Dennis stood petrified at the sight of his corpse slumped over his PC, his lifeless eyes frozen in the exact direction he now stood. The monitor still glowed faintly, illuminating the stiffened fingers resting on the keyboard, while a faint sour smell hung in the air like something long forgotten and left to rot.
From the corner of his dirty room filled with filthy clothes, empty cans, and garbage bags, several medical officials slowly pulled his body away from the desk while another team unfolded a stretcher with practiced indifference. Their gloves brushed against stained fabric and greasy surfaces without reaction, as though they had seen far worse. One of them muttered something while adjusting his grip, and another began checking the rigid limbs as if cataloging an object rather than a person.
His parents stood by the door, both stiff and awkward, while an officer explained the situation in a calm professional tone. She spoke about cardiac arrest, possible heart failure, and the estimated time of death, but Dennis could not clearly hear her words because their voices sounded distant, like echoes traveling through thick water. Their lips moved, their heads nodded, and yet everything felt disconnected from him, as if he was watching a muted recording of his own death.
In fact, the world itself seemed darker than usual, the colors washed out and drained, like someone had dimmed reality.
"I'm dead?" he mumbled, yet there was no surprise in his gaze, only a dull acceptance.
When Dennis was young, his homeroom teacher once told him he would become a failure and never amount to anything in life. She said it bluntly after he submitted another blank assignment and laughed it off, thinking she was just being cruel.
Guess what.
She was right.
Dennis grew up into a fat slob living in his mother's basement, surviving on junk food and endless gaming sessions while days blurred into nights and nights into weeks. He avoided calls, ignored responsibilities, and drowned himself in anime, cartoons, and online worlds where he could pretend to be someone else. His parents slowly stopped asking about his future, stopped knocking on his door, and eventually behaved as though he did not exist. That was why it took them one hundred and twenty eight hours to realize Dennis had slumped over his computer and died from cardiac arrest, his body quietly decaying while the world outside continued moving without him.
This was not even a sob story about a boy with a tragic past. He was just a failure who chose fiction over reality and comfort over effort, and he died living that shallow life to the fullest.
Suddenly, Dennis felt cold.
A biting chill seeped into him, crawling through his chest and wrapping around his spine. He hugged himself instinctively as his shoulders trembled, his gaze darting across the room in search of the source of the cold wind. The windows were still locked, the curtains unmoving, and the door remained shut, yet the temperature continued dropping like he was standing in an open freezer.
That was when he saw it.
A mighty figure stood behind him, easily over eight feet tall, its massive frame wrapped in a dusty torn cloak with a hood that completely hid its face, leaving only darkness beneath the fabric. On its back were three pairs of batlike wings folded tightly, their outlines barely visible beneath the heavy cloth, while its hands remained cupped and hidden deep within its sleeves.
Dennis's mouth opened wide but no sound came out. He felt warmth spread down his legs as his body betrayed him, his knees trembling violently while his muscles refused to obey.
The cloaked figure moved forward, yet it did not look like walking. Its robes brushed the floor, but its body glided seamlessly, like it was floating through the air. Every motion was smooth and silent, unnatural in a way that made his chest tighten.
Within seconds, it stood directly in front of him, towering over Dennis and casting a suffocating shadow that swallowed him whole.
"Follow."
The word came in a strange language, yet Dennis understood it perfectly, the meaning appearing directly inside his mind.
Without waiting for a response, the figure turned, and the room began to tremble. The air ahead of it tore open like fabric being ripped apart, revealing a single massive crimson eye embedded in the void. The eye rotated slowly, scanning the room while bathing everything in a blood red glow. Its gaze finally settled on Dennis.
His mind went blank.
Fear surged beyond anything he had ever felt, so overwhelming that his thoughts simply shut down. His body trembled uncontrollably while his consciousness dulled, as if his mind had forced itself into numbness to prevent him from collapsing entirely.
After staring at him briefly, the eye slowly closed.
