Within a vast sea of possibility, a droplet of potential sends ripples throughout the ever-shifting energies of what could have been and what may just be. It moves outward, expands, and multiplies. Within this vast nothing, a Tree sprouts. Each fruit, a world. Some rotten. Some pristine. Others are unremarkable but healthy. These are the common fruit, the worlds the entity had least interest in.
A cluster of these realities blink out of existence as the end of their time has been reached. The apples fall, rotting into nothingness, when one of them has its fall arrested by an outstretched hand. The hand, as vast as space itself, it is void taking form, with stars shining within its pitch black nothingness. It holds the apple up to a pair of eyes, dark and full of burning embers made out of raw potential in its purest form. This vast, omniscient eyes stare at the apple. As they watch it intently, a smile forms upon a pair of lips as the face seemingly materialize out of the vast nothing around them.
“Ah.” A voice purrs out into the void, deep as the ocean and as smooth as the sound of gentle waves on an abandoned beach. “Sliced Bread. That's an odd cataclysm.” It says, seemingly nonplussed. Within the world in her vast hands, her attentions focuses on a store clerk, tiredly working through their night shift. The clerk has their short, red hair in a messy side-cut. Their name tag reads 'Saga'.
***
Saga was extraordinarily ordinary in many ways for a swede. While not the blonde, tall, 10 our of 10 that Hollywood associated with their country, they were instead tall but lanky. They did have blue-eyes that seemed to be associated with their country at least. They had a little bit of fat on them, but they worked out, and they had a little bit of muscle underneath. Not much but enough to balance it out, in their own opinion. Currently, they were dressed in the 'BQ-K8 20/4' apron, which was draped somewhat awkwardly across their frame. They were otherwise dressed in a black t-shirt and a pair of black khakis. At 6'3, Saga was tall by most standards, but where they lived, 6'1 felt to be about the average.
Saga was approaching 30, and life seemed to be a meandering, vicious cycle of self-doubt and soul-crushing repetition. Unlike what their name would imply, they were not living the enchanted fairytale life. They were working a 9-6 job at a small tobacco store and Gas station. All while their friends were pairing up and starting families together or otherwise moving on with their lives. Even Tim, their best friend, was heading away from this place. Leaving their little dump of a town. To say that Trollhålan was a small town was like calling the desert dry. You could tell by a glance that even by Swedish standards the place was nowhere to build a future. It was firmly placed out in the sticks, you had to take a bus for half an hour to take a regional train if you wanted to reach the closest thing to a city. It was the kind of place where whenever an old person died within town limits, half the town went into mourning.
Saga only lived here because there was nowhere they felt at home anymore. They had come out here with their mother, not too long after Saga's father died in a car accident. They had lived here for so long and even if they had been studying elsewhere, their mothers' sickness had made them come back. And now where could they go, with nothing left but the extremely cheap apartment where they lived. Moving elsewhere would cost far beyond their means. So they were stuck here.
Forever.
Saga sighed as they checked out a loaf of bread for a very jittery customer. They had never seen them before, but they had met a tweaker or two and figured it was some sort of withdrawal or drug involved. But even so, the person's skin seemed sickly, and his eyes were strange. Almost as if the eyes were vacant of intelligent life. That spark that Saga was used to seeing in people just wasn't there. They could not see that slight hint of recognition that they were talking to a living, normal human. Instead, the strange man gave them a dull stare. In those dull, lifeless eyes, Saga felt a strange, unsettling hunger. What's more, was that the strange man had yet to attempt pulling out a wallet or cash.
“Are you alright?” Saga asked which seemed to startle the person. The strange man jerked back as if shot before he suddenly and violently lashed out.
The movement of the person's arm was so fast it was an actual blur to Saga. They stepped back with horror as something sharp raked across their throat. The shock was written all across the pale face of Saga as one of their hands reached up and clasped at their throat. Warm liquid ran through their fingers and a searing pain soon accompanied it. Blood. Did the person have a knife? How did that sickly person move so fast? Were they about to die? They stumbled backward, against the lockbox for cigarettes and snus as their strength rapidly left their body. They sank to the floor, sputtering and gurgling, trying to speak.
The last thing they saw before darkness took them was a woman in black, with skin as pale as to be almost translucent. She appeared out of thin air and Saga stared in shock and horror as the lady conjured a spear made out of woven silver metal, and plunged it through the thing that had just killed Saga.
“I regret that I found you too late, young soul” The woman spoke. Her voice was strange and muddled. But perhaps that was just because Saga was dying. “Now I have another soul to sort out.” Her words rang out in the final moments of Saga's life. As the tile floor turned crimson with their blood, the woman reached for Saga.
“But don’t worry. Death can be a new beginning”
***
Darkness wrapped about them, and Saga was no more.
