Sixteen Hours Before Death
"Bro, are you even listening?"
I gripped the steering wheel of my beat-up Toyota Camry. The leather was cracked. The AC blew warm. My back hurt from fourteen hours of driving fares.
"Yeah," I lied. "Listening."
The guy in my backseat—"Mike" from the app, headed to the airport—wasn't on a phone call anymore. He'd finished screaming at his girlfriend ten minutes ago. Now he was screaming at me.
"The market's about to crash, you know? I told my boy to pull out last week. Did he pull out? No. Stupid—"
I tuned him out.
My phone buzzed. Again.
Jenna: If you don't send $200 by tonight, don't bother coming home.
I'd read it twelve times already. Twelve times in the last hour. Each time, my stomach dropped lower.
I didn't have $200. I had $43 in checking and $12 in cash from tips. My rent was due in three days. My parents hadn't spoken to me in two months—not since Dad asked when I'd "get a real job" and I didn't have an answer.
Just pick a lane. Make a decision. Be a man.
But I never could. Pick the wrong thing? Make it worse? Easier to just... not.
"Hey! Turn here!"
I jerked back to reality. "What?"
"The hotel. Turn here. I told you twice, man. You good?"
No. I wasn't good. I was twenty-six years old, driving strangers for gas money, about to get dumped by a girl who only liked me when my wallet was full.
"I'm good."
I flicked the turn signal.
That's when I saw her.
A woman, mid-thirties, standing at the crosswalk. Two grocery bags in her hands. Waiting for the light to change. Normal. Ordinary. Alive.
My phone buzzed again.
Jenna: Last warning.
Mike leaned forward. "Bro, go, go, go, I'm gonna miss my flight—"
Green light.
The woman stepped into the crosswalk.
I had a half-second to decide. Wait for her? Gun it? Honk? What's right? What's wrong? What if—
My foot hit the gas.
Wrong choice.
The woman turned. Saw me coming. Dropped her bags.
I yanked the wheel left to miss her.
The truck hit my driver's side door at forty miles per hour.
---
Then: Nothing.
---
Then: Everything.
I opened my eyes.
White light. No pain. No car. No Mike.
Just... space.
And a voice.
"Well. That was disappointing."
I spun around. Nothing there.
"Who said that?"
"The universe. The system. Whatever label makes your tiny human brain comfortable."
"I'm dead?"
"Astoundingly perceptive. Yes. You're dead. Killed by indecision and a loud passenger. Want to see the aftermath?"
Images flashed in front of me.
The woman I'd almost hit—shaken, crying, but alive. The truck driver—bruised, cursing, fine.
Me? My body crumpled in the wreckage. Dead before the ambulance arrived.
My parents got the call. Mom collapsed. Dad just... stared. Said nothing.
Jenna posted on Instagram two hours later. "New year, new me 💅" with a picture at a club. No mention of me. No grief. Nothing.
Mike made his flight.
"Feel that?" the voice asked. "That emptiness? That weight? That's the realization that your existence changed nothing. You were born. You breathed. You died. And the world kept spinning like you never existed."
The words hit harder than the truck.
"So that's it?" My voice cracked. "I just... end?"
"Usually, yes. But someone put in a request for you."
"What? Who?"
"A person you helped once. Small thing. You don't remember. But she does. She spent her last breath asking the universe to give you a real chance." A pause. "The universe said yes."
Light exploded around me.
"Don't waste it."
---
I woke up gasping.
My lungs burned. My head pounded. My body felt... wrong. Smaller. Weaker.
I looked down.
Small hands. Thin arms. Dirt under fingernails I didn't recognize.
I stumbled up. The world tilted. I caught myself on—a wall? No. Wooden crates.
I was in an alley. Narrow. Trash on the ground. Smelled like rotten vegetables and something worse.
Where—
Memories slammed into me.
Not mine. His.
Name: Ren. Just Ren. No family name because he had no family.
Age: Seven.
Parents: Dead. Fever took them last winter. Both gone in the same week.
Current status: Orphan. Street kid. One of hundreds in the city of Valdris.
This body—my body now—had been sleeping in this alley behind a tavern. Stealing scraps when possible. Begging when necessary. Surviving.
Barely.
The last memory hit hardest: yesterday, older street kids found his hiding spot. Beat him. Took the half-loaf of bread he'd been saving. Told him they'd kill him if they saw him again.
He'd crawled here. Cried himself to sleep. Never woke up.
Now I was here.
"System initializing."
The voice in my head was nothing like the tired female voice from the in-between. This one was cold. Mechanical. Precise.
Welcome, Host.
Previous life assessment complete.
Designation: Grade F (Useless).
New life detected.
Host body: Male, age 7, human, orphan, malnourished, no magical affinity detected.
Survival probability without intervention: 3.7%.
Intervention approved.
System synchronization: 100%.
Welcome to your second life, Ren. Try not to waste this one.
A blue screen materialized in front of my eyes. Holographic. Glowing. Impossible.
And real.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
New quest available.
[QUEST: SURVIVE THE NIGHT]
· Objective: Find food and shelter before sunrise.
· Time remaining: 5 hours, 47 minutes.
· Reward: 100 EXP + Basic Survival Package.
· Penalty for failure: Death (Permanent).
I stared at the screen.
My hands—his hands, my hands now—shook.
This was real. Magic was real. Systems were real. And I was a seven-year-old orphan in a fantasy world I knew nothing about, with a clock ticking down to permanent death.
The old me—the indecisive me, the frozen me, the useless me—would have sat here. Overthought. Wondered what if. Done nothing until time ran out.
I remembered the nothing. The emptiness. The voice saying "you never existed."
I stood up.
Seven-year-old legs. Empty stomach. Fear crushing my chest.
I took a step forward.
"Show me the map."
The system blinked.
[MAP UNLOCKED]
A glowing path appeared in my vision, leading out of the alley and into the streets of a city I'd never seen.
I followed it.