The ceiling tiles never changed. He'd stared at them for so long he could trace the tiny cracks with his eyes closed. Haise exhaled softly, a breath that felt more like the world leaving him in pieces. Somewhere above him, distant voices fought to keep him tethered to the scraps of his own fading life.
"He's slipping... pressure's falling-"
Another voice snapped back, sharper, firmer. "Get the crash cart! Move!"
The words barely brushed his ears. Their urgency couldn't reach him anymore.
He blinked slowly, his vision swimming, the sterile lights blurring into long smears. They didn't matter. None of it did. The doctors, the machines, the sharp scent of antiseptic, all of it was just noise now. He'd spent the last two years caged in this room, tied to this bed, wasting away. A sickness had gnawed through him like termites through soft wood, hollowing him out until he wasn't sure there was anything left.
Was this it? Was this all he'd been?
The weight of it crushed his chest. Not the sickness, not the failing organs, just the quiet realization that he had lived for nothing. No milestones, no grand memories. Just... waiting to die. Fighting, for what? For more time in this place that had never felt like life?
His breathing thinned. His limbs sank deeper into the mattress, the edges of his body slipping away as if he were dissolving. A muffled voice called his name, but it sounded wrong, like it belonged to someone else.
Haise.
His eyelids drifted shut, slow, final.
Then-
The weight was gone.
No pain. No beeping monitors. No cold needles buried in his veins.
Just... lightness.
His eyes fluttered open.
He was standing. Not lying, not weak, not drowning in his own body, but upright, steady, as though none of it had ever happened. His hospital gown was gone. In fact, everything was gone.
Beneath him stretched a floor of purple glass, smooth, impossibly clean, its surface faintly rippling as if it held secrets underneath. Around him was nothing but sky, a vast, endless violet sky, streaked with darker shades that seemed to twist and curl like ink drifting in water.
He turned, slowly, carefully. It didn't feel real. It couldn't be. He should have been... somewhere else. Or nowhere at all.
A figure stood a few steps ahead, silent, waiting. Their body was little more than a silhouette carved out of the sky itself, no face, no features, only the faint shimmer of something humanoid.
Haise's throat worked, but it took him a second to remember how to speak. "Are you... God?"
His voice sounded small in the vastness.
The figure didn't move. "God?" There was something like amusement in the voice, faint and distant, like the echo of someone else's laugh. "Not even close."
Haise's mouth tightened. "Is this the afterlife? Some kind of... waiting room?"
The figure offered no answer to that, only stepping forward until the faint edge of their form flickered against the purple light.
"You've been through much," the figure said, voice calm, weightless. "A life spent watching, waiting, struggling. I know what you've endured."
A flicker of irritation sparked in Haise's chest. "You know? You know what it's like to rot away in a hospital bed for two damn years?"
His hands curled into fists, though the sensation was distant, like the memory of clenching, not the real thing.
"Why?" His voice cracked. "Why give me that weakness? Why make me fight a battle I was never going to win?"
The figure's head tilted up, slowly, toward him. No eyes. No mouth. Just the suggestion of a gaze resting on Haise.
"Had?" The voice dipped, colder now. "You still have it."
Haise's breath caught.
What?
The figure's form wavered as if caught in a breeze that didn't exist. "You are still alive."
"That's-" Haise stepped back. His heartbeat stumbled. "No. I was dying. I was-I was already-"
"Life is rarely so simple." The figure's words slipped around him, soft but absolute. "Everything happens for a reason. Every breath, every struggle. You survived, and you are ready now."
Haise's pulse thudded in his ears. The purple sky pressed closer, suffocating, like it was waiting for him to understand something he couldn't grasp.
"Ready for what?"
The figure didn't answer, not really. Only a faint hum of something close to approval.
"The future."
Before Haise could ask more, the ground beneath him cracked.
His head whipped down.
The glass floor splintered, fine fractures racing out beneath his feet like a spider's web. Shards broke away, drifting downward into the endless purple beneath him.
"No, wait-!"
The surface gave out, and he fell.
The sky spun, fragments of purple glass tumbling around him, catching light that wasn't there. His stomach lurched, but there was no air, no wind, only the freefall and the weightless pull of whatever waited below.
His eyes squeezed shut.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
Then-
A faint glow pulsed in the void.
His eyes cracked open, and a window of pale blue light hovered in the dark, its edges sharp and clean, words etched in letters too crisp to be anything but real.
[STATUS]
Strength: 1
Agility: 1
Endurance: 1
MP: 0
HP: 10/10
Special Mark: ???
His brow furrowed.
"What... the hell is this?"
He reached for it, hesitantly, but his hand passed through the display like it wasn't even there.
Was this some kind of joke? Some fever dream his dying brain had cooked up? He'd played games before, sure, but this, this was something else entirely.
Before he could figure out what any of it meant, his vision blurred, a wave of exhaustion crashing over him with suffocating weight.
His knees buckled.
Darkness again.
His body sank into it this time, no falling, no rushing, just a slow drift into black.
Then warmth.
Not the sterile warmth of hospital sheets. Real warmth. Sunlight.
A sharp breath dragged into his lungs, tasting of dust and stone and something faintly metallic.
His eyes snapped open.
He wasn't in a bed.
Not in a hospital. Not in the purple sky.
He was lying on rough stone, its surface uneven, biting against his skin. He sat up slowly, wincing as the stiffness in his joints caught up with him. The ceiling above was jagged rock, faint streams of sunlight leaking in from cracks far overhead.
A cave.
The air was heavy, cool, laced with the damp scent of moss and something else he couldn't place.
His head spun, the last threads of the dream, or whatever that was, slipping through his fingers.
His heart thundered, a frantic beat that didn't seem to know where it belonged.
"What the hell..." His voice trembled.
He pressed a hand to his chest.
It was beating.
Steady. Real.
He dragged his gaze around the cave, blinking hard to clear the fuzziness from his vision. Dust danced lazily in the beams of sunlight, and somewhere in the distance, water dripped steadily.
There was no sign of the hospital. No machines. No glass floor. No faceless figure.
Just him. Alone.
Alive.
Or something close to it.
His hands trembled as he stared down at his palms. The same hands that had been too weak to even lift a spoon days, no, minutes ago. They felt different now. Lighter. Stronger? Maybe. Or maybe it was just the adrenaline.
His gaze darted back to the faint shimmer hanging in front of him.
The system window was still there, pulsing softly.
Strength: 1
Agility: 1
Endurance: 1
MP: 0
HP: 10/10
Special Mark: ???
It hadn't vanished.
It hadn't been a dream.
Haise pressed his palms into his eyes and let out a shaky breath.
What the hell was this?
Where was he? Why was he here? And why did it feel like something was waiting just outside the cave's mouth, something pulling at him, quietly urging him to move forward.
For the first time in years, his body didn't ache.
For the first time in years, he wasn't trapped.
He didn't know where this path would lead.
But he couldn't go back.
Not now.