A black dust swirled around the figure, a chilling wind whipping at his tattered uniform.
Disoriented, he pushed himself upright, putting his hand on his head where there was supposed to be a sting. As he opened his eyes, he was standing in nothing but a vast and endless expanse of marble floor. His name was Ivan; he was supposed to be delivering a load of furniture from a local warehouse to a mall for a big sale event.
The last thing he remembered is that he swerved his truck to avoid hitting a bystander near a college campus and falling into a construction site where a new subway was being built. The truck fell headfirst into the construction site, and Ivan felt a sharp pain in his head before everything went black. Now, in this strange place, he had no idea why he got there and what was going to happen next. Visibility was also limited; a black fog enveloped him, making it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead.
Then, a booming voice echoed through the empty place, vibrating the very bones of him. "My apologies, unexpected guest," a voice rumbled. "My calculations were... flawed, and your demise was unforeseen. To rectify this error, I offer you a return to your world."
Ivan widened his eyes as he finally remembered what had happened before he ended up in this strange place. He wasn't sure if he was speaking to a god, a reaper, or an angel. But he knew one thing for certain—he needed to ask some questions.
With a racing heart, Ivan cautiously replied, "I accept your offer, but I must know why a literal voice that doesn't even show itself brought me here in the first place."
"You presume I am infallible, that I am immune to error," the voice said, rich and unfathomably deep. The fog thickened. The very floor beneath Ivan's feet pulsed faintly with some kind of unseen energy.
"I am more than a god," the voice continued, now carrying the tone of something ancient and tired beneath its grandiosity.
"I do not merely observe. I sustain. I am the breath between moments, the hand that arranges, creates, and abolishes universes that follow."
Ivan took a slow step back. Having to know what he was dealing with, he steeled himself and asked, "You haven't answered my questions yet. Why let someone like me slip through the cracks?"
"Because you were right."
"What?" Ivan asked, confused.
"I do make mistakes," the being said. "Even if I put things in order, chaos slips in through the seams. I built existence not to be perfect—but to balance. Good and evil, creation and destruction, and success and failure. You were... misplaced. And now, I must fix things the way they were intended from the beginning."
Ivan hesitated. "So… you're saying I'm just a bug in the system? "
"A minor one, you're right," the voice replied with something close to amusement again. "You are the result of my misplaced calculation. I'm the reason you exist." There was a long silence between them. Then, quietly, Ivan muttered, "So, what now? You shove me back where I came from and hope I don't die again in five minutes?"
"It is your home nonetheless," hummed the unseen entity with a flicker of surprise and even amusement in its voice. "Maybe I will bring you to a different time, a time where you can make different choices and alter your fate. Would you like that?"
Ivan pondered the offer, realizing that this unexpected opportunity could be a chance to rewrite his story and create a new destiny for himself. "But—what if I say no? Since you're apparently an all-knowing being, you should already know my luck's always been in the opposite direction since birth." Ivan continued, "Even if I could redo my past, I can't fully escape the fact that I'm autistic," he said, trying to grin. It came out crooked.
"Not diagnosed or anything, but… yeah. I've always been the weird one, not the quiet one but the one that everyone looks at like I'm off somehow."
The silence that followed was… different. Less cold. Less cosmic. It felt like the air itself paused to listen.
Then the voice answered—not with the usual rumbling grandeur, but with something closer. Closer to a whisper made of starlight.
"You are correct."
Ivan blinked. "Wait—what? "
"I did not place that label upon you. You brought it with you, buried in the folds of your soul. But it is true."
Ivan's mouth opened, then closed. For a second, he couldn't breathe. He'd only meant it as a joke. A way to laugh at the thing he never had the courage or means to face. Therapy was expensive. Life was more expensive. He thought maybe, just maybe, he was imagining things. Overthinking. Overanalyzing. But now the universe itself had confirmed what he had never dared say out loud to anyone else.
"…Huh," he managed after a long pause. "That's… weirdly validating. And kind of terrifying."
As Ivan was contemplating, the being dug deeper into Ivan's mind; he saw a flurry of emotions, nothing but contemplation and regret, and it seemed he was stuck absorbing all the information. Then, out of the blue, Ivan spoke softly, "Maybe a new existence isn't such a bad idea after all."
"Very well, as a token of... entertaining me, I shall grant you three wishes."
Ivan widened his eyes, caught off guard by the unexpected offer. "Three wishes?" he said, smiling for the first time. Unsure of what to wish for, Ivan only thought of one thing that would surely help him in his new life. "Fine, for my first wish, I desire the ability to summon a perfect copy of everything that already and previously existed in my world by my will. I don't want to forget where I came from."
"Hmm." The entity hummed, with a low vibration in the air. "A curious choice, but granted. And your second wish?"
"Knowledge. The knowledge to utilize these... things from my world, to understand their function."
Ivan paused for a second, then sighed. "Yeah, I got nothing. It feels like wasting a wish on something dumb would be a crime." He crossed his arms. "Mind if I save it for later?"
"Consider it granted. When the time comes, you shall have your third wish."
"One last thing," the entity continued. "You will be transported to a random world, but do not worry—I shall put you in a place far from local humans, ensuring your solitude in learning your freshly acquired abilities. At the very least, you will not die within your first few days… assuming you do not do anything reckless."
"Can you at least say something comforting before you send me off to who-knows-where?" Ivan said as his body glowed with a bright light, preparing for the unknown journey ahead.
"I will be watching you," the voice said.
Ivan grinned and placed his palm on his head. "That's not exactly comforting, but I'll take it," he replied, bracing himself for the adventure that awaited him in the mysterious world he was about to enter.