Pure white surrounded me. Without frost. Without cold. The chill of nothingness. My body incorporeal. In the vast space of nothing, I saw my first something. Unhollow was I when the book presented itself to me. A new chance to redeem. A new chance to die.

* * *

“Hurry your ass, Carmine. We’re going to be late,” Alex said to me. I couldn’t bother to look up from my phone. My texts weren’t going through to Donovan; winters in Kansas were always a gamble. Alex threw a snowball that whiffed beside my head, his aim was laughable.

“You missed.”

“The next one won’t if you don’t hurry up!”

“I already texted Don that we’re here. Go bang on his door or something.”

I admired Donovan’s house whenever we visited. Two stories, a beautiful porch, a three-car-garage, and the suburbs were in walking distance to a strip mall. Even though a blizzard kept everyone else huddled in their homes, it didn’t stop us. As broke college students, we scraped together what little money we had for matinee tickets to the movies. And damn the world if the three of us weren’t going to see the next iteration of Chaos Killers.

Alex pounded on the door repeatedly and screamed all types of profanities. We were lucky that Don’s parents were on holiday, but I feared the wrath of his sister most of all. The garage opened with a mechanical screech and there she was, Sage, peeking her head out while wearing an oversized t-shirt that drooped to her bare legs.

“The hell do you want!?” she yelled.

“We’re waiting on your dumbass stepbrother!” Alex yelled back. “Can you go get him!?”

“Why don’t you go get him!?”

“Can’t you see that’s what I’m trying—” The front door opened and Donovan stood there charmingly, putting on pink gloves two sizes too small for his dark hands.

“Sorry, sorry. I couldn’t find… y’know.” He flashed a bright grin and ushered for Alex to get off his porch.

“Where are you going?” Sage asked with chattering teeth.

Her tiny space heater glowed a warm orange in the forceful frost of the snowfall. Her garage was a workshop of rust and stainless steel. Anything that broke, she’d further destroy. If she ever repaired or created anything, I’d never know… and it’s not like she’d tell me anyway.

While she conversed with Don, all I could see were the brush strokes of rose-red painted upon the pale canvas of her face and knees, the chestnut brown of her hair, and the honey-colored eyes that hid behind her frost-ridden breath.

“You’re staring again, poet,” Alex snickered. “Thinking of what to put in your little diary book?”

I glared at him and shook my head. “They’re poems.”

We shivered as the snow built around us. My mittens wrapped around my face. Alex paced back and forth. He checked each second that went by on his watch. The countdown to the last showing of Chaos Killers III ticked down.

“We’re leaving without you! Come on, Carm.”

“Yeah, alright.” I turned my back and took one slow lumbering step after another while Alex raced ahead down the street. His puffy red jacket was as bright as the brake lights of the few cars that plagued the street. Each breath that nerd took fogged up his glasses; and he would wipe them with his damp gloves to no avail.

Don’s footfalls crunched through the snow behind me. “Thanks for waiting,” he said.

“Of course.” We walked in tandem with our hands buried deep into our jacket pockets.

“You excited?” he asked.

“I could live without it. I’m just glad to be out of the dorm.”

“I hear that,” he said. “This storm has lasted too damn long. When did it start? Like the third of the month? And what is it today?”

“The 17th.”

Don scoffed, “Way to bring in the new year.”

Our walk to the theater was blistering cold. I had no scarf so I kept my chin close to my collar and braced the howling winds. My green eyes were half-shut and glued to the top of my shoes. Donovan and I lost track of Alex ahead but knew we had a block left to go.

As we pressed onward into the veil of frost, I tripped on a concrete curb and fell with a silent thud into the pillow of cold. When I raised my head, Don was gone. I followed in his footprints and pushed ahead. But eventually… they vanished as well.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Pure white surrounded me.

I could not see my sneakers nor the hands in front of my face. My body was so cold that it numbed all of my senses. I no longer felt the wind or heard the howls. My breath, my whispers, my shouts, and the cries to my friends were soundless.

Silence encompassed all.

The snow was gone. The concrete was gone. Just the pure white landscape remained until it felt like I was gone. I couldn’t tell when I lost my reality, for even my mind felt cold and hollow. Alive? Dead? Dreaming? I knew not and could not muster the energy to fight my descension into nothingness. I only had my consciousness that floated in this white fog of purgatory before me.

What the hell even happened to me? Did I goddamn freeze to death walking to a shitty action flick?

