As my eyes rewarded this place with its precious glance, the sibylline zephyr danced with the autumn trees while the falling leaves were branded as the epitome of mundane serenity. The heck? Scrap this.
.
Once upon a time... No, definitely not.
Lets just get right into the action, why don't we?
.
"Where am I?"
"I fell asleep in the hospital but woke up on this barren land."
"Am I already dead?" Cryzanne kept asking herself.
She has always been mature and calm even at an early age. Though she was born with an incurable illness that made her body frail and was even doomed to live only for five years, yet she was able to brave through and survive for 15 years. She believed this was due to her positive outlook in life coupled with her intelligence. Well, that's what she believed. Who are we to argue with?
"I'm pretty sure this ain't Heaven."
No matter where Cryzanne looked, all she can see is the vast flatness of the land and nothing else. No mountains, trees, water, not even a rock. As she kept on observing, she noticed several wisps of light around her floating towards a single direction.
"So they're supposed to be souls?" she exclaimed aloud even though she's only talking to herself.
"But why do I still look like human while the others are like floating lightbulbs?"
"That's what you only see for yourself."
"You're also a wisp of light, a speck even. Now move along."
She suddenly heard a male voice behind her.
Cryzanne turned around and saw a big ball of shiny ball of light floating towards her. (Or more accurately, she was in the way.) No matter how she looked at it, this shiny lightbulb is definitely bigger and brighter than the rest.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"No time for questions. Hurry up and go." the big ball of lightbulb replied.
"Why?" she didn't move even a single step.
"Because..." then he suddenly realized.
"Why are you not moving?" he became puzzled.
"Am I supposed to move? Why? To where?" now she's also puzzled.
She looked around. All the wisps of light are moving, not one is stationary. Nobody else is even talking (In the first place, how can a wisp of light even talk?). Afraid to be singled out as an odd one, she wittily moved towards where everyone else were heading. Seeing that this tiny speck of light started moving, the big ball of lightbulb stopped thinking about it and continued moving too.
After a long while, an ancient but grand looking wall as tall as a mountain appeared into view. This wall seems to be very long since the opposite ends are not even visible. There's a gate in the middle of the wall and all wisps of light are seen moving towards that huge open gate. Naturally, the tiny speck of light and the big ball of lightbulb were heading there too.
"Hey mister. What's on the other side of that wall?"
'This lass sure is talkative.' The big ball of lightbulb thought and maintained his silence.
"Is there a big city beyond? Are we going to live there permanently? Or is this the place where we will be judged according to our past deeds and then send us to our appropriate destinations?"
After a while of continuously being ignored , she stopped talking when she saw there's not a soul that's talking. Besides this big ball of lightbulb, everyone else doesn't seem to even have self-awareness.
Contrary to what she thought, there wasn't a city or even a judge, a saint, or an angel that's seen after they passed by the gate. Instead, they immediately brought themselves into an enormous hall with nine doors at the end. While she kept on observing, everyone else headed separately to the doors at the end of the hall. The tiny specks were floating to the leftmost door, and the slightly bigger specks of light entered the second door to the left, the third, and so on, while the biggest balls of light entered the farthest door to the right. Some lights were even bigger than her big ball of lightbulb pal beside her. But on the second look, even if they were bigger, none of them were brighter than her pal. Yes, she already considered him her friend even though he didn't even bother talking to her.
Her pal the big ball of lightbulb suddenly moved to the farthest door to the right. Seeing this, she also followed behind him silently.
Beyond the door, she was immediately greeted with loud noises. What she saw were no longer wisps of light but hundreds of thousands of people. And majority of them were different sorts of creatures she haven't seen before while others look slightly familiar. But enough of that, our dear protagonist immediately cleared her confusion and looked around for her pal the big ball of lightbulb. She hoped she would be able to notice him even if he is no longer a lightbulb. All of a sudden...
"Survive and you will be rewarded." A voice was heard inside her head.
'What was that?' She looked around but there was no one near her.
Without warning, she suddenly felt like being pulled away. As her awareness came back she was no longer in a place with lots of people. She felt like being caged even though she doesn't see any wall or bars around.
"It's you!?"
She turned around upon hearing the a voice and saw a plainly dressed but good looking middle-aged man behind her, equally as surprised as her.
'Who is this guy?' she asked herself. Then a sudden realization came to her.
"Ahjussi?" Cryzanne exclaimed.
"What ahjussi? You don't even look Korean." The man refuted.
"Besides that, why are you here? You're not supposed to be here. You were supposed to enter the first door to the left." He said.
"Ahjussi, you talk too much." She may be a pure-bred Filipino but her love for Korean dramas when she was still alive became evident with her style of communication.
Deep inside her mind, she also knew she was supposed to be heading towards the first door on the leftmost side of the hall. But for some reason (except for retaining her self-awareness) she wanted to follow this no-longer-a-big-ball-of-lightbulb person.
"Huuhh..." The man exclaimed. "Nevermind. This might also be predestined."
"Even though we now look like human, we are still wisps of souls." The man continued talking, giving her no chance to reply. "This is a battle arena. Everyone is matched against each other on a 1 on 1 fight immediately after they enter the door. The winner gets rewarded while the loser loses his awareness and is brought back to Gaia."
'Battle arena? What fight? What is Gaia?' More and more confusion stacked above her head. Without waiting for her to talk, the man continued.
"I have no idea what the others call it so I personally dubbed it as Gaia."
"Gaia is where souls are collected and merged then create a newly formed soul every time a person or any other intelligent creature is born."
Despite having a lot of questions, Cryzanne kept silent and listened. After a while, she understood a fair amount of stuffs; that human kind is not the sole intelligent being; that there are several planes of existence aside from the already vast universe where she belonged; that no matter what plane of existence they belong, each and every intelligent being's soul is transported here the moment they die. And depending on their fate, they will either be reincarnated or merged into Gaia. Then Gaia creates a newly formed soul to be fused into a newborn. Once a soul is fused, the newborn receives a form of knowledge called 'instinct' and 'reflex'. This kind of knowledge is brought about and carried on from the experiences of the previous souls merged into Gaia.
From all these and the rest of what the man said, she also understood that there's no heaven or hell. No absolute good or bad. Just very powerful beings living by their own principles. Yes, the good looking ahjussi told her that there are very powerful beings out there who can single-handedly create and also destroy a star system.
When he saw that Cryzanne was silent, he paused and said. "You might be thinking how do I know all of these?"
"It's because this is my second time here. Although it's just the second time, technically I might have been to other doors a lot of times but I'm really not sure. What I'm sure is that I didn't start as a big ball of light that you saw me. I definitely started as a speck of light and went through the other doors and survived until I came here. The difference is that I have only retained my self-awareness the first time I survived on this last door. After I that, every experience and knowledge gained from surviving through the previous doors came back to me. What I don't know is why I can talk with you before we entered here because the other bigger souls were also lacking awareness before entering this last door. I also don't know why you retained self-awareness otherwise you were supposed to go to the leftmost door."