I didn't think I'd ever find myself in this situation.
Dead.
If you'd asked me a year ago what dying would feel like, I would've given you something dramatic—sirens, shouting, the cinematic last-second realization that I'd wasted my life. Movies always made it look like a punchline or a tragedy.
Cancer didn't let it be either.
Cancer was slow. It was fluorescent lights and the sharp, clean sting of antiseptic. It was machines that beeped like metronomes, counting time in a way nobody wanted to acknowledge. It was my mom squeezing my hand too hard because she didn't know where else to put her fear, and my dad hovering in doorways like stepping closer might make the whole thing collapse.
It was me trying to be brave so they wouldn't fall apart.
So maybe that's why, when it finally happened, I didn't panic. The pain was gone, and the quiet that followed felt less like an ending and more like someone had finally lowered the volume on the world.
The emptiness wasn't black.
It was white—too white. Not the white of sheets or snow or paper, but something that refused to be a place at all. No horizon. No ceiling. No shadows to prove there was distance. Just a blank infinity that made my thoughts feel like the only moving thing left.
I tried to blink and couldn't tell if I had eyelids. I tried to breathe and couldn't tell if lungs existed. When I reached for my hands, there were no bones or skin waiting for me—only the sense of intention, like my body was a shape I could remember without needing to wear it.
'So this is what being dead feels like', I thought.
A stupid part of my brain—one that had spent too many late nights with a laptop dimmed and a story open—murmured that this was the setup. The blank void. The moment before some cosmic figure appeared and offered me something.
Another part of me, smaller and meaner, argued back that I didn't get rewards. I got an ending.
Still, I waited.
Time didn't behave here. Without sound or sensation, even a second could stretch into something huge. My thoughts wandered, looped, doubled back. I tried to picture my parents. I tried not to.
Then the fear crept in: what if this whiteness was all there was? What if mercy looked like nothing because nothing could hurt you anymore—because nothing could touch you.
The thought had barely settled when something shifted.
Not the void itself—there was no ripple, no change in the endless white. The change was in me, the sudden awareness of presence behind my back, the way you can feel someone standing too close even before they speak.
I turned.
The first thing I saw were eyes.
Gold, but not the bright yellow of jewelry—something deeper, like sunlight melted down into liquid and held steady in an iris. They didn't reflect light; they seemed to contain it, a glow with depth that made looking too long feel dangerous, like staring into a furnace and pretending you weren't.
Everything else about the figure couldn't decide what it wanted to be.
The eyes didn't change.
Neither did the feeling that rolled over me the instant I met them.
Warmth—thick, steady, familiar. Not heat, not a wave of temperature, but the kind of warmth that comes from being held when you're sick. The kind that makes you realize how long you've been bracing for impact.
My throat tightened.
It should've felt embarrassing. It didn't. The comfort was too immediate, too real; my body—whatever I was here—responded like it had been waiting for someone to tell it it could stop.
The presence smiled, and the smile didn't feel like a trick. It felt like recognition, like she knew my name without asking, like she'd watched me swallow fear with my meds and pretend it didn't taste like metal.
"Hello, little one," she said.
Her voice was gentle, and it didn't sound rehearsed. It settled into me like a lullaby I hadn't heard since I was too young to remember it.
"Who… are you?" I asked.
My voice came out steadier than it had any right to. In the hospital, bravery had been a mask I wore so my parents could breathe. Here, the calm felt like something allowed.
The being tilted her head, and for a moment the white around us seemed to lean with her, as if this place was more responsive to her than to physics.
"I am many things," she said, and there was a flicker of amusement in it—not mocking, never mocking. More like a mother smiling at a question she'd heard from countless children.
She drew in a breath, more for effect than need, and began, "I am the Mother Goddess of—"
The words stopped.
Not because she stumbled, not because she forgot. It was as if she'd reached the edge of something and decided not to step across it. The warmth around her pulsed, and for an instant I felt what lay underneath: a weight so vast it made my thoughts stutter.
Her smile stayed, but sharpened slightly.
