The first thing he noticed was that the floor was wrong.

  It was smooth beneath him, but not in any way he recognised. There was no grain to it, no join, no variation in texture. It felt less like stone or wood and more like the idea of a surface. Present, functional, and entirely uninterested in explaining itself.

  That alone should have been alarming. What unsettled him more was that he could feel it at all.

  He had no sense of weight. No sense of limbs. No breath to draw or release. And yet the floor existed, and so did his awareness of it.

  He tried to blink. Nothing happened.

  “Hello! Hi there! Welcome!”

  The voice was cheerful. Bright. Too close.

  It didn’t arrive through sound. It simply appeared, fully formed, inside his awareness.

  His attention widened, as though something inside him had finally decided to render the rest of the scene.

  A building stood before him.

  It was wrong in the same way the floor was wrong, but louder about it.

  The roof was tiled in a style he associated with old photographs of Japan, sloping neatly and casting sharp shadows. The pillars holding it up were unmistakably Roman, fluted and proportioned with mathematical confidence. Beneath them, the floor was polished wood, warm-toned, well-kept, the sort of thing that belonged in an English pub that took its atmosphere very seriously.

  Each element made sense on its own.

  Together, they did not.

  Floating in front of the building was a girl.

  She looked to be no more than eleven. Small, slight, with one knee bent, one leg straight but neither touching the floor as though gravity were a suggestion rather than a rule.

  She wore a white robe clearly meant for someone older. It draped around her in excessive folds, heavy with ceremony and authority pressed into the fabric whether it suited her or not.

  The fabric shimmered faintly, points of light glinting within it like distant stars. It moved despite the lack of wind, as though aware it was being observed.

  The robe was not tailored so much as imposed, worn with the careful seriousness of a child playing a role they believed they were expected to take seriously. The effect wasn’t unsettling because of what it revealed, but because of what it tried and failed to be.

  It felt rehearsed.

  And, like the building behind her, it didn’t quite fit.

  “Hi! So I’m God!” she said brightly. “Aren’t you impressed?”

  He had the distinct impression that there was a correct reaction here, and that he was already failing to provide it.

  This is… certainly more interesting than the ceiling fan repair checklist I planned for today, he thought.

  “I know, right?” she said immediately. “It’s a lot. Take a moment. Really. Take it all in. I built this place myself! Isn’t it cool?”

  He tried to answer and discovered that he couldn’t. There was no mouth to open, no air to move. With a little effort, he found that he could push the thought outward instead.

  Did I die?

  “Oh yes. Dead dead dead,” she said as though there were a polite alternative. “Like, completely. A cargo plane crashed into your house while you were sleeping. You didn’t feel a thing, did you?”

  She leaned forward slightly, clearly pleased with herself.

  “See, I know it’s fashionable to grab people who die from overwork or get hit by trucks and all that,” she continued, waving a hand dismissively, “but I wanted to branch out a bit. Try something different, you know?”

  Uh… I see.

  Is this hell?

  “Pffft! Haha! No!” she laughed. “You’re funny.”

  She puffed up slightly, as though remembering her role.

  “I manage a different world. And you, you lucky fellow, you, have been chosen to be reincarnated!”

  She made what could only be described as finger guns and punctuated them with a wink.

  But… why?

  “Er. Well. Um.” Her confidence faltered for just a moment. “My planet is kind of young. I have to seed it with magic every few thousand years, and, well… Earth isn’t really using theirs, so if I bring you over I can take some! Isn’t that nice?”

  She brightened again, clearly relieved to be back on script.

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  He noted the ease with which she said it. No hesitation, no qualifiers. A declaration offered as though the details would arrange themselves.

  “It’s got all the standard fantasy stuff,” she continued. “Elves, dwarves, humans, demons, magic…”

  She paused, then smiled wider.

  “And a demon king.”

  She said it the way a real estate agent would brag about a splash pool for kids or a fountain.

  “You know. Something to push against,” she added. “Otherwise people get bored.”

  He didn’t respond immediately.

  The implications were stacking up faster than he could sort them.

  Could I not?

  “What do you mean?!” she spluttered. “It’s going to be amazing! You gather companions, fight the bad guys, grow stronger… who wouldn’t want that?”

  The enthusiasm drained from her face when he still didn’t answer.

  How do I know this isn’t some kind of elaborate dream?

  She pouted, then held one hand out flat.

  Above her palm, a rectangular projection flickered into existence.

  It showed a house at night.

  His house.

  The peach tree in the yard leaned slightly to the left, just as it always had. In the sky beyond it, three lights blinked steadily, distant at first, then growing larger. Louder.

  Too fast.

  The image didn’t cut away as the commercial jet tore through the roof, erupting into fire, metal, and splintered wood.

  He tried to look away, before remembering he couldn’t.

  That explains the lack of pain.

  Strangely, the impact didn’t land the way he’d expected. There was no surge of emotion. No shock. Just acknowledgement.

  Did you do that?

  “What? No!” she said quickly. “I can select a soul. I can’t reroute planes or mess with electronics. That’s not my thing. I do reincarnation. Souls and stuff.”

  She hesitated.

