What is the first thing you think about when you die?
Not the moment itself—the noise, the heat, the sudden violence—but the quiet that follows. The pause. The space where something should be happening, yet isn't.
You expect fear.
You expect memories of loved ones, unfinished confessions, prayers whispered too late.
Instead, you think about money.
You think about the funds still sitting in your accounts. The security measures you postponed. The people who owed you favors—and interest. You think about the man who killed you, and how inefficient it was not to have him removed first.
That is how you know, even in death, that you are still yourself.
These are not the regrets of a good man. They are the calculations of a forty-year-old politician who misjudged one variable and paid for it in pieces. A self-righteous idiot with a cause turned you into a headline.
You suppose history will simplify you. It always does.
Yes, you siphoned public money. Yes, you destroyed careers. Yes, you accepted funds from men whose hands were cleaner than their intentions. That was the price of power. You never pretended otherwise.
But none of that matters now.
You are dead.
There is no pain. No breath. No body.
Only darkness—thick, endless, without direction. Time does not pass here, or perhaps it passes without your consent. You feel movement without motion, as though you are being carried through nothing by something that refuses to explain itself.
With nothing else to do, you inventory your life.
It was comfortable. Privileged. Predictable. You never starved. You never feared obscurity. You were brilliant where it mattered, ruthless where it counted, and successful by every external measure.
A clean ascent.
You search for regret and find very little.
Marriage, perhaps. Children. A softer kind of legacy.
You dismiss the thought almost immediately.
Next time, maybe.
You are dead, after all. There is no urgency anymore.
Then sensation returns.
At first it is distant—an irritation without shape. Then pressure. Then impact. Something is wrong. Something is touching you.
No.
Something is hitting you.
Souls are not supposed to feel this.
Light fractures the darkness. White, violent, impossible. Vision follows pain. Shapes blur, then sharpen.
You realize, with detached disbelief, that you have eyes.
Your first instinct is not panic.
It is vengeance.
You try to move. To reach. To kill the man who killed you.
Your body betrays you.
You are lying down. The surface beneath you is soft, unfamiliar. Above you hangs a chandelier—large, ornate, glittering like a constellation someone trapped indoors.
This is not a hospital.
Someone is on top of you.
Your vision steadies. A child. Small. Warm. Breathing.
Be careful, you think automatically. There are rules. Cameras. Witnesses.
You try to speak.
"Hey, kid—"
The sound that leaves you is wrong.
Too light. Too thin. Not yours.
Understanding arrives before panic ever can.
The child stirs. She lifts her head. Her face is soaked with tears, her eyes wide with terror and relief in equal measure. She says your name.
And your mind fractures.
Memories pour in—foreign yet intimate. A room you have never seen but somehow know. A family you have never met but somehow belong to. A history that settles into you with the quiet confidence of something reclaiming its place.
You do not ask if this is real.
You ask which impossibility it is.
Reincarnation.
Transmigration.
Possession.
Time travel.
You would laugh, if the body allowed it.
Even death, it seems, is subject to manipulation.
The girl clings to you, sobbing. The chandelier above flickers softly, responding to emotions you do not yet understand.
And finally—finally—clarity settles in.
You are not dead.
You are not human.
You are a wizard.