Zeke floated in pervasive nothingness. He struggled to feel anything, could not think, and failed to move. In his most cognizant moments, he was reminded of the space between Earth and the Mortal Realm. He’d spent eons there, content with similar nothingness.

And yet, this was different, though subtly so.

The ephemeral pain, barely felt but still definitely there, was probably part of that. Before, the endless darkness was peaceful, and in the most profound way. But this? It was chaotic. Untethered. And agonizing.

But if there was one thing Zeke could endure, it was pain. He’d been forced to do so since the very beginning. Even going back to his life on Earth, pain had been familiar company. So, that was what he did. Still, he knew it would change him, that with every passing moment, it altered the very nature of his being. Because how could it not?

Gradually, Zeke acclimated to the abyss. It wasn’t pleasant, but a man could grow accustomed to anything – even endless pain. Or perhaps his mind had shattered, just like his body.

His body.

The necromantic vessel.

[Wrath of Annihilation].

His memories came tumbling back, though he felt detached from it all. It was as if he’d heard about those events from a stranger. He cared, inasmuch as he could, but they couldn’t affect him. Not anymore.

Indeed, the only thing that mattered was the abyss. And the pain, even if he’d steadily grown accustomed to it.

Like that, a subjective eternity passed. In the distance – or close enough that if he reached out, he could touch it – a tantalizing light danced. Zeke didn’t know what it was. He scarcely cared. But it called to him in a way that the abyss could not rival. If he could have moved, he would have gone to it.

Yet, something held him in place. Or maybe it was the nothing itself that prevented him from going to the light.

Then, suddenly, he heard a noise. It was so abrupt that, for the longest time, Zeke couldn’t even remember what sound was. Then, that too came rushing back to him, and after an indistinct time, he recognized the noise for what it was.

A voice.

And it was calling to him, steadily screaming his name.

“Ezekiel!” it yelled, piercing through the miasma of the abyss. He recognized the voice from somewhere, but he couldn’t place it. Not at first. Then, in an epiphany he couldn’t even begin to explain, a name came to him.

“Eveline,” he thought.

“Yes! You must come to me, Ezekiel! Come to me now!” she said with no small degree of urgency. It didn’t make sense to him, why she would be so agitated.

A subjective eternity later, he saw a different light at the edge of the abyss. To his perception, it was mostly the same. And yet, it was markedly dissimilar as well. Zeke couldn’t understand it, but he accepted it nonetheless.

In any case, that was the origin of Eveline’s voice. So, he asked what he thought of as the most pertinent question. “Why?”

“People are depending on you,” she said, sounding much further away than only moments before. “Please. Think of everyone who needs you to –”

And then her voice was gone, leaving Zeke enmeshed in the desperate peace of his painful existence. He drifted a little closer to the second light, and his thoughts cleared. More importantly, he remembered precisely what Eveline had referenced. All the kobolds. The beastkin. Pudge. Talia. Tens of thousands of people would assuredly perish if he never returned.

But even as those thoughts crossed his mind, he wondered why it even mattered? What good was life, anyway? It was filled with constant struggle, ups and downs, joy and pain. He much preferred the constant agony that his existence within the abyss had become, if only because he lacked the context of comparison. With no pleasure, pain lost much of its bite.

Abruptly, a fire ignited in his mind.

If Zeke was honest, he’d never been driven by good deeds or heroism. He had saved people. He tried to put the needs of others first. That was what being a decent person entailed.

But it was not what had pushed him to continue on, to take one step after another along his path of progression. It wasn’t what kept him going, even when every fiber of his being had told him to stop.

No. He wasn’t driven by helping others. Instead, he was motivated by his own ego, by the treading the path itself. By continuing to strive for the a higher tier. To take the next step. To be better that he was even a moment before.

It was the same thing that had pushed him to become an elite athlete back on Earth. Certainly, he could trace some of it back to his father’s abusive attempt to live vicariously through his son. However, even that took a backseat to his own personal ethos. The core of who he was had never been about baseball or winning or fighting, though he enjoyed those things. Instead, it was about improvement. It was the idea that if he pushed himself hard enough, he could one day become the best version of himself.

Of course, what that best version meant was up for debate, but after being reborn in those troll caves, Zeke had latched onto personal power as his gauge. The eternal treadmill of gaining levels, of developing skills, of meeting one goal after another – that pursuit was what defined him.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

And it was what burned so brightly in his mind, banishing the peace he’d come to take for granted.

He didn’t want peace.

He didn’t want quiet.

He wanted the struggle and the pain, the joy and the triumph. He needed it because, without that, he was nothing.

So, with the fire of ambition roaring through his mind, Zeke turned his attention away from the first light and focused in on the second. The abyss faded from his thoughts as he latched onto the light – of his life – and pulled. At first, it did nothing. He had no body, and yet, he leveraged his mind in its place. And eventually, he inched toward it. That small distance felt like a thousand miles, but that was enough to spur Zeke on.

Gradually, inch by agonizing inch, he moved closer.

In the abyss, time had no meaning, but if it had, it would have been like walking to the moon. Or further. But Zeke didn’t care for distances. Nor was he concerned with the passage of time. He only cared about his goal.

At some point, he realized that the abyss wasn’t responsible for his pain. Rather, it was his Will. The power of his Path of Arcane Destruction burned through him, and he suspected that it was the only reason he hadn’t moved on. Zeke had no idea how that worked, but it gave him a clue as to how to speed things up.

He embraced his path, harnessing his Will. The pain increased a thousandfold, but he embraced that as well, welcoming it to him. More importantly, the pace of his steady trek toward the light increased, and before long, he’d made discernible progress. It loomed before him like the sun, torturing him with its proximity.

