In spite of death, Quinn opened his eyes. 

He hadn't expected anything to be waiting for him, nothing more than darkness. As far as dying went, a perpetual black as far as the eye could see was more accommodating than anything else. Be it some supernatural phenomenon or a sign of the divine, being greeted by anything at all after dying was unwelcome. 

Despite himself, however, Quinn opened his eyes. 

There was something wrong with being aware that you'd been killed. Almost like having a pair of eyes on the back of your head, there was an inherent wrongness with being conscious in death. Quinn recognised something was wrong, but what? 

"Right," he muttered to himself. It wasn't an overly sarcastic tone, but then anything might sound sarcastic if it were being said by a dead man. Whatever the case, he wasn't overly impressed with his circumstances, all things considered. 

Had the human race misinterpreted death? Among all their wondrous gifts and scientific advancements, perhaps misunderstanding death was a potential error in their ways. It was definitely possible. Quinn could imagine himself being wrong about something like death—he could imagine everyone else being wrong about it, too. 

"Well, they are wrong," he said, looking around. The darkness wasn't so much a solid black, no more than it was simply a wall of fog in the night. It seemed to be shifting, convulsing in and out around him. "Death is…a bit boring." 

Was this it? Would he remain here for eternity? Something about that sounded unimaginably boring, but then a thought crossed his mind. A rather pressing thought, considering the circumstances—but then, who could blame him? 

"Am I in Hell?" 

That made a bit of sense. Caged in a prison of shifting darkness for all of eternity sounded like quite the punishment for someone cast down to hell…but why on earth was he in hell to begin with? 

Maybe I wasn't as green as I thought I was? 

Criminals aside, perhaps he hadn't been the most astute and diligent student on the planet, but he was hardly the worst either. Having shared a school with glue sniffers and compulsive gamblers, he was likely one of the good ones.

Quinn shook his head, dumbfounded by the notion. Hell was supposed to be a burning fireball of hate and wrath, not a solemn, yet strangely warm expanse of eternal darkness. 

"That doesn't sound a whole lot like heaven, either. Where are the angels?!" 

Strangely, it seemed something had heard his cry. Quinn wasn't quite certain what had changed around him, but something was happening. Almost like a drumming in the back of his mind, something seemed to be echoing—not rhythmically, but sporadically. It sounded like someone was trying to hammer a nail into something but were failing miserably, instead slamming the hammer into the wall. 

Just as he began focusing on where the hammering seemed to be coming from, it stopped. Quinn stood dumbfounded again, staring off into the distance. It could have gone on forever, though it could have easily ended twenty metres in all directions. Was that it? Was he just in a really, really dark room?

"No, no," he told himself. "If this was a room, I think I'd know. Besides, it feels more…wispy than anything else." A dream, then? He felt awake, though there was an inherent fog to everything around him, almost like he was caught between being drunk and high on copious amounts of drugs. His situation began to slowly make more sense the more he focused on the drug part of it all. 

Quinn shook his head as if to reassure himself. He wasn't one of those students, but it wasn't like he was immune to being spiked. Had he gone drinking and had something slipped into his drink? Possible, but then why him? 

"To summarise," he started, "I'm dead, but I'm also not dead. I'm surrounded by a bunch of dark, foggy blackness and I can't seem to leave. It's probably not hell or heaven…but what if it's another religion?" 

Another curveball. He hadn't thought to consider that, though it didn't make very much sense. If he was an atheist, why would some random religion cast him down to whatever their version of hell was? That made absolutely no sense, though the fact there was another person staring at him didn't make much sense either, so who was Quinn to speak on the matter? Maybe there weren't any specific versions of anything; maybe there was a universal hell where everyone was sent…

Quinn scanned the darkness again, turning back to eye the other person with him. 

"Huh," he mumbled. 

He wanted to acknowledge some abstract train of thought, but that didn't seem very prudent, given the circumstances. He was dead—thoroughly dead—and this person was…what, dead as well? Was this some sort of waiting room for death?

Whatever the case, the stranger strode up and stood beside Quinn, apparently content. 

Quinn looked them up and down. "You…know I can see you, right?" It was a girl, though their short hair framed their face in such a way that made them look less feminine from a distance. Up close, Quinn could tell they were a girl. She wasn't necessarily gorgeous, but then she was a far cry from being ugly. 

Her mouth swung open as she took a step away from Quinn, apparently surprised. "You can see me? You're certain?" 

"Should I not be certain? Is there something I'm missing about this place? We…are dead, right?" 

The girl nodded. "Why are you dead?" 

Quinn eyed her. "Why are you dead?" 

"Because I died," she said sarcastically. She took a step forward a moment later, a wry smile creeping up. "What about you?" 

"I have no idea," he admitted. It was true, to an extent. 

Quinn kept his eyes on the girl as she strode around the wispy darkness, studying her. She was dressed in the same clothes as he was—a suit. Unlike his, she wore a black two-piece suit that looked suitable for a wedding, though that notion was lost on Quinn as he glanced down at himself. He'd been fitted into a blue three-piece suit, which was strange considering both the way he'd died and their surroundings. 

Who'd gone out of their way to dress them up? Better yet, why had they dressed them up?

Having apparently looked around enough, the girl approached him again, a smile still plastered across her face. "Got a name?"

"I have a name," Quinn mumbled. "What about you?" 

She scoffed. "Very funny." 

"It's Quinn." 

"Quinn," she repeated. "You don't say?" 

He furrowed his brow. "Ring a bell? Or do we share the same name?" 

"My brother is called Quinn, that's all," she said. Walking up, she closed the distance again and extended her hand out. "My name's Gwyn." 

"Quinn and Gwyn," he sighed. "You're not pulling my leg, right?" 

