As Diann's gaze was locked on the grey sky from her unusual position on the ground, only one thought kept repeating itself in her mind,

What was it all for?

All her life, she was told to be good. She did what she was supposed to without complaint. She finished high school as she was supposed to, and entered college right after as she was told to. She finished with a general business degree even though she didn't feel any passion for the subject. She only took it because it seemed like a good choice.

All of that only to land her an office job she didn't like. Diann had moved out when she got the job and hoped that her life would finally start at that point.

But no. Life was just the same. She went to work, finished her tasks and went home.

All day, nonstop. For the past three years.

She tried making friends at her office at the start, but the same plague that had haunted her since childhood reared its ugly head. She was incapable of making friends.

Something must have been wrong with her because she could never just fit in. That had led her to withdraw into herself, simply doing her work and going home straight after. With that, any chances of promotions went out the window as she stopped participating in office culture and its politics.

With no friends, she tried turning to dating to stem the crushing tide of loneliness even if the premise of it had never interested her much growing up. She had blamed her focus on studying for her lack of interest in dating but found it remained the same as she grew up. Her first attempt at using dating apps ended in disaster as Diann realized she had let her social skills deteriorate too much. Her lack of knowledge on how to navigate the dating world only worsened the situation, so she quit trying to go down that route.

Her only joy in life the past years had been watching TV, playing games and reading books. Before she knew it her life had become a repeat of the same things, but somehow she found it comfortable. She was aware that she was letting herself rot away. But Diann always comforted herself with the fact that she had her whole life ahead of her and could always try getting her shit together in the future.

That was why the fact that she was slowly dying, bleeding out on the ground hurt all the more.

Voices, lights, pain and the unmistakable stench of her blood all blended into this overwhelming cacophony that she could barely process. But what she did know was that it was nothing compared to the crushing regret of having done nothing with her life. A whole life wasted doing nothing of note, just a cog in the machine with no friends or loved ones.

Even her parents had lost hope in her and stopped calling as frequently.

From the corner of her eye, she could barely perceive her coworkers rushing out of her office building at the commotion going on outside. All of them had dressed up for the Halloween party, a party she congratulated herself for managing to escape.

God how embarrassing, I got hit by a truck barely a block away from my job just because I didn't want to socialise.

Diann could feel herself bleed out, her life force quickly slipping away. Was she going to go to heaven? She didn’t think so as she had done nothing remarkably good enough. In the same vein, she had done nothing evil enough to warrant going to hell. What would happen to her? She didn’t know.

So when the sinister yet comforting temptation to give up whispered in her ear, she didn’t fight it.

Because there was nothing in her life worth fighting for.

----------------------------------------

She didn’t know where she was. It was hard to process thoughts in the new place she found herself in. It was dark, confusing and numbing to the soul. Diann worried this was hell at first, but the lack of fire, horns and the colour red dissuaded her of that notion.

What she could perceive was the fact that she was moving forward. She wasn’t alone, no. There were others. She could not see them but still knew they were there. All of them moving forward to a destination unknown.

Any emotion she tried to parse or memory she tried to relive did so with a mindnumbing slowness and lack of depth. She couldn’t even grieve her death because of it. Diann found it hard to feel anything.

After what felt like… a while? Diann could finally feel something, a sense of closure. With the aid of whatever minuscule senses she could use, she perceived a drop-off point some ways in front of her. A cliff they were all walking towards.

The knowledge of the cliff somehow felt good, reassuring.

Like the gentle hands of a mother putting you to sleep, kissing you goodnight. She tried moving faster towards it just to feel anything other than the emptiness inside of her, but she couldn't. Diann was stuck in her place in the queue, no one could push forward or back. We would all meet the end. All that was required was patience.

Wait, the end?

With a bone-chilling clarity, she realised that the ones falling off the cliff didn’t enter a place of bliss. They were being unravelled. The forms the souls - she realized - had taken in this place would unravel like threads and their pieces would fly off into the distance the minute they fell off the cliff.

She was not truly dead yet. But if she let herself continue on this path, Diann would cease to exist.