Saga felt themselves come to. Felt their spirit surge into a vast nothingness before they suddenly came roaring back into existence. They soon realized that they found themselves in a large and cavernous room with walls so high that the ceiling was last among gray clouds. But their eyes ended up staring at the bread that they still held in a death grip. The bag of toast that had been the cause of their death.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Ah, fuck” Saga stared at the toast in their hand. “Was I killed over…. toast” They wondered, eyes not leaving the bag of bread, their only link to their pre-death existence. Why were they allowed toast in the afterlife? There were hundreds if not thousands of questions running through their head. But it all came back to staring at the damn bag of toasts.
As they continue to panic, a glowing set of runes appear before them, suspended in the air. They swirled about before morphing into text that could read. Saga wanted to ask what the hell was going on, but before they could a disembodied voice startled them as it began to read from the text.
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“Congratulations! You have died”
“Your death has been deemed premature.”
“Your spiritual anchor is
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"Wait. What do you mean my anchor is null. I should not be dead! Please put me back. Please.” But Sagas' panic was cut off by the runes forming a new set of words. Accompanied by the same, strange disembodied voice.
“Alternative Spiritual anchor found. Locking in. Soul Transfer begins.”
“Wait." Sagas' eyes widened in disbelief, "Wha-” Saga started but then the cavernous room was suddenly no more and Saga found themselves slung through a strange kaleidoscope of colors and broken imagery. All manners of alien words flashed before their eyes, a river of images of places fantastic and terrible. They were dragged along it until finally, their vision settled on a massive world that seemed vastly different from Saga's own, yet still possessed numerous, strange similarities.
Then Saga was once against plunged into nothingness.
***
Within the northern reaches of a large planet and world not too unlike Saga's old one in terms of climate, reality screamed and tore itself apart for a few seconds. There was a pop in the world's very fabric of reality as an unlikely visitor came crashing, literally, into existence.
As reality spat them out, Saga crashed face-first into a massive pile of snow. Their nostrils and mouth were soon very intimately aware of the taste of this world's snow. Grunting, they dragged themselves up and out of it. They blinked as they tried to get the taste of pine and dirt out of their mouth. They ran a hand over their mouth as they took in their surroundings while disoriented and confused.
No matter where they looked they soon realized that they were standing in the middle of a pine forest that stretched as far as they could look in any direction. No roads were cutting through, no hikers' trail, or anything indicating civilization. There was no sound of cars in the distance.
Saga was no stranger to nature. As a kid, they had been out camping with their dad, right up until he died. And as a teen, they had been LARPing in the forests of Sweden. Stayed a week sleeping in a tent, with most trees around. But even then, it was rare to be so far away as to not see a single trail or errant sign of civilization.
The reality of it all began to become terrifyingly clear as Saga looked about with wild eyes, trying to make sense of it all. Their hand trembled as they reached up to touch their throat and they soon let out an audible whimper they could feel where the skin rose in a freshly healed scar.
“I can’t believe I actually died,” Saga said to themselves as they looked around, the dark forest looking all the more oppressive now. As if to compound their confusion, the runes from before appeared. This time without the accompanying voiceover, however. Instead, they hung silently in the air right before Saga’s eyes.
Saga studied the text before them as they only found themselves with more questions.
{You have died and been resurrected.}
{Affinity unlocked: Death. Secondary Affinity has yet to be determined}
As Saga stared at the text before them, they began to frown more and more as confusion and disbelief grew within their mind. Trying to wrap their head around it, nothing added up. They have died, which means they were in the afterlife. A bit of a shocker for an atheist, but it was what it was. They could have an existential crisis when they figured out the specifics of this place since it appeared they could still feel things such as a cold.
“What kind of afterlife is this though…” Saga asked themselves while rubbing the back of their head. "It reads like a videogame."
"Hey. Text thing. Can you tell me where I am?" Saga inquired, trying to query the strange, seemingly omnipotent text. It appeared to want to guide them, so Saga saw no reason not to try and squeeze it for more information. It responded, whirling into existence.
{Location; The Everfrozen Wilds.}
The message popped up before their eyes and Saga found they could minimize it with a nod of their head or just through a simple thought.
Thinking to themselves, Saga tried to put some semblance of order into the situation. They had no idea if there was any sort of civilization in this strange life after death. And whatever place this, was, afterlife or not, they could still feel pain. The crash into the snow had demonstrated that. And they knew they were not dressed for a prolonged stay out in what seemed like a northern winter. But if this was the afterlife, could they even die? As the questions just kept popping up withing their mind, Saga looked for anything that could give them a sense of direction, just so they had something to grasp and hold on to. They had no idea how they had stayed so calm about it all so far, by all rights they should be out of their mind with worry. It was a surprise even to Saga. Even if they had never been the kind of person to panic easily, this was way beyond the pale.
Their thoughts were interrupted by the rumbling of their stomach.
“What the hell. You need to eat in the afterlife?”