Where?

"Kair!" A loud shout echoed throughout the auditorium as a student entered the hall. His appearance was shabby, with dark circles underneath his eyes. He had a lanky physique, which was fortunately covered up by puffy, oversized clothing.

Combined with his long, messy hair, he seemed no different than a slightly well-off homeless man and would definitely have been mistaken as such, were it not for his school bag, highlighting his status as a student.

"You are late again! What excuse do you have this time?" The teacher, Mr. Hammer, yelled at Kair, his face a picture of annoyance.

"My apologies, Mr. Hammer. It won't happen again." Kair responded in a monotone voice, bowing his head lightly, his hair falling over and covering his face.

"Whatever, whether you fail this class or not, is none of my business, anyway," the professor said, waving his hand dismissively as he turned back around to the projected whiteboard, continuing his lecture.

Kair dejectedly walked towards an empty seat at the back of the auditorium, sitting down and turning his attention towards the lecture, yawning occasionally. He waited out the class, paying minimal attention, when finally, the bell rang, signaling his que to leave the auditorium. The entirety of his day continued like this, with small breaks between lectures, when finally, around 5 p.m. in the evening, his classes ended.

"Damn, what an exhausting day." Yawning, Kair packed his things in his backpack and made his way outside of the campus. His stomach growled, and he decided to walk to the nearest convenience store to pick up dinner. He rubbed his eyes, feeling a strong sense of tiredness creeping up. He walked to the nearest crosswalk, when suddenly, just as he had started to cross the road, he heard screams coming from right behind him.

Looking back, he found himself staring at the horrified faces of the pedestrians on the sidewalk, finding himself to be the only person, in the middle of the road.

His view was soon soon invaded by a bright, blinding light coming from his left. When he turned around to face the source of the light and the pedestrians' terror, his eyes widened, and his heart nearly came to a stop.

A car was speeding towards him, the driver wearing the same horrified looks as the pedestrians. Contrary to his expression, however, the car showed no signs of slowing down, speeding towards him at illegally high speeds.

To Kair, in that moment, it felt like time had stopped, with him frozen in place and not being able to move. His body felt like it was being crawled on by ants, the adrenaline pumping through his body at the highest possible speed. And, in that moment, his brain exceeded human limits, trying to think of any way to avoid the almost certain death that Kair was now staring right in the face.

This is what humans would call "life flashing before their eyes," which, according to researchers, everyone experienced right before death. According to some scientists however who studied the phenomenon, this wasn't the brain reliving its memories; it was itself trying to desperately find a method to cheat death. All of Kair's episodic memories indexed and stored in his temporal lobe were laid bare, with the sole intent on somehow escaping the oncoming doom.

However what happened to Kair here was something.. much more peculiar, and unprecedented. Kair's brain.. exceeded its limits. When one experiences an overload of information, they experience a loss of memory, or lack of concentration, mental fatigue, and so forth.

However, for Kair, due to his brain somehow working at a much higher rate than it was meant to, and experiencing said informational overload to a severity far, far beyond what the brain could handle, the split second where the car speeding towards him at 120 km/h was just a hair's breadth away from crushing his body, he died.

Why? Well, when someone exceeds the natural limits set by one's own body, they face backlash. When one sprains an ankle, twisting it far beyond what it is used to, it becomes inflamed, hurting for days before healing itself.

The backlash becomes worse as the severity of the overexertion increases. In this case, this backlash was so large that his brain and body couldn't handle it, with his brain collapsing in on itself, effectively killing Kair before the car could even hit him. The death was painless, the death was instantaneous; it was ironically the most peaceful death one could ever hope for.

The time between Kair noticing the car coming towards him and his death was difficult to describe. On one hand, it felt like it was a lifetime before he truly died. He could have memorized the faces of every single person in his field of vision in that moment if asked, fully confident that he would have been able to pick them apart in a crowd of millions and draw them with superhuman accuracy. He felt no pain nor inconvenience, as if his body was fully at peace with itself.