The muted emotions inside of herself came back with a vengeance, the crushing regret of having wasted her life filled her with an unmistakable desire to live. To get another chance, anything other than the oblivion that awaited her beyond the cliff. She started bucking and fighting to move back. Whatever control she had left over herself was used to trash against the unseen chains holding her in this place.

She started slowly but surely inching backwards, making the distance between herself and her potential end grow bigger. Others noticed her actions and seemed to copy them. Her struggle had instilled the others with the will to live.

Some gave up, others started fighting back too late and fell off the cliff. The majority ignored them, too sedated and confused to understand anything. And even worse, some rushed forward eager for their end.

I don’t wanna die! she shouted to herself.

She fought and fought, for what felt like hours, days, weeks. She didn’t know nor understand how time passed in this place, but at least she didn’t feel fatigued. Probably because she had no physical body to exhaust. Hope was the only thing keeping her from giving up. The hope of another chance in life.

She had noticed that the very few who followed her example had disappeared, she didn’t know where to. But at least they hadn’t met their end by falling off the cliff. Maybe she too could be saved from this place?

Please! To anyone who can hear me, I just wanna live!

Her thoughts, emotions and desires must have reached further than her own mind because, in the next moment, a gentle touch pinched her soul and whisked her away.

“This will do.”

----------------------------------------

Air!

As Diann regained consciousness, air filled her lungs. “I can breathe! I can finally fucking breathe.”, she celebrated. She was kneeling on the ground, relief visibly pouring out of her.

A laugh escaped her lips as she realised that it worked. She was alive again! Diann had escaped her fate. Something or someone had listened to her plea and saved her from that place.

But where was she? From her place hunched over on the ground with her hands holding her up, she notices the floor was... Rippling. As if it was a puddle.

Any movements from her caused it to ripple out in waves. But the strange thing was that the floor wasn’t wet. It felt hard to the touch, like stone.

Diann looked up and-

A man stood in front of her. No, a thing. The legs were too thin and straight to be human as they floated inches over the puddle floor. The thin stick-like legs were pressed together. As she tilted up at its height she noticed a white bolto mask made out of marble staring down at her.

The holes in the mask where eyes should've been gave way to orbs full of a purple and black ocean, the sight reminding her of photos of nebulas.

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

An involuntary scream left her lungs as she fell backwards onto the floor, her behind catching her fall.

“W-what. Who are you?!” She asked, bewildered. The figure in front of her didn’t make sense.

The mask made out of stone somehow stretched into a worried frown as a rich and masculine voice left its mouth. “Do not be afraid. I mean you no harm.” The thing/man said.

Diann tried to understand how the thing could sound so clear when the mask covered its mouth, but she didn’t understand. None of this made sense. One minute she had been dead, the other she was in a strange limbo and then something had saved her- she looked up as she realized something.

“Wait, was it you who saved me?” Diann asked breathlessly.

The being nodded and floated towards her, Diann flinched as arms extended out of the being's cloak. The long pauldrons caused the white cloak to give the being a bigger frame than their limbs suggested. The arms were as black as the legs but more human than them as they had joints. She noted that the arms were still strangely thin as a marble-gloved hand extended towards her.

As it - no he - effortlessly helped Diann to her feet he spoke. “I am the one who answered your plea, yes.” He said. While simultaneously floating backwards to give her some space.

A thing she was thankful for as she was intimidated by his size. He was almost three meters tall.

“It is a rare thing for a soul to still feel so strongly after death while it’s in limbo,” he said. "I heard your powerful plea and decided to answer it."

"But why?" Diann found herself asking. It's not that she was ungrateful, instead, it was just pure curiosity. If he truly had the power to pluck souls so casually, then why had he picked her? She wasn't the only one who had fought back in that limbo place.

He smiled at the question as if he already expected it. His arms had hidden themselves under his cloak again without her noticing. They stretched out in front of him. She started to wonder what he was doing until a mist poured out of his hands and painted a picture.

Diann's breath was hard to find again, not because of fear this time, but because of amazement. "Ho-What are you doing?". Diann asked, stepping closer to see.

