The man in the black suit stood before me, his presence neither welcoming nor hostile—simply there, like a mountain or a star. His face held no expression, yet somehow, I felt his acknowledgment, as if my existence had just been logged into some unfathomable record.
"Congratulations," he said, his voice neither warm nor cold. "You are dead."
The words hung in the air, weightless, yet final. Around us stretched an endless void—not darkness, not emptiness, but the absence of anything that could be named. Distantly, echoes of celebration reverberated, a chorus of voices and music with no discernible source.
I tried to speak, to move, but my body was gone. Only my consciousness remained, untethered and mute.
"Communication is unnecessary," the man said, answering the panic I couldn't voice. "Your thoughts are sufficient."
He turned and walked away, each step measured, effortless. Then—
A throne appeared.
Not in a flash of light or a twist of reality. It simply was, as if it had always existed and always would. Golden, austere, radiating a quiet authority, it seemed less like an object and more like a law of the universe. The man sat, resting his hands on its arms, his crimson eyes regarding me with neither pity nor amusement.
Am I… hallucinating?
"No," he replied. "This is real. You are in the Void—the space between all things. And I am reading your thoughts because, here, they are as audible as speech."
His tone carried no mockery, only fact.
"You are here because your soul met the criteria," he continued. "Most beings cease or recycle. A few are observed. You are among the latter."
Observed?
"Yes." He tilted his head slightly, as if consulting some unseen ledger. "Your life, like all lives, was a narrative. Some narratives are archived. Yours has been selected for review."
Selected by who? You?
For the first time, something flickered in his gaze—not emotion, but something closer to recognition, as if I'd asked a question he'd answered a trillion times before.
"I am a curator of sorts," he said. "You may call me God, if it helps. Or Creator. Or Architect. The title is irrelevant. What matters is this: you are being offered a choice."
A pause. The void seemed to hold its breath.
"A wish?" I thought, half-doubting.
"A modification," he corrected. "An alteration to the rules of your existence, within defined parameters."
Why?
"Because it amuses me," he said, blunt but not cruel. "And because entropy is inevitable. Even for me."
He leaned forward slightly, and for the first time, I sensed the scale of him—not a personality, not a being, but a force, vast and indifferent as gravity.
"Choose carefully," he said. "You will not get another."