Chapter 2: The new world

For a timeless moment, I drifted through an endless sea of words.

Sentences formed and dissolved around me.

Words became images.

Characters of every kind marched through the void.

Heroes riding in shining armor.

Dragons.

Witches.

Masked killers.

Monsters.

All of them were made from stories.

All of them laid waiting to be called upon.

The same voice spoke again.

“World transfer initiated.”

I tried to move, but i found that I did not possess a body at the moment,

“Unique qualification detected.”

Images flashed faster before me. 

A colossal machine of stone and crystal.

A world of towers and floating islands.

Crowds cheering as fictional beings battled.

A dark domain shrouded in mist.

A half destroyed creature contained inside of a crystal.

Dark shapes watching from the fog.

“Primary asset identified: Narrative knowledge.”

Gene laughed weakly.

Of all the things to carry into another world, my horror obsession had somehow made the list.

“Beginning reincarnation.”

The void brightened around me.

I felt myself falling.

Fast.

Faster.

Toward a world where stories were weapons.

Toward a world where imagination ruled.

Toward a world that had never heard of Earth’s greatest nightmares.

My final thought before consciousness slipped away was simple.

If they can summon things like knights and superheroes the possibilities must be endless. 

I realized that maybe I had an outlook unlike any one there.

I know all about  the monsters from my world.

They would never know what hit them.

——————————-

 I awoke with a start as I regained consciousness. 

Falling did not feel the way that I had always imagined it would.

There was no rush of air screaming past my ears, no lurching stomach, no sensation of gravity clawing at his insides.

 Instead, it felt as though I were sinking through layers of parchment and ink, descending through a library whose shelves stretched into infinity.

 Pages brushed against my skin like the wings of moths. 

Sentences coiled around me in glowing ribbons of silver script. 

Half-formed words drifted through the darkness—verbs, nouns, names, destinies—each one carrying the weight of a story.

I floated among them, bodiless and suspended just far away that I couldn’t interact.

I watched as scenes from countless worlds unfolded.

A knight drove a sword into the heart of a magnificent dragon.

A detective in a trench coat lit a cigarette in a rain-soaked alley as cop cars pulled in front of them.

A little girl opened a closet and found a door another universe.

A masked killer stepped slowly through thick fog, knife gleaming in moonlight.

Each image flared brightly, full of life before vanishing, just to be replaced by another.

My vision split as I became more than I once was.

I could see my body, yet it felt as though I was in a virtual simulation.

It felt as if I had been given an avatar in a video game.

I or rather me and my avatar slowly began to fuse.