He pushed harder, and the pain increased accordingly.

Soon enough, Zeke could no longer ignore it. So, he did the opposite, diving headfirst into the agonizing miasma. It welcomed him like an old friend, wrapping its arms around him and squeezing until he could neither think nor feel.

But he kept going toward that light.

Finally, he saw an opening. A hole in the nothingness that beckoned to him in ways he couldn’t understand. Through that bright, white portal was hope and joy and fear and every other emotion he couldn’t currently feel. And he needed those things. In his state, Zeke wasn’t certain why he knew that, but he was aware of it nonetheless. And it only grew stronger as he inched toward the aperture.

And then, it happened. At last, he plunged through and into whiteness. Zeke fell face-first, his cheek hitting the ground a moment later.

“I thought you’d never make it,” came another voice. This one was familiar, though not nearly as much as Eveline’s.

Zeke looked up to see a short man with broad shoulders looking down at him. He was maybe four feet tall, with leaves and twigs interwoven into his beard.

“Oberon,” he said.

“Ah, so you remember me. Good. I had wondered if your mind would survive the abyss,” the dwarf said, extending his hand. Zeke took it, then let himself be pulled to his feet.

“What happened? Why am I here?”

“Because you died. Mostly. Once someone reaches your level of power, the lines get a little blurry,” Oberon explained. “More importantly, you glimpsed the final battle, didn’t you?”

Suddenly, Zeke remembered the world-sized war he’d witnessed. It had only been there for an instant, but the image was burned into his mind. So, he said, “I think so. What was it?”

“That is our goal,” Oberon said. “Some interpret it as a war between heaven and hell, but it’s not. The two sides are more fundamentally opposed than demons and men.”

“That’s what you described it as,” Zeke pointed out. He remembered it distinctly, even if he’d been a bit distracted by all the other information that had been conveyed during that meeting.

“Sake of brevity. Humans tend to process a battle between heaven and hell a little more easily than they can comprehend the notion of beings from an entirely different dimension trying to unmake our reality,” the dwarf stated. “But that’s what we’re dealing with. Or we will be if you make it to the Ethereal Realm. Do that, and you can join me. Together, we’ll ascend to the Divine Realm where we will defeat the invaders once and for all.”

“That’s the point of all this, then?” Zeke asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Of course. Why else would the Framework have been created?” Oberon asked.

Zeke just shrugged. He didn’t know enough to offer an answer. Instead, he asked another question, “I heard a voice telling me that I shouldn’t have seen that Final Battle. Who was that?”

“The Arbiter. It is the final power of our universe.”

“Is it God?”

“Maybe,” Oberon said. “I don’t know. No one does, at least as far as the Ethereal Realm. Perhaps we’ll find out when we ascend.”

Zeke shook his head. “I don’t understand. People talk about you and others like you as if you’re gods. Why haven’t you ascended already?” he asked.

“It is complicated.”

“I think we have time,” Zeke persisted, glancing around the pristine white room. It was no different than the last time he’d visited, which wasn’t surprising. There just wasn’t anything else to see in what Oberon had once described as a construct.

“People are selfish. They are also often cowards. No one wants to ascend until they are certain that they can maintain the power they’ve worked so hard to compile,” Oberon explained.

“And you?”

“I don’t want to go alone.”

It was a simple statement, but Zeke felt a world of regret in those few words.

“I see. So, what’s next?”

“You go back to your body, where you will spend quite some time healing. Then, I expect you’ll be able to guide your own hand. However, I will give you a few hints. First, the necromancer you thought you killed in the Mortal Realm was not slain. Indeed, he is responsible for many of the problems you recently faced.”

“Micayne is alive?” Zeke asked. “I killed him.”

“You did not. And you will not, unless you can find his phylactery. It is the tether that binds his soul to your world, and without it, he will be torn apart.”

Zeke just nodded. “What else?”

“You took that better than expected.”

“I realized that I didn’t get any kill energy when I thought I killed him. Your explanation makes sense.”

Oberon scratched his beard. “That will be your first challenge. The second will be even more difficult. Shar Maelaine’s forces are arrayed against you. This is my fault. She fears what you represent.”

“And what’s that?”

“A threat to her power in this realm and the next,” Oberon answered. “When you awaken, you will have only a short time before a war breaks out.”

“That’s nothing new. I’ve been at war for a while now.”

“So you have. And finally, the most difficult challenge of all is that you must find your way to the Ethereal Realm through Hell.”

“What? Why?”

“You will not make it otherwise. If you ascend from your current realm, you will be forced to swear allegiance to one of the other so-called gods, or you will be killed,” Oberon answered. “The only way to avoid that is to come in through the back door, so to speak. The demons will not force you to make such a choice. If you have the power to brave the Pit, they will leave you to make your own way.”

“Do I have that kind of power?”

“Not yet. But by the time you reach the peak of the Eternal Realm, you will,” Oberon answered. “Our time has run out, though. You must move on, one way or the other. Make your choice.”

Despite the dwarf’s vague statement, Zeke understood it well enough. He needed to pick a light. Now didn’t have the abyss clouding his mind, he recognized what they represented. One way was death. The other, which was the one he’d already chosen, was life.

But it was more than that. Life meant struggle. Pain. Hardship. While death was peace. Zeke only thought about it for an instant before he reaffirmed the choice he’d already made. He would return to the Eternal Realm, then figure out a way to accomplish the goals Oberon had set for him.

“Thank you,” he said to the dwarf. The choice didn’t need to be stated. Oberon already knew.

“You’re welcome.”

And then Zeke opened his eyes.