  “But, uh… look. None of that really matters now,” she said, forcing brightness back into her voice. “What matters is the future! You get to live on my world! Have a grand adventure! Maybe even marry a princess!”

  She beamed, waiting for the reaction she was certain should follow.

  It didn’t.

  The silence stretched. The light neither dimmed nor brightened, simply persisting without change.

  “So… what now?” she asked.

  How should I know? You’re meant to be God.

  “I am God,” she said with a sigh, tilting her head back as though consulting something above her. Nothing answered. “You know,” she added, looking back at him, “you don’t seem very upset about dying.”

  Once the worst has happened, he replied, there isn’t much left to be afraid of.

  He paused.

  Do I have any alternatives?

  She winced. “Kind of. You’d mostly just… fade. I pulled you off the reincarnation cycle. It’s not even supervised.”

  Another long silence followed.

  Tell me about your world, he said at last.

  She brightened immediately, then hesitated, watching him for a reaction that never quite came.

  “What did you want to be when you were alive?”

  She said it with confidence, as though this were an easy question. A safe one. The sort of thing humans always had an answer to. Not something they debated their whole lives.

  He searched for an answer and found none that felt right.

  I studied computer science because it was practical, he admitted. It came easily.

  He hesitated.

  I don’t think it was what I wanted.

  “Ah,” she said, nodding sagely. “So! Second chances. Very popular.”

  She leaned forward.

  “Okay. I’m allowed to give you one divine gift. Just one. Something helpful.”

  He considered the obvious options she clearly expected him to ask for. Strength. Magic. Survival. None of them suggested themselves as a first move.

  He did not answer.

  “What were you doing when you were happiest?” she asked probingly.

  Then, like a jolt, something else surfaced.

  University. A cramped kitchen. Three friends. Cheap ingredients. Plastic fermentation buckets scattered everywhere. None of them really knew what they were doing. They’d ruined batches, made things that were barely drinkable, and somehow, even the failures had been fun.

  Does your world have alcohol?

  Her eyes lit up. “Oh! Yes! Of course!”

  Then she hesitated.

  “They haven’t really figured out yeast yet,” she admitted. “It mostly just… happens. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

  That bothered him more than it should have.

  So no one understands why it works when it does, he thought. They just accept the result.

  He took a moment before responding. Their alcohol wasn’t a craft. It was gambling with sugar.

  He pushed a thought outward carefully.

  Can I summon yeast?

  She blinked. “Yeast?”

  Specific cultures, he clarified. The kinds I understand. Nothing magical. Just… reliable.

  She tilted her head, considering.

  I don’t know what I wanted to be, still don’t.

  “I guess that’s fine,” she said at last. “It’s not like you could use that to fight the demon king or anything.”

  She smiled, clearly satisfied.

  “Alright! Rules time.”

  She began counting on her fingers. “This part is important,” she said, suddenly serious. “Mostly.”

  First finger went up.

  “Standard hero package first. Bigger mana pool than average, but not, like, huge. You can feel magic, use basic spells, nothing fancy. You’re not going to accidentally explode a mountain or anything.”

  She hesitated.

  “Probably.”

  She shook her head and moved on quickly.

  “The yeast still needs food. Sugar. Time. The right conditions. You can’t just wave your hand and make beer appear. That would be cheating.”

  Another finger.

  “Any cultures you summon, if you stop paying attention to them, they’ll die. Or go weird. Or get taken over by local stuff.”

  She made a face. “Microbes are mean.”

  A third finger.

  “Oh, and it’s not bound to you. Once it exists, anyone can steal it, ruin it, misuse it. That’s on you to deal with. I’m not doing magical ownership clauses.”

  She looked up at him, clearly proud of herself.

  “See? Balanced.”

  He considered that.

  And the limits? he asked.

  “That’s the limit,” she said firmly.

  Then, after a beat, quieter, “…I think.”

  She straightened abruptly, as though remembering something important.

  “Oh! Right. The send-off.”

  She cleared her throat and stood a little taller, the robe settling around her as if it, too, knew this part.

  “Go now, fair hero!” she declared, voice ringing with rehearsed authority. “Remember that I will be watching you, always, and that the power of my…”

  She faltered.

  “…my divinity,” she finished, a touch awkwardly, “will always be with you.”

  She nodded once, satisfied enough, as though she’d said the correct words even if they hadn’t quite meant what they were supposed to.

  Before he could respond, the space around them shifted.

  The white dimmed, folding inward like curtains being drawn. The building behind her seemed to tilt, its mismatched architecture pressing in on itself — the Roman pillars stretching too tall, the tiled roof bending at an angle that made his stomach tighten.

  Wait, he projected. What about my body?

  “Oh, that?” she said easily. “Don’t worry.”

  The light began to drain away.

  “I designed the body for you already.”

  The word designed implied there was nothing left to decide.

  Designed how…

  The world went dark.

  The last thing he registered was a fleeting, irrational thought, an image of that building, the way none of it quite fit, the way her aesthetic sense leaned more toward enthusiasm than restraint.

  And then sensation crashed in all at once.

  Weight.

  Breath.

  Cold.

  And a body that was suddenly, terrifyingly, his.