"…Mother Goddess," she finished, smooth as if nothing had happened.
My mind tried to grab at the missing word, the way you worry at a loose thread.
Mother Goddess of what?
The question slid away before I could hold it. Not erased, exactly—set aside, like she'd placed a hand over it and told it to wait.
"Okay," I managed. "Mother Goddess."
"Mm." She looked pleased, like I'd done the sensible thing.
There were a hundred questions I wanted to ask. Where was I? Was I really dead? Was my family okay? Was there a heaven? Was there anything at all beyond this?
The hospital had taught me one useful skill: if you speak too fast, you drown in your own fear.
So I chose the question that mattered.
"What happens now?"
The Mother Goddess stepped closer. There was no sound of footsteps, no sense of the floor compressing under her weight, but the space between us shrank and the warmth deepened until it made my eyes sting.
She lifted her hand. It wavered between slender fingers and a broader palm, between youthful skin and something older, but when her fingertips touched my cheek—my cheek, suddenly real enough to feel—it was gentle.
"You reached the end of your life," she said softly.
I flinched and then let out a small, breathless laugh. "Yeah. That part I figured out."
Her eyes crinkled at the corners. I got the ridiculous sense that I'd made her proud.
"You bore pain that should not have been yours," she said. "You endured. You loved. You tried to spare others by carrying their fear for them."
Something in me cracked—not loudly, not dramatically, just a quiet break that made room for everything I'd refused to admit.
I hadn't wanted to be brave. I'd been brave because my parents needed me to be.
"It wasn't—" I started.
"It was," she corrected gently, with a certainty that shut the door on my attempts to minimize it.
Then she continued, "You were not given enough time."
That was the sentence that hurt.
Because I'd accepted it, hadn't I? I'd made my peace. I'd told myself I was lucky to have loved at all.
Acceptance didn't erase grief.
Her thumb brushed under my eye, wiping away wetness I hadn't noticed forming.
"I can offer you another life," she said.
The words hit like oxygen after holding my breath too long.
My heart—imaginary or not—stuttered. "In… my world?"
"Not that one," she said.
A part of me wanted to protest, to demand my parents back, my room, my boring school days, my mom's cooking, the ability to grow older in the place I'd started.
But the warmth around her held my grief so firmly that the protest stayed in my chest.
"I can offer you a different world," she went on. "A world you've dreamed of. A world where your story does not end at sixteen."
My breath caught. I didn't ask which world, because my mind had already leapt to the place I'd carried like a secret comfort for years—the one I escaped into on nights when my bones ached and my mouth tasted like medicine.
"Harry Potter," I whispered.
Her smile widened. "Yes."
It wasn't a contract, and she wasn't bargaining. It was simply an answer, given as naturally as if I'd asked for water.
Hope surged through me so sharp it was almost frightening.
Then the hope hesitated, because hope always had a shadow.
I swallowed. "What's the catch?"
She laughed, low and warm, like I'd proven I was still myself. "There is always a price for existence," she said, "but I am not here to trick you."
The calm in her presence made me believe her.
"I will not take this second life away the way the first was taken," she promised. "But I will not make it effortless. A story without struggle becomes hollow."
My fingers curled without me meaning them to. "So… you're sending me there."
"Yes."
"And I just start over?"
Her eyes swept over me as if she were looking at something beneath the shape of me—something like a soul.
"You will be reborn," she said. "But you will not go unprotected."
The word protected made my throat ache. I'd spent my last year being protected and it still hadn't been enough.
"What kind of protection?" I asked.
The Mother Goddess stepped back, just enough to give the space between us room to breathe. She spread her hands.
For the first time, the whiteness responded. Not like wind or fog, but like reality itself had been paying attention and had decided to move.
In the empty space between her palms, a tiny point of green appeared.
It wasn't a leaf, not yet, and it wasn't a spark. It looked like the idea of growth made visible—small, stubborn, alive.
It pulsed once.
And I smelled earth.