She narrowed her eyes. "I'm…not pulling your leg. Are you certain you can see me?" 

"Why wouldn't I be?" 

"Can you see them?" 

Turning around, Quinn found himself blinded momentarily by a vibrant array of different colors; or more accurately, different suits. Hundreds, if not thousands of people lined the darkness before him, each mingling with each other, running around as if the world had ended. They were all fitted in a suit of their own, each somehow unique and different to the next. 

"Don't suppose we're all dead, do you?" Quinn muttered, eying Gwyn.

She shrugged. "Thousands of people die every day, so it might not be so crazy to imagine. I…don't know about the whole black-wall-of-doom, though." 

Being conscious after death alone was strange enough, but this? Paired with the so-called wall of doom, there were a number of thoughts running through Quinn's mind, yet none seemed to make any sense out of this. 

Some others approached them, each as eager to figure out what was happening as the next, though none of them seemed privy to any special information. That made sense, considering the absurdity of it all. If you were going to go out of your way and somehow dress a thousand dead people in unique suits, you'd likely know how to keep quiet about it. 

"And you're positive?" Vean asked. He was a little shorter than Gwyn, though nearly twice as wide. At first glance he looked a little overbearing, but Quinn found him easy to talk to. 

He nodded. "Pretty positive. If I knew, I don't think I'd be able to contain myself." 

Vean cocked his head. "What do you mean?" 

Gwyn seemed to be curious as well, seeing as she brushed a guy off and ran over a moment later. "What're you talking about? Better be about how incredible I look." 

"One, it's not—and two, you can't just brush someone off like that! It's rude!" 

Gwyn scoffed. "He was hitting on me, so he kinda deserved it! Think of it as predictive kindness." 

"I…sure, whatever," Quinn muttered. He glanced back to Vean a moment later, who was waiting nervously to his side. "I want to know just as much as you do; maybe even more, so I'm pretty sure I'd go insane if I knew and couldn't tell anyone. Sort of like a bomb going off, you know?" 

As if rehearsed, an explosion erupted somewhere amidst the darkness as soon as Quinn stopped talking, shaking what felt like reality uncontrollably. It subsided after a minute or so, though Quinn wished it hadn't. A real explosion would have been far less comforting than the thing that hovered before him now. 

It had strange angles, though it was most certainly a human—or a humanoid…thing. It seemed to pulsate in and out of itself, growing small and larger with each passing breath, though it remained all the same. It seemed to be looking around, looking at them. 

"Hello, hello," it said. It's mouth didn't move, yet it spoke regardless. "Hear me? Can you all hear me? Is this better?" It continued speaking, apparently tapping some invisible mic. It was floating above everyone some first or so metres in the air, though that fact seemed lost to everyone else. Even Gwyn, who'd seemed a little too enthusiastic a moment ago, was now silent staring at it. 

Hell had fallen silent. 

From what'd been a booming and unnecessarily obnoxious place to be trapped in, this place had suddenly grown cold, almost dead. It was an uncomfortable, almost unbearable pain for Quinn to bear. He didn't hate it, but then he couldn't make it stop. He was completely out of control, just like everyone else in this room. 

"Ah~," the person mumbled to themselves, voice growing quiet and then loud again. "There we go…welcome!" It hovered for a couple seconds, bobbing up and down as it glanced around, apparently put off by its lack of audience. "This was supposed to be a little more lively." 

Maybe if we weren't surrounded by darkness. 

Quinn found himself blinking rapidly after something bright appeared in front of him. It wasn't painful, but it'd happened so suddenly that he'd instinctively raised his hands to his eyes and began rubbing, irritating them. 

"Is this better?" the creature whispered. It boomed all around him, yet seemed to trickle into his ears like a gust of wind. 

A moment later, Quinn found himself standing in…an enormous stadium. He didn't recognise anyone sitting around him, nor did he recognise where they actually were. Unlike the darkness from before, he could see the sky here; he could see the sun. There were clouds and even a little grass growing in places at the bottom of the arena, but that was it. Without any real evidence as to where they were, he may as well have actually been dead. 

"You all died!" the creature said enthusiastically. "Very dull, I know. Death is supposed to be incredibly frightening and terrifying, and yet here you all are—with me!" 

It wasn't a football stadium…or any kind of stadium Quinn recognised. There were no goals or potential sports-like instruments at the bottom, but a simple open-field. There was some grass and a couple rocks scattered around it, but other than that, the arena was empty. 

"The Triumphant is an incredibly honourable tournament to have been invited to!" the creature said. He couldn't see it anymore, though it was speaking just as loud regardless. "Consider yourselves lucky! Today, you've all been pooled together as part of a greater purpose. You could say the multiverse is beckoning!" 

Triumphant? Tournament? Greater Purpose? Multiverse? Somehow, Quinn found himself wishing for the former darkness to swallow him whole and wash this all away. That would have been far easier than trying to stomach all this down, but alas, the darkness did not return. Instead, an enormous diagram seemed to appear in the sky before him, hovering there by some unseen force. 

"The rules are simple: there are no rules! You'll all be given one month to gather strength in your designated story! Sounds simple, right?" 

Quinn let his mouth hang agape as he stood up, eying the diagram. It was just as the creature had said: everyone was to be thrown into a variety of…popular stories in order to…gather strength?" 

"Very, very simple! We like it simple here at the Triumphant! Gather your strength—fight off enemy combatants and survive until the first round! Simple! That's how we do things here!" 

Before Quinn could contest—before anyone could contest, the darkness appeared and swallowed him whole. 

"Good luck, combatants." 

It seemed to smile at Quinn as he fell. 

In spite of this newfound life, Quinn shut his eyes.