There was light, then darkness. A sharp jolt, a crushing weight, and then... silence.

He remembered running—his legs burning, chest tight. A kid frozen in the middle of the road, a truck barreling toward them. No time to think. Just move. Push the kid out of the way.

Then the tires screeched. Metal met flesh.

"Ah, so this is it," he thought as the world went black. Just like that, an ordinary guy—nothing special—now gone.

Or so he thought.

When he opened his eyes, there was nothing. No light, no ground, no sound. Just... void.

"Okay," he muttered, his voice echoing strangely in the emptiness. "This is weird."

He wandered aimlessly at first, half-expecting to wake up from some bizarre dream. But days—or maybe they didn't pass? Time felt slippery here, like trying to hold water in your hands.

"Alright, so no pearly gates, no fiery pits. Just... nothing," he said, sitting cross-legged in the void. "Kind of anticlimactic, honestly."

He tried shouting. Running. Even tried sleeping, though he wasn't sure if he succeeded. Nothing changed. The silence stretched on forever.

Eventually, he stopped. What was the point of moving when there was nowhere to go?

"Guess this is my life now," he muttered. "Or my afterlife. Whatever this is."

Time crawled. He tried to keep track at first. "Day one," he said. Then "Day two." But soon, the numbers didn't matter. His voice went hoarse. The silence didn't care.

Yet he didn't go mad—not quite.

There was something about the void. It wasn't empty. It was something. Slowly, he started to feel it—a hum, just beneath his awareness. He began to understand it. He wasn't trapped in the void; he was the void. It wasn't hostile or indifferent. It just was.

"Wait a minute," he said one day—or whatever passed for a day in this place. "Does that mean I can...?" He waved his hand experimentally. Nothing happened.

"Oh, come on! I'm supposed to be a god or something by now, right? Can't I at least make a sandwich?"

He kept trying. Days—or centuries—passed. Eventually, he figured it out. He started small: a tiny flicker of light. Then a chair. Progress, right?

Eventually, his power grew. He could shape the void. He recreated little things from his old life: a tree, a book, a steaming cup of coffee. But it wasn't the same. Nothing felt real.

"I guess this is what being a god feels like," he said, lounging on a throne made of stardust. "Unlimited power, infinite nothingness, and absolutely zero entertainment."

He tried creating people, but they were hollow. Puppets. Nothing more. The void wasn't alive, and neither was he—not really. He had everything, but...

"I miss people," he admitted. "I miss being human."

His memories of his old life started to slip away, fading like sand in the wind. He clung to them. He couldn't lose that.

"Can't lose that," he muttered. "If I forget who I was, what's the point?"

So he sat, watching time pass. Eons. Millennia. Uncountable ages. He had no way of knowing how long it had been. Even the stars he created flickered and died.

Finally, one day—or whatever passed for a day—he sighed. "Alright. Enough's enough. I'm bored."

He stretched. "I've been sitting here for... what? A trillion years? A quintillion? Who even cares anymore? It's time to do something."

With a flick of his hand, the void shifted. Countless shimmering portals appeared, each one showing a different world—alive, vibrant, teeming with stories.

He smiled. "Let's see what's out there. Something's gotta be more interesting than this place."

He stepped forward, his form shifting. He decided to start small—maybe a wandering swordsman. Blind, for the mystery. Classic.

"Alright, world," he said, stepping through the portal. "Let's see what you've got."