In the mist, a table draped with red cloth caught my eye. With the thought of my legs in motion, I walked to it. An open leather-bound book and a feather quill inside a jar of ink sat atop. My ghostly mind raced with questions that could never be answered. I knew not if this was the Book of Life or if the Gates of Heaven were defunded and this is how I’d enter eternal paradise or the pits of damnation.

I willed the book to flip to other pages. All the same. Marked and signed with ink from others. Some pages were splattered and drenched in the oozing black while others were torn from the book entirely.

It returned to my own empty page at the very end. As I read the gilded lettering, it reminded me more of a character sheet for a roleplaying game than a list of virtues and sins that I’ve accomplished.

Choose Your Bloodline.

Distribute Four Points Into The Following Attributes.

Sign Your Name.

Three directions that I had no choice but to follow. The quill called to me and I obliged. The pen dripped with ink as I read over the options for my bloodline.

Dwarf [+1 to CRAFTING]

Elf [+1 to DEXTERITY]

Beast [+1 to ENDURANCE]

Orc [+1 to STRENGTH]

No humans, huh?

After all my years of wasting my life on games, I found it humorous that in my death all I’d see was another character creation sheet. I’ve done it all before: the warrior, the mage, the merchant, the sneaking rogue that specializes in archery, all of it. Nothing drew me to Orc in particular, but if I had another chance at life, why wouldn’t I be stronger?

Next, I had to distribute the four points into the following attributes:

STRENGTH [STR]

DEXTERITY [DEX]

ENDURANCE [END]

SPELLCASTING [SPL]

CRAFTING [CFT]

That’s it? Which one do I put points into to get smarter?

What was peculiar about the choices that I made was that I was unable to make any. It was as if the ink slipped off the pen each time I dipped it into the jar. I tried using my spectral hands to dump the ink onto the parchment but even then, no mark.

This was my life… or lack thereof. Trapped in limbo and not being able to finish the book. I was the last page. And I failed to complete it. I wandered the white nothingness in search of anything. But the table appeared before me in every direction.

Doubt a damn thing would even happen if I finished it. Guess I’ll go meander through this white hell forever.

I stared at the leather, the gilded lettering, and the ink that I'd previously placed. Time did not exist. Only the befores. And the afters. Before I saw the book. After I wrote in it. Before I failed to exist. After I wandered. Before I tried to flip the table over. And the after… when I heard the laughter.

“Who’s there!?” I shouted in my mind. The deep cackling echoed through my head. It was the only tangible sense I could feel that wasn’t caused by myself. I repeated it over and over, thankful to whatever oddity it was in this prison of nothing.

Eventually, the voice returned.

“This is the beginning of your death, Carmine. Now sign the book and embrace it.”

"Who are you!? God!? How do you know my name!?"

"I am your Creator. And you are nothing. You are what I wish for you to be and not to be. You may forever despise us, but may you take solace in the knowledge that your life is eternally forfeit. You, Carmine, are bound to this world to be fed upon. Nothing more. Nothing less. Your kind has come once before, and will fall once again. Whether by a beast, the lands, or your own hands, your kind has always failed in the end. As my last creation, I have gifted you what many have sought after… a swift death."

My emotions were stunted as this phantom, but rage had consumed me now. It was the first emotion I was able to harness that didn’t feel dulled or tainted with despair. An ember glowed a soft orange in my mind, and realizing it was this entity was the cause of my purgatory only fanned the flames.

It deemed itself my Creator yet it told me I was nothing. It dared not to show its face to me yet it threatened me with a swift end.

“Coward…” I muttered.

I wished for my mundane mortal life to return… one way or another.

I took the quill into my spectral fingers, skipped over the attribute section, and signed Karnyn into the book as my first act of rebellion. The bastard that spoke down to me did not deserve my true name. When I threw the pen onto the table and shouted above, a door appeared.

The door had a peculiar zig-zag pattern that I happily stomped my way forward to. I threw open the entrance, grateful to escape this limbo and return to Earth. However, as I stepped into the passage and saw nothing but blackness, my soul shivered. It felt like I stood on the precipice of light and darkness. Of life and death. I knew not where this new gateway to the abyss led, but before I could contemplate it any longer… I was shoved through.

Pierced by cold air, my lungs burned and my skin felt like ice. It wasn't until I felt the soft powder between my fingers that I realized I was buried in the snow once more. I rose from the pile like a man escaping his grave. Joyous to return to the wintery hell of Kansas. But forests surrounded me, not the concrete streets of a suburban town. None of this looked familiar. Not even my own hand.