As the mist started solidifying into the picture of blue orbs standing side by side, he decided to answer her question with one of his own. "What do you know about the term Omniverse?".

Diann looked up at his eyes and down again at the picture, illusion, hologram? "Omniverse? Is it related to the term multiverse, but more encompassing of everything?" That's what Omni meant right? All or everything.

"Correct." He answered. The picture zoomed out as more and more blue orbs filled the mist. Those must be universes, she realized.

"That is the term coined for all of existence. Every single universe, multiverse and metaverse exists inside of the Omniverse." The mist started shifting showing images and examples of different worlds and creatures. "The Omniverse is a vast place, filled with anything you can think of or imagine."

She started seeing sights she was familiar with. Technological worlds similar to her own, some even lightyears ahead of her time. She even noticed some odd sights. Wait, are those wizard hats?

Small green aliens, creatures the size of planets and trees with demonic wings. Those were all some of the different sights the mist cycled through. If what he said was true, then did that mean everything she thought of as fiction possibly existed out there?

"This...This is amazing." She breathed. How many times had she wished that there was some magic in her life? Or maybe what she would do if she ever got powers like in some of her favourite movies. All those things were real and possible?

But why was he showing her this? It still didn't answer her question of why he had chosen to save her.

"Well you see, Diann.", He said, using her name for the first time. She had never given him her name and yet he knew. One of the many strange things he could do. He must had powers like the things he showed her through the mist.

"The Omniverse is dying." He revealed. It was what? "And it needs your help."

"My help?", She laughed. Her? "You're joking right?" Her question was tinged with a hint of nervousness. How could she save the Omniverse if someone of his power couldn't?

"Yes, your help. And those like you."

Before she could ask what that meant, he continued.

"Let me explain." He said. The mist now showed a different sight. The blue orbs changed and appeared to her in different forms. Some were cracked, others imploding, one turned to ash and another... infected? Something black and misty was eating away at it.

"What you see here are different universes on their way to dying. Some," he pointed at the imploding ones. "will simply begin the cycle of the rebirth again. While others," This time pointing at a cracked and ashy orb "die because of other causes such as paradoxes or heath death. But even those universes should one day renew themselves."

The mist showed the process of a universe's birth, from the Big Bang to the many different ways it could die. Only to restart again.

"This is normal, expected even. But," He showed one orb that showed an imploding universe fizzle out. It did not start up again. "some universes have stopped going through a rebirth. Do you know what that means?" He asked, this time staring at me and not at his mist display.

She scrunched her brows together in thought. If every universe stayed dead after dying then that would mean... "That would mean the end of everything." Diann realized. That was horrible, on a scale her human mind failed to comprehend. But then again how could she stop it, why was he telling her all this?

"When souls die, they are unravelled to be absorbed back into the cosmic background." His voice brought her back from her musings. The mist changed and showed her an image that chilled her to her core. It was the fate she had tried so hard to escape. The fate those who fell off the cliff met. She was what looked like floating balls of light being unravelled.

The being must have mistaken her fearful silence for permission to continue.

"This is supposed to sustain a universe throughout its life. It should be enough to restart the process after its death. But somehow it's not. Souls are, simply put, not working as they should."

"But why not?" She asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"At first, we thought it was because of the typical problems. Souls slipping away into other universes and therefore upsetting the cosmic balance. But no, we rather quickly found that to not be the case."

She just nodded along, confused at what direction he was taking this.

"To be frank, we have our suspicions but nothing concrete. Even still we've started taking actions that are combating this 'Omniversal Death'. It's not perfect but it's proven to work." He dispelled the illusion and stood up straight. His eyes pierced her very being.

"That's the reason why I've brought you here."

Diann could only guess at the why. She held no delusions that she was special. She was self-aware enough to admit that.

"Each soul has a certain weight that affects the universe they're in. The more a soul impacts the development of their universe, no matter how insignificant their actions may seem, the more weight the soul accrues. When a soul then dies, it gets unravelled so that its cosmic weight gets absorbed back by its parent universe to sustain itself. " He explained. His voice took on a more sombre tone at the end of his explanation.

