1 Prologue

I think it was my dream. It is the only explanation I can think of, the only thing I can link to what happened. I can no longer remember exactly what I was dreaming of, perhaps an anime I had watched recently? Whatever I watched or read tended to occupy my dreams, so it feels like a safe bet. More likely than not, at least.

I wasn't lucid at first, or really paying attention, to the dreamscape around me. It was honestly a very mundane and boring dream, not the kind that draws you in and sticks to your memory. If nothing had happened, I probably wouldn't even remember I dreamt of anything that night. Until it changed. Until the question.

I was vaguely watching the events around me when I felt a small pain in my chest, blinked, and opened my eyes to a still and frozen landscape. A strange sight paused in time. It was no longer what I was dreaming of before, this was a weird blend of every type of ground and region you could think of. Lava and glass next to grass and cloud. Each place I looked was more fantastical then the last. What looked like a void of stars and flowers turned into a sparkling rainbow desert. I was at a loss, trying to remember where I was, what I was doing. The clarity was too sudden.

And I felt it. The question. Not consciously, but as a vague feeling around me. Like a growing pressure, a feeling of death and possibility. It built up and bid me to answer. I don't remember exactly what it asked or what the pressure truly felt like, only how I responded. If it was even me responding. My voice seemed to just bubble up and out of me, all of its own accord.

"Sure I'm scared of dying, but not of death. I have faith that the soul endures, and as long as I have that faith, I will not fear my end. Only the pain, not the change it brings." I could feel the ground and sky considering my answer. It was a chorus of voices, each different yet all of them felt the same. They whispered of judgment, acceptance, and a wish granted. But it didn't feel like my wish, it felt too second hand to call it mine. My words from someone else's perspective. A misused quote. It had something added that I didn't know or understand, like it was changed to fit with something else.

A serenity came over me, a sensation of loss and gain. Like a moment of great importance had passed, and change enacted. And then the dream ended. I don't know if I died when I felt that pain, or once the dream changed, or if I died at all. All I know is that I woke up somewhere I did not belong. And it wasn't my body I woke up in.