"So let me get this straight," Jay said, his voice dangerously calm in the way that precedes either tears or violence. "You thought it would be a *great* idea to experience what it feels like to *not* be omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient... and I *died* as a result?"
The being who called himself Rob had the audacity to look sheepish. Guilty, even, like a child caught elbow-deep in a cookie jar, radiating that particular brand of remorse that comes not from wrongdoing, but from getting caught.
Jay had entertained many theories about the afterlife. He'd imagined robed figures, blinding light, perhaps a stern but merciful presence seated upon something appropriately throne-like. Never, not once, not in his wildest theological tangent, had he imagined *this.* The Creator of All Things, the Architect of Existence, the Alpha and the Omega, standing before him with his hands clasped behind his back and his divine gaze fixed firmly on the floor like a man who very much did not want to make eye contact. There was no regalness. No cosmic weight to the moment. Just Rob, looking sorry about it.
"Well, it's more complicated than that, but yes, that's the general gist," Rob said, silently giving the soul a sidelong glance.
Jay rubbed his forehead, trying to wrap his mind around the sheer absurdity of the situation, his thoughts drifting back to the moment before everything went sideways. It had just been an ordinary afternoon. Then again, most of his life had been.
Twenty-seven years old. An office job he tolerated. A small apartment overflowing with notebooks, reference books, and half-finished manuscripts. The sort of life that sounded depressing when described out loud but had never actually felt that way to him.
He had always wanted to be an author, not just any author either. He wanted to be the kind whose name people said with a certain reverence, whose stories got taught in schools and debated in forums and passed down like heirlooms. He wanted to write something that mattered.
For nearly a decade he had written whenever he could: during lunch breaks, late at night, on weekends. Fantasy worlds, superhero epics, science fiction sagas, thousands of hours poured into characters, settings, power systems, and plots that existed nowhere but his hard drive and his head. Finishing them, though, was always another matter.
A few web novels had gathered modest followings, and some readers had even called him talented, which meant a lot more than they probably knew. But talent and passion didn't pay rent, so he worked, and wrote, and worked some more. One manuscript became five. Five became twelve. Twelve became a graveyard of abandoned worlds he still visited sometimes, late at night, when he couldn't sleep.
Still, he kept going. Not because he believed success was right around the corner, but because every time he sat down to write, he felt the same thing he had felt as a teenager staring at a blank page: that quiet, stubborn electricity, the possibility that this one might finally be the story.
And the funny thing was, recently, he had actually started to believe it.
For the first time in years, he had a completed draft he was proud of. It wasn't perfect, the first draft never was, but it existed. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and when he read it back he felt something he hadn't felt in a long time: hope. Real, embarrassing, cautious hope. The kind that made him think he might finally have something to show for all those years, something that might even give his quietly disappointed parents and siblings pause.
But then reality had apparently decided to hit him with a divine administrative error, and now he was standing in the void having a conversation with God.
Jay let out a long, slow breath. "So what now," he said, less a question than a statement. He couldn't even summon the energy to be angry, and besides, it probably wasn't wise to raise your voice at a being of unimaginable power. For all he knew, the sheepish routine was a test.
The being made of living cosmos blinked at him, visibly thrown. "No reaction? That's not how I imagined this going."
"I mean," Jay said with a small shrug, "I'm already dead. And judging by the fact that I'm here talking to you instead of waking up in a hospital somewhere, I'm guessing bringing me back isn't exactly on the table."
Rob's expression shifted into something that confirmed it before he even opened his mouth. "You've been erased at the conceptual level. Returning your existence to your world would break certain rules and, honestly, cause more trouble than it's worth."
Jay turned that over quietly. "Conceptual level," he repeated. "So everyone I've ever known..."
"Won't remember you," Rob said, and had the decency to look uncomfortable saying it. "Yes."
Jay nodded slowly, a bitter smile tugging at the corner of his mouth without quite making it all the way. "Yeah," he said. "I figured."
A beat of silence stretched between them, comfortable in the way silences only get when both parties have quietly accepted something neither particularly wanted to say out loud, before Rob cleared his throat. "About that, actually." He paused, clasping his hands together in a way that managed to look both divine and deeply awkward. "As compensation for the... inconvenience, I'd like to offer you a reincarnation."
Jay stared at him. "Reincarnation?"
*Figured as much,* he thought. He'd seen this kind of thing coming from a mile away. When you'd read as many of these stories as he had, certain things stopped being surprises.
"Yes." Rob brightened at that, clearly pleased with himself, and snapped his fingers. A wheel appeared out of thin air, enormous, easily twelve feet tall, mounted on a golden stand and split into four colored sections, the text across each segment so small you'd probably need a microscopic lens just to make out what any of it said. The kind of oversized, flashy prop you'd expect to see on a game show set, spinning under studio lights while a crowd went wild in the background.
"What's this for," Jay asked, even though he already had a pretty good idea. He just wanted to hear it said out loud to be sure.
"This wheel," Rob said, "will determine your destination."
---
Jay looked at it for a moment, turning things over in his head. "Okay, so let me make sure I've got this right. The wheel picks my destination, and whatever world I land in determines my chances of getting a certain level of ability or item. Is that what you're saying?"
"Correct," Rob answered.
"So if I ended up in Demon Slayer, for example, the odds of me getting something like Ultra Instinct would be pretty much next to nothing."
"Correct," Rob answered again.
"Alright." Jay took a breath. "I'm ready."
He ran through everything Rob had told him one more time, just to make sure he had it straight. The wheel decided his destination, and he had three respins available if he landed somewhere he really wasn't happy with. The ability wheel was a different matter, no respins on that one, but he did get three modifications he could make to whatever ability or item he ended up with, as long as none of those changes completely overrode what the ability was originally meant to do.
He walked over to the lever, stared at the wheel for a moment like he was sizing it up, then pulled it back. The wheel spun into action with a deep, satisfying whirr that filled the room, the four colored sections bleeding into each other until they were just a smear going around and around, and then, slowly, almost like it was doing it on purpose, it started to lose speed.
That's when he noticed the text beginning to grow.
As each section eased past the marker at the top, the words on it got just big enough to make out, like the wheel was giving him a glimpse of what he could have before pulling it away again. The first one crawled past and left him genuinely stunned.
**[Demon Slayer × Tokyo Ghoul]**
"Crossover universes? Really?" He gave Rob a sideways look, and the bastard had the nerve to avert his gaze and whistle. He pushed the feeling down. It was pointless to dwell on. What else could he do but complain? His life was literally in the hands of this so-called Rob.
The wheel moved on.
**[My Hero Academia × Kaiju No. 8]**
"How would that even work?" He couldn't help but question it, the power systems weren't exactly comparable, and he let it go, watching the slot roll by.
[Invincible × The Incredibles × The Boys]
[The Lord of Mysteries × Warhammer 40K]
[Mob Psycho × Jujutsu Kaisen]
[Merlin × The Witcher]
[Star Wars × Mass Effect]
[Black Clover × Fairy Tail]
[Lord of the Rings × Wheel of Time]
[Resident Evil × The Last of Us]
[Stargate × Halo]
[Harry Potter × The Magicians × Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell]
The wheel rolled on through different worlds, some terrifying, some mundane, and then at last it slowed, and stopped.
[Marvel × DC × Invincible × Ben 10]