in this empty world, it hurt until you couldn't think of it once more.
"What even is this place?"
I turned to the fog, from which escaped an angered scoff, almost like he expected me to figure it out by myself.
"What do you think?"
He asked with a human-like voice that didn't resemble any gender.
"Is this hell?"
"Eh... close."
"Then am I in heaven?"
"Colder."
Sending him a weak glare, a thought crossed my mind, which soon closed off and gave up on responding.
With a long breath, my lips seemed to murmur some words by themself.
"Why did I have to die..."
I could remember it like it was yesterday.
Two days ago, when I was coming back home with a bag of groceries, I got an eerie call from my parents that sounded strangely rushed and horrified when they found out I was still living back in our old house.
Makes sense, after all, almost everyone I knew there since childhood was already long gone due to sudden accidents and financial situations.
They gave me the same excuse each time I wanted to keep in touch with them: 'I need to sell my phone for cab money,' or 'I'm moving out to a remote location where no one uses the internet!'
It was pathetic.
Both that they lied so blatantly and that no one cared to explain why the sudden rush.
Well, it didn't take long for me to find out.
The small city I lived in was built close to a giant dam that held back one of the largest rivers in the world from spilling out and killing all the citizens.
However, the day when my parents finally tried to reach out to me, even after abandoning me and forcing me to work at the convenience store at the age of seventeen, something inside the dam cracked.
There was no time for me to hear their voices scream for me to move out, as I froze with my phone slipping from my hand on the hard concrete.
I couldn't move, no matter how much I wanted to run inside my mind.
So the current swallowed me whole, alongside the entire city, which was wiped from the maps for good.
As my barely conscious body drifted alongside the rubble, my yearly streak of luck happened at the worst time, forcing me to collide with a passing stop sign and get pierced in my stomach, leaving me to bleed out under the barrage of broken stone and raging water...
"Hey."
The voice made my eyes snap open, forcing me to gag and cough up whatever was left in my already empty stomach.
My hands, which were almost torn off, were now somehow supporting my body and functioning just as well as before they started to look like two used rags.
"Don't ignore me like that again. I get the trauma thing, but to doze off in the middle of the conversation is a bit much, don't you think?"
I shook my head, to which the fog with amusement lifted my spasming body in the air, straightening my limbs as if I was nothing but a mere doll in his blank, glinting eyes.
There was no pain, but the knowledge of being at someone's mercy made my stomach churn.
"So? Have you come to terms with it?"
I raised my brow, to which he raised his own brow that shaped itself out of fog.
It looked stupid to see a single brow floating above his eyes.
"The contract."
As his words shook the world around us, a long scroll sprang out from within his body, almost like it had waited there ever since he woke me up a few days ago.
Without touching it, the document opened itself, revealing lines upon lines of endless text that kept on coming no matter how much time had passed.
'My head hurts.'
"Mine as well!"
He said with amusement before handing me something akin to a pen but not quite.
"You don't have to read all of this, I can summarize a couple of main rules that you have to follow, and you can have the life you desired before your oh so gruesome death~."
...I nodded weakly.
"Great. Well then, let's start with the main one."
His hands took the scroll over to his eyes, scimming through the seemingly endless paper as if it were a short book.
"First rule." The earth shook around us as his voice took on a low pitch.
"You must never disobey this contract; if you do so, you will be terminated."
My head hurt too much to understand the first rule.
How could you die after already dying? I took it as being banished from heaven or any kind of afterlife that exists in this strange place.
"Second!" The dots inside his head ignited, reminding me of two tiny flames.
"No matter what happens! Prioritise your assignments over anything else! However, this rule can be overruled under certain conditions!"
Every sentence he spoke to my ear was like none other.
Like the person he was before was different from what he has become now.
Until now, I didn't have much of a job, nor any opportunity to sign something like a contract, thanks to my young age.
"And the third rule! The one you have to follow until your new life is over!"
I swallowed my saliva, preparing for the worst.
Because even if his words were true, there was no quarantee id be able to do something for him.
"The moment your soul will be handed over to me! You have the right to live your life to the fullest!"
...
"Huh?"
And that's how... I became a Rift Delver.