He wasn't able to notice all this, though, as all he could think about was the car, its headlights blinding him, and the terrifying look of the driver. It was as if he had slipped into a flow state, uncaring for the impending doom, as all he did, and could do, was observe.

Then, he lost consciousness, a split second before the car rammed into him, breaking all his bones. His ribs caved in, piercing his lungs as they started to bleed. His spine cracked, broke, and ripped through his skin, gleaming white bones protruding from his back. His face was rammed against the hood of the vehicle, breaking his skull and turning it into a mush of brain matter and bones, liquids squeezing out of it like a water balloon with holes.

His arms and legs bent out of shape, shattering from the impact. His foot flew off of his ankles, being brutally sliced off by the car's bumper. The shoe, still tied tightly to the foot, landed in front of a pedestrian, who, after a moment of stupor, fainted from horror, seeing the foot-covering drenched in blood with bones and flesh poking out of it.

The moment of impact was loud, startling the driver and degrading his drugged mental state even more, leading him to crash the car into a concrete wall. Due to this, he also died a fraction of a second after impact, the force thoroughly crushing his body. The sudden deceleration caused him to experience roughly 75 G's, also causing an instantaneous and painless death, although filled with horror and gore, yet still leaving him in a comparatively better state than Kair's corpse.

The car also took Kair and his corpse with it, ramming it between the wall and the car, mutilating it even more and disfiguring any and every part of his body that still could have been considered to be relatively recognizable.

And, as the final act, the car caught on fire, the fuel tank catching a spark and exploding in flames, burning the remains of the driver's and Kair's corpses along with it.

All of this happened so fast that everyone at the scene stood frozen for half a moment, before screaming and rushing away, some calling the police, some grabbing their loved ones and fleeing the scene.

The stench of fuel and blood began to fill the air, the foul combination causing everyone still present to hurriedly clamp their hands over their noses

.The accident luckily did not fatally injure anyone; only one person in the area suffered a second-degree burn from the heat given off by the explosion of the vehicle.

The police, fire department, and ambulances arrived at the site five minutes later, with the entire city square being evacuated temporarily to avoid any more unforeseen injuries.

Meanwhile Kair, or rather, his consciousness, was floating in a void, an abyss of sorts. Everything was pitch black, not able to hear anything, and all he could see was his own body, completely naked. It wasn't his real body, though, but rather an ethereal representation of himself. Lines of light blue-ish green, purple, and traces of red connected his ethereal self, giving off a slight, eerie glow. They pulsed on occasion, with sparks travelling through the lines periodically.

As Kair floated around in the void, he tried to move his ethereal body. After a while, he regained basic function, being able to stand up. He realized after a short while that he could not feel anything.

It isn't like the feeling of numbness your hand experiences after you sleep on it at night; it was like the body part never existed in the first place. He could move his hands through his "body", passing through the lines without hindrance. He realized that he didn't feel the need to breathe. He felt no hunger, no thirst, no desire to do anything.

'What am I standing on?' was the first coherent thought Kair formed after opening his eyes and finding himself inside the void. He didn't know how much time had passed. Seconds? Hours? Days? Weeks? Years? Centuries? Millenia?

Kair started walking, not knowing in which direction. For an unknown period of time, he wandered. Sometimes he would turn left, and sometimes he would turn right. He would run, he would walk, he would crawl.

Sometimes, he would lay down. The "ground" he was on felt.. hard, but also soft as a cloud at the same time. Regardless, sleep was impossible. Only stuck in this place with himself and his thoughts, he tried doing anything he could to alleviate the loneliness and boredom.

'Hm, I don't know what to do. Can I.. never mind, I'm ethereal so how could I even die?' 

A mocking grin appeared on his ethereal face.

'Where was my immortal self when I most needed it? Now I'm dead, what use does it have?'

An inaudible sigh escaped Kair. Well, it wasn't really a sigh, just a slight opening of his "mouth".

'So this is the afterlife? Am I just supposed to wander around here forever? And why don't I see anyone? Am the only one here? No, that can't be...'

