I don’t remember how I died, and I don’t think I ever will. I do remember, in vivid detail, my last day. I know I was nineteen. I know I had been out of school for a year. I know I didn’t have a job. Instead, I spent my days, because I had no friends, alone in my room. Day in day out, I locked my eyes on the screen before me. My only solace, in a dark room, were games.

In these games, love was expressed to me in a way it never had been before. People expressed their love for me, even if it was just my name. I don’t remember that either actually. I do remember the name of the last game I ever I played.

Iarilon Academy

Despite it’s unassuming name, the game featured nine capture targets of four different races, from three countries. While the world building was lackluster, and didn’t state much, the character art and CGs were amazing. Not just that, there were nine routes, with nine targets. It played far too much to those paths, but it was enjoyable. Personally, I was never hyper into the characters, for more than one reason. That being said, I found the villainess more relatable than the heroine.

Her actions were a bit much, but never amounted to anything more than what a high schooler might try. Hiding her books, tying her shoes to a chair leg, she never brought true physical harm. I’d have pulled worse, in her shoes, but despite the lacking severity in her actions…

In every route, bad or good end or even true ending, she died. One route she died of starvation in the dungeons. Either way, there were absolutely no good endings for the villainess.

And that’s the problem I now have to deal with. When I died, it was as though I had fallen into a deep sleep before a lucid dream. The nothingness before me gave way to a white expanse of fog, lit by a low cresting sun. A slow winding river stood before me, and it smelled faintly of wet grass. A moment later, my bare feet touched the grass with a crunch and I stared ahead of me in silent shock.

My skin felt damp, and I was faintly aware of the fact I was no longer wearing any clothes. Despite that, I felt no chill, instead my skin felt faintly as warm, as if it was steam and not fog. In my shock, a silhouette broke from the fog and approached me across the water. A strange whisper grew in my ear, like a buzzing before breaking into words as the silhouette finally got close enough to reveal actual features.

Long silver hair crested down the figure’s head and onto its shoulders and deep blue eyes, almost fading to black met mine of a face neither masculine nor feminine, though sharp. As the figure’s mouth opened, the whisper turned into words and the billowing shadow around it’s body looked halfway between it’s original shadowy form, and clothes. A cloak covered their back, and the clothes were simple, a shirt and a long skirt of some sort.

The figure’s voice touched my eyes, both beautiful and strong, as it spoke. “I am Endros, Of the Dusk. Welcome to the Ether of my domain, child.”

I blinked in silence before speaking, my own voice not what I had known it to be, that low but far from baritone familiarity lacking. “What is going on?”

“As each day begins and ends, so do lives. The Dusk is I, and the Dusk is here,” the figure, Endros, answered, “You are here because your Dusk has come. I seek to send you to your dawn.”

I can’t say that the metaphorical, or philosophical mumbo jumbo, was entertaining in the slightest yet something told me Endros was right. I was here, in all sense, and my eyes wouldn’t be opening in that dark lonesome bedroom of mine. “You’re a god then? And I died.”

“Indeed,” Endros spoke solemnly, “Your life has come to an end, so you must begin a new one. As your soul has come here, not another domain, it is my duty to allow it to find the answer it seeks. A dawn, a new life.”

“Excuse-“ the fog swirled and the sun rose to the sky with a blink, scorching away the fog and blinding me with searing pain. After the pain and light faded, I found myself staring up at the blurry figure of a woman. From what I could tell, she held me against her stomach. Bewildered, I reached out and tried to pull myself up, yet I could not. My muscles couldn’t support the movement, and two very small pairs of hands stretched out faintly ahead of me.

A cry sounded out, rather close, and I felt a rumble in my chest. The noise was me, I had involuntarily spoke and it threw me once more, for it sounded far higher pitched than what I was used to. As I noted how much larger the woman appeared to be than I, another blurry figure, a man, appeared.

I was lifted from the woman’s arms to the man, and his lips moved for a moment in that blurry world before settling into a smile. I managed tilt my head and the room appeared far larger than what I would have expected. Either these people were playful giants or…

Endros spoke of a new life, so perhaps this was it. Had I been reborn as a child? An exhaustion set in as those words crossed my mind and I soon found myself drifting off to sleep.

When I opened my eyes once more, I was no longer in the mans arms. Instead I was atop the bed next to the woman, soft yet somewhat scratchy blankets were wrapped around me. They much like when one touches raw skin with cloth, it would seem I truly was a child now. I rolled to the side and looked out from the bed. Atop a table sat a lantern, old and flickering with candlelight.

If I was a child now, and this truly was something like reincarnation, was I even in my own world anymore or was I elsewhere. However, despite that, I could say I truly hoped it wasn’t. I wasn’t terribly fond of home, and a new world would be far more interesting than the one that reeked of familiarity. Perhaps I could go on an adventure, learn magic, discover ruins, anything I might have once thought of doing.

If it was truly a different world, then I would live the life I chose and not that repetitive routine of my old one. Despite the excitement of that thought, my heart trembled slightly with fear at the idea of an unknown world.