I awoke. Not with any supernatural clarity nor cat-like reflexes, no, I likened my awakening to working through a nights worth of steel reserve and exactly zero food or water. Being accustomed to it didn't help, my mind forcing every sensation away from conscious thought as I deliberately tried to go back to sleep, hoping to avoid the worst of this hangover. 

Sadly it didn't work. So, with reluctance, I tried to go through my memories and recall just what in the heck happened the night before that would have caused this. I wasn't planning on celebrating anything, I think, nor mourning anyone and I hadn't partied since I started trucking. I froze then as it hit me.

'I died.' whispered across my mind as the memory came back with vicious clarity.

The car that hit me, the doctors fighting a losing battle to keep me alive, the terrible sensation of pain slowly ebbing to nothingness. Then a spark of rage. A terrible anger filled me at the sheer unfairness in the face of inevitability, the lack of control and the inability to set my own course. I could not stand by and let my life fizzle away.

With a fury I clung to life, even as the world faded and the pain passed to numbing non-existence. I grasped at my life with all my might, with every part of my soul I fought the coming dark. I could feel something, almost like sorrow, nagging just out of reach but I ignored it, clinging to the feeling of life as it was the only thing I could still sense. My nails bit in, my muscles ached with the force I was putting on it as my body and mind strained against it.

I must have lost.

I was hyperventilating now, taking short hard breaths as I held my eyes completely shut. I'm not sure how long I stayed like that, rocking back and forth on the floor until my panic abated and a worrying curiosity hit me. I couldn't feel the air rushing past my lips. My hands should be gripping tight enough to draw blood but I didn't even feel them until my mind tried to check on the rest of my body. I couldn't feel pain, though I still felt oddly numb, and I couldn't hear anything. I had to know.

Slowly, praying not to see fire or utter void, I cracked my eyes open and a sudden rush of sensory input forced my lids back together, cutting that input off. I hadn't grasped much but I could check the void off my short list of places not to be. This time, focusing on just one eye, I slowly opened it and gazed into the brightly lit area my soul had wound up landing.

The circular room I was in was solid stone, perhaps the size of a small living room with enough room for a couch, chair and television and I could probably reach up and brush my fingers against the ceiling. And in the very center on a stone pedestal was a basketball sized green orb. Light poured out of that orb in a slow array that filled the room with a vibrant green color, showing the odd uniformity of the walls that made the whole place seem ominously artificial.

Despite my worrying surroundings I just had to know, my eye slowly creeping down to gaze at my hands and finding nothing. No skin, no flesh, no bones. Not even a ghostly aura or anything to indicate what I was feeling was a body at all. For all i could tell i was a set of floating eyes, but i could still feel in a way. My hands met, or they felt like they did, and fingers interlocked in a strangely numb sensation but one that was as real to my mind as the stone walls around me appeared. Along with that green orb.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I gazed at that orb, pondering on my situation. For all that I could tell I was a ghost or spirit and this was my punishment or reward. "Nothing to it then." I could feel myself moving closer, taking steps that made no noise in the room. "Green means go right?" I almost felt like I was shaking, my earlier panic attack having only faded enough to focus on what survival I could. My hand reached out and my fingers gently brushed against the smooth surface, arm stretched out as if it would sprout teeth and bite the ghost appendage. A strange sensation passed through my 'body' like shivers up my spine, the earlier sluggishness receding and replaced with a cool and calm feeling as if I was fresh and ready after a shower. And then a little window appeared.

I was familiar with things like this in vr where a window would appear in game but this maddening blue square was hardly an image on a screen inches from my eyes. It hovered in front of me at arms length, rounded edges and trimmed with a bronze color that looked like wire holding the image up. And, on the blue square, was immaculate hand writing done in cursive that completely went against the artificial nature of the window. 

"John. Due to the nature of your death and subsequent refusal to give up on life i have been forced to make other arrangements. While not common it isn't entirely uncommon for people to  refuse to move on, clinging to life for some reason or another such as waiting for a lover or wanting to watch over their children. The solution to those is simple, time. Time for them to accept that others have moved on and will live well despite their deaths, or simply waiting long enough to meet them. You however proved to be of another sort, clinging to life to defy death alone. That provided me with some difficulty in guiding you on your way as no end would be accepted by your soul, so I have chosen to guide you to a beginning instead. Here you will find a new life to live and, truly, I hope you will be fulfilled by it so that, when the time comes again, we may meet and I can guide you on and enjoy the stories you tell me to pass the time. I wish you luck my dear friend and offer you this small bit of advice, grit your teeth for this will be utterly strange." ~Guide

Utterly strange was utterly underselling it. I was beginning to wonder what kind of boat man being my soul had been snatched by when I realized that the last part may not have meant the situation, rather something else was happening. I couldn't take my fingers from the orb. I glanced past the screen, which chose that moment to fade away, and saw the orb glowing a little brighter. The slight pattern of light was moving faster, changing and shifting as something happened to it. 

I tried to pull away from it, even putting my foot up on the pedestal and hauling on my hand enough that any real fingers would have pulled away from their sockets. I was beginning to panic again and cast about, hoping to find something that i had missed that might help me free myself, all the while the light grew brighter and patterns began showing through, projected on the walls as they spun in a dizzying dance. I stopped my panicking, for the most part, and fixed my gaze on the orb then took the guide's advice. I grit my teeth and pressed in, my full palm pushing against the orb. 

The strange feeling came back though multiplied tenfold, my muscles spasmed and it felt as if an army of ants crawled over every inch of me. I fought the feelings down and pressed my mind to focus on the one thing i'd focused on before my death. I could still feel that spark of life deep in my aching chest, I could remember the sensation of clinging to it so I clung again as the feeling of an ache slowly intensified until I was sure it was the sensation of a heart attack. Then I felt a beat. Like one I had once had it ripped through me, slamming into my chest like a sledgehammer. Then again, and again. A drumming heartbeat that was thundering away like a steam train as the intense lights and sensations peaked and started to fade.

It took some time for me to relax and let the tension flow out of my mind, finding myself breathing again and still missing the sensation of air in my lungs. But, as I came down from that insane surge, I felt something gently beating in my chest as I slowly realized my heart was pumping away again. This wasn't a sensation I thought I could fake, like my breathing, and I realized, looking at the orb, that each pulse was matched in the orb by a gentle brightening and dimming of its inner light. I had come back to life, or my spirit occupied some new body and the sensations I felt were tied to this strange green ball.

Then another curious screen appeared in front of me, with its simple blue background and white text. 

Unknown Dungeon Level:1

Classification: unknown.

Forces: 0.

Resources: 0

I puzzled over the screen for a moment then groaned, having seen this in fiction more than a few times. "I'm a dungeon core?"