Kair was a student in Neuroscience, a field which he loved more than one could imagine. He had always been fascinated by the concept of death in particular. Many people believed that death was the soul leaving the mortal body, going to another place, to either rest, be tormented, be reincarnated, all sorts of things. 

However, was this really so? According to Kair, when the brain dies, then all the information stored in it also is lost. If a person dies in a chamber, from starvation for example, then that's that. The brain died. Kair didn't believe in souls. 

Well, this was something that was bound to change after Kair found himself here, in this abyss. 

'I guess souls really do exist, huh? Also, why does this space feel familiar?'

For unknown reasons, Kair had been feeling a strange sense of familiarity ever since he had entered this place, but couldn't quite put a finger on it. Suddenly, his eyes widened.

'Yes! That's it! This feels like the Dark Zone from my novel, Chaos!' 

He looked down at himself, his eyes widening even more, something which definitely wouldn't have been possible to this extent in his mortal body. 

'And these lines, they look suspiciously like the souls of the characters in Chaos! I knew something was up, but isn't this too much of a coincidence? Who knew the afterlife was going to be-'

Before Kair could finish his inner monologue, a sudden white light appeared in his field of vision. Circles spun around it, reminding Kair of a loading screen symbol from earth. He looked at it curiously. Then, after a moment of confusion, he started running towards it.

The concept of space had been long forgotten by Kair. And, for the first time in wha could have been a lifetime, Kair felt something. He felt... out of breath? His ethereal body also started to fade, the glow receding as a tissue started appearing on him.

'What's happening to me?' Kair thought as he continued to sprint towards the light.

As he got closer to the white light, the ethereal lines faded even more, the tissue covering him taking on the form of skin. He could see white pillars, which he made out to be as bones, start forming, with red liquid like blood starting to flow. Fibers started developing, shaping out organs, and muscles.

It felt like he was witnessing his entire body being rebuilt, which was, in a sense, truly happening. Little did he realize at the time, was that this body was completely different from the one he inhabited on earth, before his death.

As he got closer and closer to the light, he felt dirt and mud replacing the dark, endless void he had been wandering on. He felt rocks stinging his feet's soles, some of them even piercing them slightly, causing him to experience jolts of pain here and there. However, as Kair's new, face formed, he could be seen wearing a huge grin.

'Finally! Feeling! I feel pain! I'm feeling something!'

Overcome with joy, Kair started running faster towards the light as more and more things started forming around him. Grass, trees, plants, and bushes started appearing, and the occasional sounds of birds chirping entered his ears. A blue sky with two suns started to become visible, fluffy white clouds floating on the horizon.

Just as he was about to collapse from a shortage of breath, Kair finally made it into the white light, which he now recognized to be a portal of sorts, maybe more like a gate.

It had the shape of an arch, with indiscernible characters written on it, radiating an ancient glow an aura, making Kair's heart subconsciously tremble in fear.

Then finally, when he entered the gate, his vision went completely black, his body shutting down as it disappeared.

Shortly after he entered, the scene around him shattered like glass. Everything returned to the pitch black color of the void, the gate disappearing to an unknown plane.

---

Far, far away, on a different, much higher Dimensional Plane, a being opened its eyes. It had pitch-black skin covered in golden runes and eyes like two twirling spiral galaxies, mesmerizing in their own way, able to lock anyone in a trance just by looking at them.

'Hm. Something interesting.'

The appearance of the Revenant Portal, especially on the lowest Dimensional Plane, peaked the curiosity of many beings, including other True Gods, bringing most of them out of their slumbers or meditations, just to curiously look towards the direction of the portal's current location. Said being was also a True God, and a very powerful one at that.

However, sensing the disappearance of the Revenant Portal, the being quickly lost interest, closing its eyes and returning to its meditation.

However it, along with the other True Gods and some Supreme Gods, did not forget to mark the time and location of this event, convinced that it was something worthy of their attention.

The Revenant Portal had not moved in eons, yet it suddenly felt the need to descend to the lowest dimensional plane, but for what? Had he not waited for trillions of years just to be graced with its presence? It sat on the third highest dimensional plane, for god's sake! And now it went to the lowest? For what purpose?