After many inconceivable years of dead-mind solitary slumber, Kivas had finally awakened.
Still feeling the warmth and the gentle lullaby that put his restless soul to a rest, his consciousness awoke once again in the middle of a void, feeling rather invigorated just as similar as when he was in the beginning of his solitary torture.
The foreign experience made him create thousands of questions unconsciously. It made him both anxious and relieved, which was an oxymoron in itself so it contradicted each other and led him into more confusion.
'Uuuh.'
Doing the equivalent of shaking his head after a harmful thought, without the physical head part—he decided to calm down and put his mind into a laid back mode.
It didn't help as much, he was still as confused as a goldfish that forgot why he lived in an aquarium.
'That is a little too comfortable for a rest.' He took the easy way out by only registering the soothing mental rest that he somewhat experienced. 'Although, I don't even know why I'm resting in the first place.'
'It is also a little bit too awkward for a dejavu. Even though I'm nothing but a mysterious consciousness in the middle of nothing.'
He couldn't stress much on how confused he was.
'The confusion aside, I also somehow still live within this darkness. Is this a dream or the first one is a dream, oh goodness, I don't know what is happening!'
'Well, panicking won't do it.'
'It just made me even more confused.'
'I'm already as confused as it is.'
He tried his best to not panic and be confused, regardless. But alas, humans couldn't comprehend the negative exclamation value like "Do not crash the tree" and "Do not think about depressive stuff" which made them crash the tree and think about the stuff.
So he ended up getting too anxious about his confusion and became more confused.
'It doesn't change the fact that I feel like I've been awake for a trillion of years, and then my consciousness dies after there is nothing at the end, even though I've had some hope upon something that will somehow put me out of this misery of boredom and loneliness.'
'Hmm, it is also possible that the experience that I remembered is nothing but a false impression or a made up memory that I tricked myself to believe.'
'Humans are social beings, after all! There's no way that I still feel this mentally healthy if all of that is happening!'
He somehow ended up forgetting about how he had the memory and experience of sleeping in that non physical state.
'Speaking of what's happening, the fact that I'm still within this ever growing darkness is not amusing at all.'
'But somehow, my hope has been restored. It might be a gut feeling, if I ever get one again—maybe something did happen after all and I just didn't notice it because of incomprehensible reasons.'
'Darn it! I feel like something major has happened, but I can't remember!'
To add to the confusion, he found a glint of foreign information about a certain petite woman and what relationship she had with him. This in result, made him more confused.
'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—'
All of that awkward monologuing with himself to deter the boredom had eventually led him to exude a great intent to get out of this state in nigh desperation.
Somewhere within the corner of his perceivable sensory vision, which he didn't even know that he had the ability to even see anything—there was a flickering violet light, resonating deeply with his mind as if it was sending an urge, something like a commanded dopamine for him to reach out and grab for the sole thing that could possibly broke through the cycle of his unchanging insanity.
'I-It looks ominous, but it is something! And something is better than nothing!'
He was usually a reserved man who thought first before acting, but in this case, his lust for change and new things had been haunting him after convincing himself that everything was going to be fine for the past thousands, if not, million of years, subconsciously within his soul to preserve himself.
Kivas then advanced forward to the flickering fire. He didn't know if he could even move in that non physical state, but he kinda did it for the first time.
'I'm willing to bet myself on this! This had to be something if it somehow appeared at this time!'
Slow and steady, the flickering fire grew bigger in his vision as he approached it.
As if his vessel-less muscle memory had been ingrained with a foreign reflexes, he exuded an intent to grab the fire by the stem, as if he subconsciously knew that it was a torch.
The moment he did that, the violet fire illuminated the surrounding area, revealing an unknown place. It was overwhelming for someone who perceived nothing but darkness and silence for Ad Infinitum. It might take him quite a while to comprehend what was going on.
Before he knew it, he was holding the darkwood that was engraved by golden unknown symbols, with his bluish, jelly-looking, and moist three-fingered-claw hand?
'W-what is happening!? Where is this!? Why is my hand this ugly jello thing!?'
The illumination only went to three meters, anything outside of that three meters border from the flickering light was utter darkness.
Within the illumination was a rocky terrain. Above him was a ceiling, which was the only important clue for Kivas to realize that he was in some kind of a cavern.
'Either that I'm the size of a mature chupacabra, or this cave is just small.'
He could see but he didn't know why and how.
There was no indication that he had any type of sensory like hearing and smell, but it seemed like it was too fast for him to create a concrete conclusion.
From how close the ground was to him, it felt like he was in a prone position. So he tried to get up. Albeit, he didn't know how, and it seemed like he didn't have any lower limbs either.
He felt like some sort of lazy rice bag being laid on the floor, a lazy bag of rice with two protruding arms on both sides.
There was a sensation that a third arm was present on top of his proning body with it slightly tilted to the left, but it seemed like he hadn't noticed it.
'... All right, I only need to calm myself first.'
'Breath in.'
'And breathe out…'
'Huh.'
'Wait.'
'I CAN'T BREATHE!'
He had a panic attack for three seconds. While it was not much of a time in the grand scale of things, that three seconds was a new experience after a while and it felt like an eternity for him.