Which made sense. He was essentially telling her there's no afterlife. Yey?

She shook her head to focus.

Alright, she was following so far. A soul getting unravelled was how a universe sustained itself. But from what he explained earlier, this process wasn't working as it should. Causing to the death of the Omniverse.

"And that was going to happen to me until..." she trailed off.

"Until I plucked your soul from limbo., yes.", He nodded his head. "You showed resilience and a strong desire to live. That is the quality we seek in candidates such as you."

"Candidates?" Diann asked curiously. Sure, a tiny part of her was bummed out that she wasn't selected because of a special quality of hers. But being chosen because of her own merits was better in her opinion.

"By recruiting those with a strong desire to live, we give them an avenue to continue doing so. We give them the ability to continuously reincarnate. By traveling from universe to universe they accrue more and more cosmic weight. By default their strong souls heal the universes they inhabit and aid the cosmic balance by giving back the weight after their death. But not all the weight they acquire in each life is lost they grow more and more powerful with our help."

Diann starts hearing her heart beat faster and faster as he continues explaining. The ability to continuously reincarnate, always visiting magical and technological worlds and by default growing stronger after each life? Just the thought of it was incredibly intoxicating.

Images of herself wielding magic and meeting creatures of fantasy or maybe even meeting aliens and visiting planets through starships filled her mind.

"With all of that now having been explained to you, would you like to officially become a Reincarnator?"

"YES!", She yelled. "I mean I would be honored to be one...Sir!" With her back as straight as possible and her arms to her side, Diann tried to look as serious as possible. But seeing how far up her head had to tilt just to stare him in the eyes, she probably failed.

The lips of his marble mask stretched into a smile. "Excellent." He said. His tone was happy.

"Make no mistake, Diann O'Hara. The responsibilities of a Reincarnator are never-ending, continuously reincarnating is a duty, not a blessing." As he spoke his body began to shimmer and his voice became more distant. His body floats up leaving the ground and entering the blue sky.

"I will be back to reevaluate your progress to see if this role fits you. I have high hopes for you."

"Thank you for this opportunity. I will do my best! But, when will you be back?"

"After your fifth life of course." He smiled.

FIFTH LIFE?!, the scope of this was finally getting to her.

"I will now depart you so you can get settled. There's a gift waiting once I leave. Live well Diann, and live long." With those parting words, he left.

Wait, she never got his name! There were still some questions she had left, like what about the afterlife? And who was the 'We' he kept referring to and what did he mean by gift?

Damn it. Even then, Diann's excitement over her new duty overshadowed her desire to get some questions answered.

I'm gonna become a big badass wizard and have dragons and spaceships and everything! By the time he comes back, I will be beyond amazing!

The more childish parts of her imagination went wild as she looked around the place. The puddle-like stone floor extended as far as she could see, a flat horizon in the distance. The blue sky was clear and empty above her. The place is as bright as a day outside in the sun.

The only object she noticed was a marble statue of...herself? The statue was almost lifelike in its depiction of her, wearing the same clothes and hairstyle she had on the day before her death. It wore shoes with business pants and a white blouse with a suit jacket over it. Her hair was done up in her standard tight bun with glasses on her face.

More curiously, however, was the orb floating in the air in front of the statue. Having nothing better to do, she went up towards it. Was this the gift?

As she touched the black orb, it came to life. The sound of celebratory trumpets greeted her while words came to life in front of her. It was as if she was reading them off a screen.

[Salutations, Reincarnator! I will be your Omniversal Travel Soul Codex, Assistant & Guide. I'm here to aid you in fulfilling your duties!]

[You've died! Your total Cosmic Weight has been recorded, analysed and absorbed! Calculating total Cosmic Essence...]

My cosmic weight huh? I guess that is the total of how my actions affected everything around me like the being had explained. The thought was kind of intimidating. Her whole life, measured...

She doubted the results would be above average, but one could only hope.

[Total Cosmic Essence Calculated; Displaying accomplishments...]

Here goes nothing.