I feel it. Like I'm being burned out of existence. No, not burned, erased. A mana void. My skin, my bones, my thoughts... all gone.
I look around. There's nothing left but white.
We're truly, utterly… Gone.
Even after what felt like forever, I could still see only the white. No colors. No sound. Nothing.
Wait, how I can see. What? I can SEE?
I was stabbed. I should be dead. So how am I seeing? Am I really seeing… with physical eyes?
My thoughts tangled together, tripping over each other as I tried to make sense of it. How could a dead man see?
Then I heard something, a low rumble. Like a stomach growling.
That was my stomach. I was hungry. But I'm dead. Dead people don't need to eat… right?
I kept staring into the void until something started taking shape. Three blades, slowly spinning. A weapon? No… it looked like machetes, rotating lazily in the white emptiness.
It felt familiar. Natural. Like something I should know.
Wait... The white's fading. What now?
But those blades, the "machetes", no that's… my ceiling fan.
My Ceiling fan.
I blinked, dumbstruck. I tried to sit up, then bolted upright too fast and slammed my head on the roof. The pain was sharp, too real. Was this roof made from a cursed beast's hide?
I froze, scanning the room. Everything felt familiar. Too familiar.
This… this was my old room. Before everything.
How the hell am I back here?
My eyes drifted to my old cracked mirror, the same one I'd stared into so many times, searching for someone else in my reflection. Someone I never found.
This time, though, I stared with a mix of disbelief, humor, and fear. Did i go back in time? I stared closer, No.
The reflection staring back at me wasn't the scarred man I'd become, it was me, more than twenty years younger.
I hadn't gone back in time. My soul had. Memories were stored in the soul after all.
That wasn't a mana zone back there. It was a time portal, one that fed on the essence of the others who were with me.
Just a theory… but I knew I was right.
Going back twenty years. Before the end of the world. And I remember everything.
If I wasn't so shocked, I'd probably be laughing like a madman right now.
"Levi."
Shit, someone's here. I'd completely lost it to not notice.
I turned and saw him.
"Cole…"
I recognized him instantly. I hadn't seen him in over fifteen years. My eyes burned red as the memory hit me, the cursed boar, the screams, his body torn apart. We never even found him whole.
"Levi, don't worry, man," he said, completely unaware of the storm inside me. "You'll get another job soon. Don't be so down, bro. Come on."
What the hell is he talking about. And then it hit me. When am I?
I looked around, spotting my old, half-broken phone on the desk. The cracked screen made me smile bitterly. I remembered exactly how it broke. Same day the mirror cracked. Same frustration.
I picked it up. Swiped down out of muscle memory. The date read: March 12th, 2040.
Of course. My birthday. Also the day I got fired. And five months before the apocalypse.
I clenched my fist around the phone and stared at my reflection one last time.
This time… I'm changing everything.
Every. Single. Thing.