Even in that state of panic, he didn't know what to do because his body was too foreign to him.
After that, he kinda realized that his body was fine without breathing. Which came into the next question.
What was he?
'This is definitely not a human body, but it is definitely something that would freak out any biologist I know when I'm alive.'
He focused his sight onto both of his hands that were relaxing on the surface of the cavern floor, one of them was holding the torch with violet fire.
'Nyeh, I guess I can try crawling.'
And by that, he meant dragging his body like a cripple.
With only one hand, he pulled his squishy body across the floor. His body was surprisingly very light to him, either that, or his arm and claw was much stronger than he expected.
There was little to no friction on his belly, as if he was meant to move like this. Everytime he moved, something inside his body jiggled back and forth as if he was a water container.
'This feels surreal, but it is somewhat exciting!'
Noticing that he had an unused arm on his back, he passed the torch on his right hand to the third hand, allowing him to move more unrestrictedly into the unknown with both of his front limbs. Well, the only symmetrical pair of limbs that he had.
While he was exploring this place, his mind was preoccupied with numerous thoughts.
Aside from the creeping realization that this might be the reincarnation-after-death event that people preached on the internet, Kivas felt a sense of doubt about what his second life was going to be.
'The universe that was home to my planet Earth might have been already nonexistent at this point. Then again, I don't know if my excessive sheep-counting is relevant to the passing of time on that exact other side.'
To him, he was basically dropped into this unknown world with an unknown body and an unknown torch.
No handheld.
No guidance.
No sign, sensory hint, nor a nice lady with a flag to tell him exactly what to do or not.
Kivas didn't care as much, as long that he won't be going back to the same sensory deprivation torture of nothingness.
'Either that I got back in time or I've awoken in another world. Probably an alternate timeline or just another set of new universes in particular. This is also definitely not just a random planet either.'
As the illumination of the torch passed, the ground that he traversed, he saw a couple of grass patches that grew on the rocky surface without sunlight shedding on them.
On the tip, the grass branches. There were also a couple of weird luminescent bugs. One of them was a quarter the size of his new body. It had the form of a giant beetle with an armored mouth of an anteater, while also moving at the speed of a sloth.
'Earth didn't have that… definitely not Earth.'
It would be better to have the mindset that he would be meeting with new things than hoping that he would be arriving back on the wretched Earth that he relished.
'I can sense the coldness of the ground and my body's temperature with the average sensory that humans mostly perceive. Things are too familiar for this to be some kind of random planet with inconsistent heat and extreme weather.'
'Huh. If I go by a psychological standpoint, how can I even remember everything and compare the familiarity to begin with.'
'Back then, I would believe that I was mostly a floating consciousness that was meant to be tortured with nothingness. Now that I have a body, shouldn't my thinking capability be capped with the physical brain in the body that I'm in right now!?'
Kivas even wondered if his new body even had a brain.
'Meh, must be magicky stuff. Not like scientists had fully comprehended living being's consciousness back then.'
'I wonder if there's any magic in this world.'
'If magic actually exists, then I might want to learn the spell that can summon exotic dishes!'
'... That might be a bit too wishful thinking.'
He somehow didn't notice that he didn't have any body parts to consume those foods.
Kivas felt calmer that he kept all of his intelligence and thinking capability like he normally was.
The only complaint he had right now was his range of sight.
It was weird when he saw the behavior of the illumination from the torch. The light didn't travel an indefinite range like all kinds of light. Instead, it looked more like a forcefield with a clear border of three meters radius with no blur on the edge.
Outside of it was an utter pitch black.
The terrain he was traversing was slowly descending and ascending inconsistently. The cave felt like a maze, and he felt like he didn't see any meaningful progress within this exploration.
At one point, he wanted to go even faster.
Feeling more daring, he wanted to see if he could gain more velocity by lunging his whole body. Imagining himself as a sentient sack of water with a flexible surface, he threw himself forward.
When his body crashed against the ground, he felt like his body wanted to collapse with all of the water inside of him swirling uncontrollably for a moment. It was an unpleasant feeling but it made him feel alive.
'That is somehow dangerous.'
Kivas had learned how to lunge.
It also seemed like he could perceive sound? The tumbling, the squishy exterior of his body that made contact against the ground, he could hear it clearly.
After a while, he noticed through the sensation of momentum and movement that his whole body was shaped like that of a tadpole.
Somewhat of a mature tadpole with the exception of no set of legs. Instead, he had a set of arms for dragging his whole body.
'Yeah, definitely not Earth's creatures.'
Aside from the weird anatomy, he realized that he could move his tail.
That is useful! Not! That was what he thought. It didn't even help much in terms of mobility as it barely had any flexibility.
Quite curious, he rubbed his front body, or head, whatever he thought was fancy.
As for the result, he found that it was smoother and as soft as his whole body.
Basically, he had zero facial structure.
'I'm a little too big for a tadpole. Not to mention, I literally have no eyes or mouth, yet somehow I could still see the terrain within the vicinity of the torch.'
As if everything that was reflected by the light on his front was automatically converted into information. It was weird but it was the only reasonable conclusion he could make.
'I'm afraid that this torch has a significant role in everything that I've gone through, and what I'm going to go through.'