There's Always Hope

{Where am I? Was death always so... soothing? This is amazing. I don't feel pain or nausea. I feel at peace}

He mused in his mind as he floated in black nothingness. He reveled in how his body, or was it a soul now, didn't ache? How his chest didn't cry out at every breath, how his bones didn't feel like cracked glass.

He didn't know how long he floated in the peaceful void. He thought time passed, but his thoughts moved so slowly he couldn't tell. He had thought death would be boring, with nothing to do for eternity, yet he didn't feel bored. He felt good. For the first time in his memory, he felt good.

However, his peaceful existence in the void was interrupted suddenly, and he found himself tumbling down onto white marble floors, his hands and knees making contact. No pain erupted from the sudden fall, just the knowledge that he had hit hard ground.

It took several minutes for his thoughts to speed up from the glacial slowness they'd been at when he was in the void. When his mind finally caught up, he whipped his head up and looked around, taking in the scenery. He was in some kind of white marble... temple? He had seen some of these temples in real life, and they looked similar.

There were columns decorated with images of feminine and masculine shapes. Some were holding things like water or fire. Others wielded weapons, spears, swords, and bows. Some even held staff or books, looking like mages from a fantasy game. He turned his head up, trying to see where the columns ended, only to see the ceiling obscured by white clouds.

Looking back down, he slowly stood, turning in circles as he took in the temple. It was massive, so large he couldn't see the walls, unless the walls were white clouds that further obscured his view. It looked almost like the entire temple had been formed from clouds, and since he was dead, he was inclined to believe it was a possibility.

"Am I in heaven? Is that a place?" He mused aloud, for no purpose other than to hear his own voice. There was no one around him to hear, and he felt like it'd been a millennium since he'd heard her own voice. It rang through the space, clear and bright. Not ragged and breathy as it had been for the last painful moment of his life.

"Depends on what you mean by Heaven, I suppose," a voice responded and the boy jumped, spinning in place to confront the new presence.

There had been no one there a moment ago, but now a being stood there. Looking at them hurt a bit, and their form was distorted like how the air above hot sand would shimmer.

She could make out an androgynous form, long golden hair falling to the ground behind the being. Their body, what he could see of it, was a dark tan the same color he knew girls of the mortal realm had strived for. A loose white robe covered the being though towards their knees. The white seemed to fade to clouds, much like the temple she was in. He couldn't discern the being's face. The longer the boy looked, the more his headache. All he could distinctly see were two golden eyes, fathomless and eternal.

"Who are you?" The boy asked as he took a step back from the being. They radiated pure power, in a way he couldn't find a comparison to. If he had to be asked to describe a god he'd have pointed at the being before him, there was no other explanation.

"You can call me Rema, though I've gone by many names through many different worlds and eons." The being, Rema, said.

Their voices didn't have a sound, per se. It both thundered around the boy and sang in his blood. He wasn't sure if Rema actually spoke or if it was just a universal truth being made apparent to him.

"Come ." Rema spoke, and the boy didn't understand the word they said, yet it resonated with him in a way nothing had before. The word somehow encapsulated the very essence of his being. Everything he had been, was, and would ever be.

"I-I don't understand." He shook his head and Rema smiled, or the boy felt that they smiled since he couldn't see their face, and held out a hand.

"I know, that's okay. You lived a hard life for one so young. Though it's not the first difficult life you've lived, and it won't be the last." Rema's words were calm, and he felt his confusion and panic fading.

Without conscious thought, he reached out and grabbed Rema's hand and the world they were in shifted, all of it turning to clouds and reforming so fast the boy felt his mind spin, unable to fully keep up with it.

'Wait, did they just confirm reincarnation?

His mind finally registered the earlier words, and he wondered why he didn't remember his previous lives, why only the most recent?

"You have many questions, but I do not have much time to explain it all to you. We gods aren't allowed to dally too long with the souls of mortals," Rema's words seemed to hold some minor regret and the boy opened his mouth, wanting to ask the questions burning in his mind anyway, yet no words came out.

"Sit," Rema commanded, and he felt his body, or was it still a soul, move on its own as he collapsed into a chair made of clouds. Rema herself took a seat across from him, a pool appearing between them. The water was pitch black. It reminded him of the void she'd so recently left.

"Through your lives, you've gathered enough karma that I can intervene somewhat in the next life you take. You've suffered so much, for so long, that it's enough for the System to allow this. However, do not be mistaken, this is not an unselfish thing I'm doing. There is a world that needs intervention. The fate it's written for itself will prove to be catastrophic for it. However, this fate can be changed, with a little help," Rema nodded at him.

The boy was stuck in open-mouthed shock, questions and thoughts running through his mind at a breakneck pace.

"Why?" he asked, so simple, yet the question bore the burden of a hundred others. Rema seemed to understand exactly what she meant, though.

"While we gods can intervene somewhat in worlds, we cannot disrupt the fate of it ourselves too much, nor can we influence free will in any meaningful way. However, if this world is allowed to continue on its current path, its darkness will not only consume it, but hundreds of others. That is a big enough threat that we are allowed to take a more active role. Along with the karma you've accumulated, it has combined to this." Rema waved around them.

"So the solution for this is that I ask you to take your next life in this world. I will give you something, for this life will not be easy either. This world is where you came from, though it may look like you have never been there, considering the amount of time you stayed in the void. I will preserve all your memories relating to it in perfect clarity, and you can never lose them. Some of your memories from your past life will be gone, for some of the knowledge would be detrimental to this one. You will also be given some manner of assistance in the new world to make your task easier. Far more than other mortals are privy to," Rema continued to explain, and the boy's mind frantically tried to keep up. Most of what the Deity was saying made little sense to him. Too little context was being provided.

Yet what he could gather was Rema was asking him to go to a world and save it, like a hero from a book. The mere thought made him want to agree. Years spent dreaming of exactly this kind of scenario flashed through his mind.

So long he had wanted to be a hero, to be strong and capable. To defeat anything that hurt him with a blade or a spell. And it sounded like he would have her own types of cheats. Whatever knowledge it was that Rema was speaking of must be useful if it was mentioned. Though the things she spoke of were rather vague, it could be anything from a better ability to cook cookies to the ability to turn himself into a dragon.

That alone made him a bit wary of the offer before him. The god had already admitted to this being a selfish request.

"You're not making this choice easy," he grumbled, freezing when he realized he'd just sassed a god. Yet Rema seemed to be amused by it, and a feeling of laughter surrounded them.

"Yes, I suppose I am not. Yet this is all the information I can give you, and our time is running short. Accept this offer, or simply return to the void to be reincarnated at a later time in a different world, all memories of your life and this interaction gone, and leave your fate to utter chance." Rema held out two hands.

One held a glowing sphere of white light and he knew intrinsically that if he touched that sphere, he'd be accepting Rema's first offer. The other hand held a black sphere, and the boy knew it would return him to the void, but strip him of his memories.

He stared at the options, then at Rema. Yet the godly being didn't say anything else, and he could no longer detect any emotions from them. He looked back at the options and reached out a tentative hand, hovering in the middle of the two offers. He closed his eyes and reached out, hand grasping an orb that felt somehow more real than the chair he sat on.

"Thank you... For your choice and aid. Please, change the fate of this world," Rema spoke, and the boy's eyes shot open, catching on the white orb in his hand.

It began to melt, the liquid dripping into the black void under his hand. As the drops hit the surface, the color changed to a bright white, and he felt his soul being sucked into it. His eyes looked up and right before his vision was overcome with white, he caught a glimpse of a wide grin.