1 Chapter 1: Rebirth?

"Uuuuuuurrrrrgggghhhhhh....."

Somewhere in the space between worlds, there is a young soul, merely moments after it's been detached from its body, just regaining its consiousness.

"Uuuuugggghhhh.... My body hurts so much. Tsk."

The name of the young soul is Soren, a normal 16-year old teenager who in terms of academics was decent, but not amazing. His relationships were pretty basic, just a couple of friends, maybe a crush, a normal family that loved him. He lived a pretty normal life but it was cut off short due to a malfunction in the school grounds equipment, which in turn ended up in blowing up a part of his school, which he and a couple of other students happened to be nearby. At that moment, all the students in that area died instantly and their bodies were pretty much charred beyond recongision, including him as well. That was what Soren was recalling right about now. At first, Soren was pretty furious but after blowing off his steam for quite a while, he started feeling confused now.

"To think the building would blow up like that. Talking about laziness mister Principal. But now what? Float in the whatever this black space is supposed to be? HELLO!? IS ANYONE OUT THERE?"

No answer was given. 'Figures.' was his thought after that loud question. He felt like there wasn't much to do now so he thought to move somewhere and maybe get himself out of this situation.

A few hours later.

"Is anything out there? I have been floating here for quite a while." *sigh* "Since i dont have anything to do, might as well list all the sea creatures that i know. Bass, trout, salmon, catfish ..."

Soren might have lived a normal life, but by no means was it boring or bland. For him, the thing that added spice in his life was his love for the sea. He loved everything related to the sea, from living sea creatures to legends of the sea and even more. After some time has passed, something peculiar appeared in front of him that forced him to stop abruptly.

"... planktons, anglerfish-" *thud* "What the? A wheel...?"

In front of him was a wheel with symbols on top of it. Some of them showed stickmen, others showed trees, mountains and other stuff as well. The next moment, suddently a woman with long brown hair and glasses appeared in front of him with an office attire.

"Hello young soul. You may already have a bit of an inkling of what this place is, but in case you don't, this is the afterlife. Sorry for taking quite a while to be getting to you but there are thousands of people that die everyday so we are always short-handed. We dont have a lot of time, just spin the wheel of fortune so i can reincarnate you."

In that moment alone, Soren felt as if he had been splashed with a bucket of cold water. 'Reincarnate...?' , 'Wheel of fortune...?' In that instance, Soren asked.

"Wait, hold it a minute. What did you say?"

"Let me say that again. In case you haven't-"

"No, not that. The part about that wheel of fortune thing."

"Oh, that. Since I dont have a lot of time, I'll give you the short version of the story. Since a lot of people die everyday, it's a bit of a hassle to pick the race for everyone, so to speed things up a bit, we decided to use this wheel to pretty much save us some time. This might sound as of we leave everything up to chance, but this wheel has some properties to it. For one, it has a karma check. What it means is that depending if you were a good guy or a bad guy you would either reincarnate or you would get send into the void. Of course there are a lot of variables to this, so for now just think of it as a way to measure the good deeds and the bad deeds together and the sum of that determines your karma. The second thing it checks is your affinity. This litterally depends on your interests and innate talents so there isn't much to say. The last thing it checks is your alignment, such as if you are lawful, chaotic or neutral. This only really affects a couple of races and to be able to reincarnate as those, you need to be heavily inclined towards towards a certain alignment."

"I see. Then what are the available races?"

"The biggest race are the humans in terms of population, neutral to everything, nothing else to be said. Next are the elves, masters of the forests with keener senses than other races. After them are the dwarves, masters of the earth and blacksmithing, as well as other crafts. After them are the dragonnewts, human and dragon hybrids, masters of combat and capable of speak with all kinds of beasts. Merfolk, the sea's strongest warriors, able to control the water on the tips of their finger tips. The last two races are the alignment races, demons and angels, demons symbolising chaos, darkness war and whatever else and the angels symbolasing light, law, peace and whatever else, these two are always at odds so if you get one of these two, the other will be always against you. That's all I can say for now since we have almost run out of time, so it's better to spin the wheel now."

"I see..."

Feeling dejected after that, he then took a deep breath, steeled himself for the worst and decided to turn the wheel.

'kckckckckckckckck..."

The wheel started spinning with great force for a bit. Soren felt like he knew the answer in his heart but he still decided to pray that he would get the one he wanted.

After a bit, the wheel started to slow down until it stopped at a fish.

"It seems the race that you are going to be reincarnating very soon is the merfolk."

Soren felt extremely happy about it, he knew that he had a decent chance to get the merfolk race but he still was afraid, but after landing on the merfolk, he breathed a sigh or relief.

"Well, before i send you, do you have anything else to ask? I'll allow one final question."

At that moment, Soren started to feel a bit pressured since he had a lot of questions but he decided that if he wants more answers, he needs more opportunities to talk with them. Then Soren asked.

"Is there any way we can communicate again, in case i have more questions?"

This question suprised the woman a bit but she didn't show it on her face the sloght moment of suprise and answered.

"Just have an audience with your race god and ask for me, although if you have any lingering questions, it's better to ask the gods, not me since i'm just an agent of life and death."

In that moment, Soren started to shine bit by bit, first his hands, then his legs, until his entire body was shining.

"Guess it's time for me to go. Take care miss agent."

After that, Soren's vision started blurring from a bright light and then before it went completely white:

"It's Pandora." The woman said.

In the moment that Soren heard the name, he made sure to remeber it before he felt a warm sensation taking him away into an unknown world.