Rich soil after rain. The scent yanked a memory out of me so fast I almost choked on it: my mom's garden, the little patch of tomatoes she tended with stubborn pride even while I was sick. The feel of warm dirt under my fingernails when I was younger and still strong enough to help.
The ache in my chest wasn't grief this time. It was longing.
"One gift," the Mother Goddess said, her voice lowering, "for understanding."
The green point unfolded into a thin thread of light that shimmered as it stretched toward me.
"Your new world is full of tongues," she continued. "Human and not. Spoken and unspoken. Promises made with words, and warnings delivered without them."
The thread brushed my forehead.
A rush of language flooded me.
It wasn't noise, not exactly—more like doors unlocking in my mind. English settled into place where it belonged, but around it bloomed other patterns of meaning: syllables that curled like smoke, vowels that tasted like salt, consonants that felt like stone. I didn't learn them the way you study; I recognized them the way you recognize your own name.
I gasped, and the surge calmed. The knowledge remained, neatly layered, ready to be reached for.
"You will understand," she said softly, "and you will be understood."
Then her gaze dropped to the green point still hovering between her palms.
"And one gift," she said, "for living."
The green brightened. Beneath it, something else shimmered—faint and strange, like light passing through water at the wrong angle. The warmth around her deepened again, and my instincts told me I'd reached the edge of something much larger than comfort.
She looked at me the way a mother looks at a child before sending them out into the world: with love, and with the quiet knowledge that love did not guarantee safety.
"This one," she murmured, "is a seed."
The green point drifted toward me, slow and inevitable. As it approached, even the whiteness felt tense, as if reality itself were holding its breath.
I swallowed, suddenly aware that calm didn't mean what was coming was small.
"What kind of seed?" I asked.
Her lips curved. "A seed of nature," she said, "and a seed of chaos."
The moment the green touched my chest, it didn't sink like a seed into soil.
It spread.
Warmth unfurled through me in living threads—roots searching, vines testing for light—until the shape of my body felt less like a thought and more like something real. Under that warmth came a second sensation, faint at first and then impossible to ignore: a shimmer of pressure that didn't feel like nature at all. It felt like possibility without a plan, like change that didn't care what it became.
My breath hitched, and for the first time since waking in the white void, something like a heartbeat stuttered into existence.
"Easy," the Mother Goddess murmured.
The word carried weight. The chaotic pressure didn't vanish, but it quieted, settling as if the warmth had offered it grooves to rest inside.
I looked down instinctively.
I had hands again.
Not the vague, thought-shaped limbs from before—hands with fingers and knuckles and skin that looked too clean, too untouched by hospital tape. Seeing them made my chest ache with relief.
Then pain lanced through both palms at once.
Clean and sharp, like a needle driven straight through skin.
I gasped and jerked my hands back.
On the back of my right hand, a mark burned into existence: a pale, glowing crest—two crowned mushrooms at its center, framed by a wreath of leaves and a faint circular seal, like a forest's blessing turned into a sigil. On my left, another symbol flared to life—an orange, sun-bright wheel of jagged arcs and hooked points, a spiked ring circling a tight spiral core, like a brand stamped from heat and chaos.
The heat faded quickly. The marks dimmed, sinking into my skin until they were little more than faint impressions, as if they'd always been there and I'd simply failed to notice.
"What—" I started.
The Mother Goddess stepped closer, and her presence steadied me the way it had from the beginning. "Do not fight them," she said.
"I'm not—" I swallowed. "I don't even know what they are."
Her smile softened. "You will."
She reached for my hands, not grabbing—guiding. Her fingertips brushed my wrists, turning my palms slightly as if she wanted me to see without panicking.
"Focus," she instructed, voice gentle.
I did, more out of instinct than obedience, and the marks prickled in response, like they recognized attention.
Something shifted at the edge of my awareness.
Not information—yet.
More like the sense of a door with a key in my pocket.
The Mother Goddess watched my face as if she could tell exactly how close I'd come to turning that key.
"Not now," she said quietly, and the prickling eased, the door settling back into stillness.
The white void began to tighten.