The space beneath it cracked open, and a massive ancient stone passageway rose from the ground, its structure wrapped in thick bloody thorns that pulsed faintly like living veins. The doorway itself was filled with gray mist, dense and unmoving, revealing nothing of what lay beyond.
The cloaked figure began moving forward.
Dennis's body followed.
His legs moved against his will, each step forced, stiff, and unnatural, as though invisible strings dragged him forward. His mind screamed, but his body ignored him completely. In a last act of desperation, his blank gaze searched the room for help, for anyone who might notice, for anything that could stop this.
The medics continued working.
His parents kept listening.
No one reacted.
No one looked at him.
No one even sensed what was happening.
That was when Dennis finally realized.
He was completely alone.
On the other side of the gate stood a massive underground cavern. Jagged stone spikes hung from the ceiling and erupted from the ground like the fangs of a giant beast. The cavern stretched high into the darkness while a crimson glow dyed everything red.
The pungent stench of death lingered everywhere. The silence felt unnatural and every footstep echoed endlessly through the cave as though unseen things were listening from the darkness.
Ahead of them flowed a sickly green river. An old wooden boat rested on the bank, its cracked frame looking ready to fall apart at any moment. A pair of paddles lay neatly at its sides as though waiting for the next passenger.
The cloaked figure continued forward as though it had walked this path countless times. Dennis followed helplessly. He struggled, screamed, and resisted, but his body refused to obey.
He could not even speak.
'Is this Hell?' the thought surfaced, heavy and slow, the only thing he could still call his own.
They reached the boat and then everything changed.
A blinding beam of light tore through the cavern from above, cutting through the crimson haze like a blade as a single ray of brilliant sunlight crashed down directly onto Dennis. The entire cave trembled violently, the ground cracking beneath the pressure of something far greater than anything present.
"His dues have been paid. Hand him over!" A voice boomed with authority.
It boomed across existence itself, shaking not just the cavern but the very air, the river, the walls, everything responding to its command as if the world itself acknowledged its presence.
The cloaked figure stopped. For the first time, it hesitated. It turned its hood slightly toward Dennis, the darkness beneath shifting subtly as if something within was observing him, and for three silent seconds the two remained locked in that moment.
Then it moved.
Casually, almost lazily, it extended one long crooked arm to the side, its pale fingers stretching outward as the ground beside them split open. Stone cracked and tore apart as another ancient gate rose violently from beneath the earth, towering high with the same gray mist sealing its entrance.
Its finger pointed.
"Go."
The command carried no force, yet Dennis's body obeyed instantly. He turned and walked directly toward the newly formed gate as though drawn by an unseen pull. The gray mist swallowed his vision the moment he crossed the threshold, everything fading into nothingness.
Buzz!
Blinding, overwhelming light flooded his senses, forcing his hands to rise instinctively to shield his eyes. His vision burned as he staggered forward, his mind struggling to process the sudden shift from darkness to brilliance.
Slowly, painfully, his eyes adjusted.
A massive palace stretched before him, radiant and grand, its structure carved from gleaming stone and polished gold. Towering pillars lined the hall, each supported by intricately crafted statues of dragons.
Not dragons.
Dennis eyes narrowed for a moment before widening with shock
"Kobolds!" He gasped.
Golden kobolds stood as pillars, their forms frozen in poses of strength and reverence as they held up the massive ceiling above, their expressions proud and their details impossibly refined.
At the far end of the hall sat a throne and on it A kobold barely four feet tall.
It sat draped in regal golden robes that shimmered faintly under the light, a delicate flower crown resting atop its head in strange contrast to its sharp reptilian features.
A long gray goatee hung from its chin, and its clawed hand continuously stroked it in a repetitive motion, as if it could not leave it alone even for a second. Its legs dangled freely from the throne, swinging slightly back and forth, unable to reach the ground.
Yet despite its size the pressure it emitted dwarfed everything Dennis had felt so far.
Its eyes locked onto him.
"Hmmmm... far from the best, but I guess this will have to do." The Greater Kobold nodded while rubbing his goatee.