The year 2050 had arrived not with flying cars, but with a suffocating, neon-lit exhaustion.
Daniel trudged through the rain-slicked streets of the megacity, his boots echoing with a hollow rhythm.
He was the definition of "average"—black hair, black eyes, and a face that blended into every crowd.
At thirty, he was a man standing on a treadmill that was slowly losing power. He was an orphan who had traded his dreams for a fluorescent-lit life as a supermarket employee, earning just enough to survive but never enough to truly live.
On the roadside, a discarded beer can seen under a flickering streetlamp.
Daniel kicked it with a sudden, sharp ferocity. It skittered into a gutter, the metallic clatter sounding like a protest against the apathy of the universe.
"I'm tired of this... fucking life," he hissed, the words disappearing into the humid night air.
He was a man haunted by the lives of others. In his cramped, lonely hours, he escaped into web novels—tales of reincarnation and transmigration. He envied those protagonists: men who were reborn with loving families, loyal companions, and a harem of women who looked at them with adoration.
Daniel looked at the happy couples sharing umbrellas and felt a cold, hollow ache in his chest. I want a wife who loves me. I want a family that smiles when I walk through the door.
But as he approached his crumbling apartment complex, reality set in like a frost. "What am I even thinking?" he muttered. "Magic is for paper. Reality is just rust."
The door to his apartment groaned on its hinges. The interior was sparse but clean—the only thing in his life he could control. Exhausted, Daniel scrubbed the grime of the city off his skin in a lukewarm shower, the water smelling faintly of old pipes and chlorine.
When he stepped back into the living room, his heart didn't just skip a beat; it stopped.
A figure in a heavy black trench coat sat on his sofa, casually eating popcorn. The stranger's face was a void—a featureless mask of shifting shadows where only a cruel, thin-lipped mouth was visible.
"Oh, so you're done cleaning?" the figure asked, its voice sounding like dry leaves skittering over a grave.
Panic surged. Daniel's hand darted to a steak knife on the small dining table. He gripped it until his knuckles turned white.
"Who the hell are you? How did you get in here?"
The figure didn't answer. Instead, it released an invisible tide of pressure.
The air instantly turned to lead. The sheer weight of the pressure slammed Daniel into the floor.
His knees cracked against the hardwood, and his lungs felt as though they were being vacuum-sealed. Sweat poured down his face, and fear—visceral, primitive fear—dilated his pupils.
The hooded entity smiled, a row of unnaturally white teeth gleaming.
The hooded entity smiled, a row of unnaturally white teeth gleaming. He rose from the couch without a sound.
He didn't walk. he ghosted across the room.
His movement was a fluid, weightless glide that defied the laws of physics.
The figure said.
"You want to know who I am, right?"
The pressure intensified. Daniel felt his ribs begin to groan. Blood started to seep from his nose and ears, a warm, metallic drip on the floor. Yet, through the agony, a spark of primal defiance ignited. With a scream that tore his throat, he forced his neck upward, staring directly into the void of the stranger's face.
"You... Fucker!" Daniel spat, a mixture of saliva and blood spraying his chin. "I swear... I will kill you!"
The figure froze, then erupted into a chilling, manic laughter. "Ha ha ha ha! Interesting! A mere mortal attempts to shake off my dominion? Fearless even as his marrow collapses? It seems the Master chose well."
The laughter stopped abruptly. A blade of obsidian light appeared in the figure's hand.
Thud. Thud.
The figure stood over him, the shadow of death eclipsing the dim apartment lights.
The strike was a blur of absolute precision.
As Daniel's head left his shoulders, time slowed to a crawl. His life didn't flash before his eyes as a highlight reel, it flashed as a series of empty rooms and missed opportunities.
I'm dying a virgin. I'm dying alone. No one will even notice I'm gone. What a pathetic, shit life.
As his head rolled across the floor, his vision fading into a grey mist, he saw his own body slumped over. Tears welled in his dying eyes, spilling onto the dusty floor.
"May your afterlife be joyful, Mortal," the figure whispered. Then, the world went black.
____________
The scene shifted to a realm where the concept of "light" had been forgotten. An ancient castle, carved from the bones of a dead world, stood beneath a sky of swirling, eternal ink.
The hooded figure appeared in the grand hall, carrying Daniel's remains with a reverent, eerie grace. He approached a throne that pulsed with a dark, rhythmic heartbeat.
Sitting upon it was Balzar, the God of Destruction.
Balzar was a terrifying contradiction. He possessed a beauty that transcended mortal comprehension—long blonde hair, skin like polished marble, and eyes the color of fresh arterial blood. Yet, he was draped in obsidian armor that was cracked and scarred.
He looked injured, his divinity leaking out in slow, heavy ripples of power that threatened to unmake the very stone of the castle.
The hooded figure knelt, placing Daniel's head and body on the cold floor.
"My Lord Balzar. The vessel has been collected. He showed... unexpected resilience."
Balzar shifted, the sound of his armor like grinding tectonic plates. He looked down at the mortal remains, his crimson eyes glowing with a faint, dying ember.
"Resilience is a rare vintage in that dying world," Balzar's voice boomed, vibrating in Daniel's very soul—even in death. "Was he truly fearless?"
"He cursed me with his final breath, My Lord. Even as I crushed his very essence."
A thin, cold smile played on the God's handsome face. "Perfect. A soul that refuses to break is the only kind that can survive the world I intend for him.
Begin the transfer. Strip the name 'Daniel' from the records of the living."
Balzar leaned forward, his gaze piercing the veil of the afterlife.
"From this moment on, he is no longer a disappointment. He is a heir of destruction"
Under Balzar's command, the hooded figure began a rhythmic chanting.
The language was guttural, ancient, and seemed to bite into the air. The very fabric of the "Unknown Plane" began to tear, revealing a vortex of chaotic red and black energy that spiraled like a dying star.
Every memory of Daniel's mundane life—the fluorescent supermarket aisles, the lonely apartment, the smell of stale rain—was forcibly extracted.
They were compressed, forged into a single point of origin, a shimmering blue soul wisp that hovered in the center of the hall.
Balzar reached out a trembling, armored hand. He bled a single drop of his own crimson essence—a concentrate of pure destruction—into the wisp.
The blue light reacted violently, screaming in a frequency no mortal could hear, turning into a bruised, violent purple.
"Go," Balzar whispered, his voice cracking with the strain of his injuries. "Claim what was denied to you. Burn what needs to be burned."
With a flick of his wrist, Balzar sent the wisp soul of Daniel hurtling into the vortex, casting it toward the distant, vibrant world named Myrhia.