It wasn't forming shapes, and it wasn't becoming a room. It felt more like a membrane drawing taut, as if the place itself was preparing to let me go.
Panic flickered at the edges of my calm.
"Wait," I said. "I have questions."
"You will always have questions," she answered, voice warm enough to keep me from spiraling.
"My family," I blurted, the word raw. "Are they—"
Her expression gentled further. For a moment the comfort in her presence was almost unbearable, like being held too tightly.
"They will grieve," she said. "They will hurt. And they will live."
It wasn't reassurance.
It was truth.
I nodded because my throat wouldn't let me speak.
"And me?" I asked, quieter. "Am I… going to be me?"
Her eyes held mine. "You will be you," she promised. "But you will be more than you were allowed to become."
The membrane tugged again. Stronger.
I took an unsteady step forward, as if my body already knew which way the world was pulling.
"When I get there," I asked, "will I remember this?"
Her smile widened. "Yes."
The answer was immediate—too immediate.
Then her gaze sharpened slightly and she amended, softly, "Most of it."
My heartbeat stumbled.
The warmth around her thickened, and for the first time the white void didn't feel empty. It felt owned.
I should've thanked her. I should've said something meaningful.
Instead, something old and stubborn inside me—the part that had listened to doctors say there's nothing we can do—made me ask the question I couldn't stop myself from asking.
"Why are you doing this?"
The Mother Goddess stared at me.
For a heartbeat, the gentleness in her expression looked chosen with care.
"Because you are mine now," she said.
The sentence was calm.
It still made something cold slide along my spine.
The marks on my hands prickled again, not hot this time—alert.
The Mother Goddess lifted her hand and touched my temple.
Warmth surged through me, familiar and soothing, and beneath it I caught the faintest hint of something rancid, like sweet perfume hiding rot.
Her smile didn't disappear.
It changed.
The corners of it held, but the meaning behind it twisted into something that didn't belong in a mother's face.
Her golden eyes brightened, molten light deepening until it felt like the white around us was dimming in comparison.
"Go," she whispered.
The word struck like a bell inside my skull.
Then her voice slid lower, slipping under my skin.
"Spread my corruption," she said.
My breath caught. "What?"
"Whether you want to or not," she finished.
The membrane around us shuddered.
I tried to move and realized the tug had become a pull—an invisible hand hooked into my ribs, dragging me toward wherever 'there' was.
"You will live," she said, and her voice was soft again, almost tender, which made it worse. "You will be seen. Your name will be spoken. And every time it is spoken, you will drag a thread of me behind you."
My vision blurred. The marks flared—quick, bright pain—and the world tilted.
The missing word rose in my mind like bile.
Mother Goddess of—
Something clenched around my thoughts.
Not an attack exactly.
A closing hand.
The darkness in her smile folded away as if someone had snapped a mask back into place. The warmth returned in full, thick and gentle, as if she hadn't just carved dread into me.
Her thumb brushed my cheek, kind again.
"Sleep," she murmured.
The command slid into me like a hook.
I tried to hold on to what I'd heard. I tried to keep the fear sharp so it wouldn't be taken.
It dulled.
It sank.
Not erased.
Buried.
The last clear image I had was her face, calm and motherly again, smiling like this was a gift and nothing else.
The white void yanked hard.
I fell.
The emptiness stretched into a tunnel, and the tunnel narrowed into darkness. There was a rushing sensation, like being poured through a needle's eye.
For an instant I thought of my hospital bed and the steady beep of machines.
For an instant I thought of my mother's hands.
For an instant I smelled soil and rain.
Then the dark swallowed everything.
I tried to scream.
No sound came.
I tried to open my eyes.
Light stabbed through me.
Air filled my lungs with a brutal, burning rush.
My body convulsed.
And somewhere, far away—so far it could've been imagination—I felt warmth retreat, like a hand letting go.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Welp, here we go again!
I'm gonna try my best to make this work how I envision!
Also if I get any lore wrong or whatever, I am trying to take some of it into my own hands, but do still point it out if I get something wrong!