I knew better than anyone not to get my hopes up. Hope was a dangerous luxury I'd stopped being able to afford around life thirty-five.
I had already mentally prepared myself for the void; I'd practiced the idea of my own non-existence until it felt like a familiar coat.
There was no point in trying anything else.
Believe me, I'd tried it all. Begging? I'd done enough of that to fill a cathedral, If someone ask me what the best method, i'll be a pretty amazing teacher.
Crying? That usually came as a free gift with the begging. Reasoning? Threatening?
I'd played those cards so many times I knew the punchline: there is no such thing as a miraculous save.
But seeing the end approaching was still nerve-wracking. A tiny, pathetic part of me was still clinging to a miniscule shred of hope that I might actually finish this last mission and go back to my old life.
Maybe I'd get an easy card? Something even a disgraced fashion icon could handle?
I couldn't stop my feet from jittering.
"Yeah, right," I muttered to the empty white walls. "That ship sailed a long time ago."
At this point, I just hoped my fiftieth death wouldn't be as painful as the others. Those "lives" were a highlight reel of trauma; I still shivered whenever I thought about the specifics. I clasped my hands together as if praying—which was hilarious, considering the gods were the ones who'd put me in this blender to begin with.
"Anything other than getting burnt at the stake again," I whispered. That one had left scars on my psyche that even resurrection couldn't heal.
The others were... tolerable. Unless, of course, the heavens decided to play a joke and test my threshold for "tolerable."
"Don't jinx it, Saoirse. Shut up."
[System initializing…]
I perked up, my hands going ice-cold. It was finally starting. The final countdown.
[System failed.]
I frowned. "Hmm?"
[System initializing…]
[System deleted.]
A series of strange, frantic beeping noises erupted from the interface. I stood up, as if being on my feet would help me understand digital gibberish. The screen was flickering wildly, beeping as if it had suddenly
developed a mind of its own—and was having a full-blown panic attack.
What the actual hell?
The words on the interface began to glitch, bleeding into a messy cocktail of blue and red. Lines of code scrambled and hissed like a computer infected with a terminal virus.
I shifted my weight, my brow furrowing. The system had never done this before.
Was it a bug? A glitch? I leaned in closer, desperate for any sign of a "Restart" button. I wanted to call out for help, to find someone—anyone—to explain why my execution was being delayed by technical difficulties.
"Hey! Old man! Where are you?!" I shouted.
My voice echoed into the void, a lonely plea to the only god I knew.
"What's happening?!"
I started biting my nails, the silence only broken by the frantic drumming of my heart and the hum of the broken machinery.
I paced the room, and the scrambled interface followed me like a loyal, dying dog. I tried to hover my fingers over the display, hoping to force a read on it, but my hand just passed through the holographic light. No buttons. No plug to pull like those modern computers I was used to.
"Wait..." I stopped in my tracks. "It's a divine system, isn't it? They couldn't be so incompetent that their literal God-ware got hacked, right?"
Suddenly, as if responding to my tone out of spite, the screen flickered and heaved—like it was struggling to take one last breath—before settling on a loading page.
Ding!
[The God of War has conceded. The 'Tester' will be summoned if a new God is accepted.]
I froze.
"Conceded?" What did that even mean? Was I free?
Thoughts flooded my brain, a chaotic mess of 'what ifs.'
Before I could even form a single question, a burst of warm, blinding light flooded my entire body. My vision blurred, and that familiar, unexplainable force began pulling me through the very fabric of reality.
I'd felt this pull forty-nine times before.
Everything went dark.
My eyes snapped open the second I felt a change in the air.
I was standing. And to my absolute shock, I was standing in a place I knew better than my own name. I'd recognize that sage green sofa anywhere. The TV, the glass coffee table... it was my house. My apartment.
The familiar clutter of my living room was exactly as I'd left it: the messy table, the half-empty bottle of wine from my aborted break.
Even my magazine and the remote were right where I'd dropped them. It was as if time had simply frozen the moment I disappeared.
A wave of relief so violent it made me dizzy washed over me. I collapsed onto the sofa, the plush cushions dipping under my weight.
Was it a nightmare? Was I just... home? If it was a dream, it was the cruelest one in history, but I didn't care. I was back.
I ran a trembling hand across my face, breathing in the scent of my own home. What a long, agonizing hallucination. I felt a dull ache in my chest—a mix of relief that it was over and simmering fury that I'd been put through that divine meat-grinder to begin with.
But I had my freedom. That was all that mattered.
I'd spent decades in those other worlds, constantly worried I'd be too late to ever see Earth again, but here, nothing had changed. I could finally do everything I'd planned. I'd go international. I'd visit the kids at the orphanage. I'd see all those places I'd put off because I thought I had forever.
Earth hadn't aged, but I had. My mind felt decades older than the face in the mirror.
I finally found the strength to stand. I couldn't undo what had happened, and there was no point dwelling on the trauma. I just needed to hear a human voice.
I searched for my phone to call my manager, but it wasn't on the table.
"I'm sure it's here," I muttered, scooting down to check under the sofa and the table.
Nothing.
I sighed, brushing it off. "Whatever. I'll find it later."
I quickly changed into something that didn't look like an imperial funeral shroud or anything, fixed my makeup with shaking hands, and grabbed my keys. I was ready to live.
Fzzzt.
The moment my hand closed around the door handle, an invisible boundary slammed into me. It didn't just stop the door; it stopped me, dead in my tracks.
"What... what is this?" I pushed harder, throwing my shoulder against the door. It wouldn't budge. It felt like I was pushing against a mountain.
"Is anyone there?!" I shouted, slamming my fists against the wood to make as much noise as possible.
"HELP!"
I screamed until my throat was raw, but no one answered. I ran to the window.
Everything outside looked perfectly normal—the street, the cars, the sky—but when I tried to step onto my balcony, I hit another invisible wall.
It was like being a bird in a glass cage, looking out at a world I was barred from entering. The desperation started to claw at my throat again.
That's when the interface popped up.
[You are inside Temporary Reclusion. Leaving is prohibited.]
[Tap 'see more' for details]