Darkness.
Not the darkness of night, or blindness, or closed eyes. This was deeper—an eternal abyss, weightless and vast, without direction or end. There was no floor. No ceiling. No time.
Gabriel did not know if he was falling or floating.
He had no body. No breath. No pulse. Only thought—pure, raw thought, flickering like static in an infinite black sea.
"Am I dead…?"
The words weren't spoken. They simply echoed inside what remained of him.
But something answered.
Not with words, but with motion—a pull, faint at first. A gravitational tug in the nothingness. Like a current beneath the surface of an invisible ocean.
He was being drawn.
Flickers of the Machine
Somewhere, on the far edge of oblivion, distant flashes pulsed—like stars blinking into existence and dying in the same breath.
They carried memory.
Glitches of a broken lab… a rain-soaked skyline… blood on steel… the moment the machine exploded. Each flicker was a remnant of Earth, orbiting his consciousness like falling satellites.
"I died."
The realization hit like a silent scream. But there was no pain. No regret. Just the cold finality of a truth accepted too late.
Still, the pull continued.
Faster now. More violent.
Something was reaching for him.
The Bridge
Suddenly, light tore through the black.
Not warm or golden—but alien. Cold silver mixed with crimson threads, forming a spiral—a tunnel of threads and veins, like the inside of a living, breathing machine. The Pathway.
Gabriel's soul was being threaded through it, unraveled and rewoven by unseen forces. Time bent. Direction lost meaning. The stars themselves cracked open, revealing patterns and symbols that pulsed like heartbeat glyphs.
"What is this…?"
"A bridge," came a whisper—not from within, but from around.
It was not a voice he knew. It didn't even sound human. It was ancient. Patient. It spoke not in language, but in concept.
"Between death and life."
"Between science and power."
"Between man… and more."
The Choice That Wasn't
He wasn't asked if he wanted this.
There was no judgment. No gods. No scales.
Only movement. The Pathway didn't care who Gabriel had been. Only that he carried a spark—the will to defy death, strong enough to activate a machine meant to map thought itself.
And that spark was enough.
Around him, the tunnel collapsed into radiant veins of energy, flowing like rivers across dimensions. Some led to empty shells. Some to beasts. Some to cursed trees in twisted forests. Some to realms beyond imagining.
But one thread glowed brighter than the rest—a mortal infant's body, wrapped in chains and born in a world where humans were prey.
The Path chose.
The spark obeyed.
Arrival
The rush stopped.
There was a flash of bone-white light, a tearing sensation, and then—weight. Heat. Noise. A scream not from Gabriel, but from someone else.
His spark collided with flesh.
And for a moment…
He existed again.
But not as Gabriel.
As Derick—a newborn slave in a world where strength reigned and humans bled for others' amusement.
Echoes
As the child cried—his soul still raw from the fusion—the last fragment of Gabriel's identity whispered in the void:
"I won't die again."
"This time… I'll rise."
Then silence returned.
The bridge sealed.
And in the realm of the cultivation worlds, far from Earth's stars, the first breath of a new fate was drawn.