[Extraction Complete]

  [Player A1f4-DOTD-000]

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  [Please, Stand By...]

  Elevator music. Of all the things to greet me, of course it was elevator music. Had it been anything else—a choir of angels, a booming voice of judgment, even silence—perhaps the sudden change of surroundings would have been more startling.

  Now, however, as I blinked my eyes open to an endless expanse of white, I was barely phased. It wasn’t quite the blinding white of a hospital ceiling, nor the soft, pillowy haze of a dream. It was flat, featureless, and unsettling in its stark simplicity. Yet somehow, as vaguely familiar jingles filled the air like some corporate purgatory, it was almost comforting.

  If this was what awaited beyond death, it aligned far more with my expectations than whatever I’d just left behind.

  So this was it, then? I thought. Had my strange adventure as Liang Feng been nothing more than a fever dream? A detour before arriving at the pearly gates? Or, at the very least, a waiting room to whatever came next.

  I might have felt more, but the music—cheerful and devoid of urgency—smoothed the edges of my emotions. Compared to the agony I’d been drowning in moments earlier, this felt almost serene. Just as I began to quietly hum along, however, a calm, mechanical voice interrupted the tune.

  “Victor Moore,” it said, emotionless and precise. “Adaptability, A+. Initial screening, passed. Administrator will be with you shortly.”

  I blinked again as a screen materialized from the nothingness, floating in midair. It was crisp and clean, displaying what could only be described as a glorified slideshow of my life. Highlights, lowlights, and a montage of moments I would’ve rather left forgotten. It was a condensed summary of who Victor Moore—I—had been before I died, as if my existence was little more than a dossier for some cosmic HR department. Below the footage was a cheerful little message: You’re dead, but don’t be sad.

  It came with a selection of philosophical musings about life and its meaning, the kind that would’ve felt profound at 3 a.m. but came off as trite under fluorescent lighting. “Death is merely another step in a long journey…” the screen assured me, its font annoyingly cheerful as it tried to comfort me of the cyclical nature of existence. A video icon blinked at the bottom, offering an instructional guide for what was to come next, complete with a variety of language options.

  I couldn’t help but huff a soft laugh. The afterlife was a lot more tech-savvy than I’d expected.

  “Aren’t you doing this in the wrong order, though?” I asked, my voice echoing faintly against the endless white expanse. There was no discernible source for the earlier mechanical voice, no hidden speaker or disembodied face. Just a subtle gradient shift between floor and ceiling, as if someone had decided the afterlife needed a vague sense of depth. All it served to do was make me feel small.

  “What was last night about?” I continued. The faint bitterness in my words surprised me, as did the sting of regret that followed. “What was the point of getting my hopes up if you were just going to yank it away…”

  Disappointment. That was the feeling. Dao of the Divine had been my life long before I fell into Liang Feng’s body. Even burned, drowned, and nearly devoured by the undead—now that I was separated from the pain and discomfort—I realized missed it. Or maybe it wasn’t the body I missed but the world it had anchored me to.

  “Damned teases…” I muttered, more to myself than anyone else.

  “No need to be so pessimistic, Victor Moore.”

  The voice startled me. Where the earlier announcement had been mechanical, this voice carried an almost conversational tone, its androgynous timbre coming from somewhere much closer. I turned quickly, expecting—well, I wasn’t sure what I expected. A face, a figure, something human.

  There was nothing.

  The endless white stretched on, undisturbed by my spinning around.

  “We will return you to A1f4-DOTD shortly,” they still continued, as calm and steady as before. “First, however…”

  There was the crisp sound of hands clapping, a simple gesture that somehow carried the weight of a command. Everything went dark in an instant, as though someone had pulled the plug on the endless white.

  [Updating Background...]

  As light began to bleed back into the void, the endless white was gone. In its place emerged something strangely grounded yet out of place: an upscale Chinese restaurant. Black wood polished to a near mirror shine, accents of deep red and bright gold, cushioned chairs arranged around round tables, and soft, glowing lanterns casting everything in a warm, atmospheric light.

  The space was somewhere between cozy and elegant, like the sort of place you’d go for a special occasion that didn’t demand a suit jacket. All that was missing were the hum of conversation, the clinking of chopsticks on porcelain, the lazy swirl of tea in delicate cups.

  “This should be more comfortable, no?” The voice returned, its tone casual, almost teasing. “A reasonable blend of two worlds you should be familiar with.”

  It pained me how little I could disagree.

  My gaze swept over the room again, lingering on small details: plastic bowls on one side of the table, menus translated neatly into English on the other. It was the kind of fusion that reminded me of home—not the deep, aching homesickness of a man torn from his roots, but the simpler nostalgia of a life lived in borrowed pieces, warm and bittersweet.

  Beyond books and digital screens, this was the most culture I’d ever managed to absorb as Victor Moore—a half-hearted exploration of the world through takeout boxes and fortune cookies. The realization was faintly embarrassing, but before I could dwell on it too long, my gaze found them.

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  I could have sworn the voice had come from across the room, yet as my eyes finally landed on them, they were seated directly across from me, lounging opposite a low, lacquered table. Perhaps they had always been there. Or perhaps they had waited until my gaze was ready to land on them.

  Their figure was lithe, balanced on a delicate knife’s edge between masculine and feminine. They wore something resembling a tailored business suit, but its lines and details were threaded with a thematic elegance—two golden dragons curling down the sleeves and along the sharp seams of their pants, seamlessly blending with the room’s quiet opulence. For a moment, I thought I caught the glint of a high-heeled shoe as they uncrossed their legs, but it slipped from view just as quickly.

  And then there was their face—or, rather, the lack of it. Despite their relaxed posture, there was something meticulous about the way they were positioned. The lanterns shadows cut perfectly across their head like a veil, swallowing every feature. No contour or edge broke through the murk, and no matter how I tilted my head, the darkness seemed to follow, fluid and impenetrable.

  I felt the faint itch of curiosity creep closer. What would happen if I moved toward them, leaned in just so, forced the shadows to give up their secret?

  Yet a deeper hesitation rooted me in place. Whatever I might find, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to see it.

  For a brief, unsettling moment, I could have sworn I saw the shadows settle—coalescing into the shape of horns curling away from their head. Then, just as quickly, they shimmered into the faint suggestion of a halo before dissolving back into ambiguity.

  “No need to change it on my part,” I said, swallowing my unease as I forced my voice to remain steady, polite.

  If I wasn’t mistaken—and I prayed I was—this was the person who’d been toying with me all night. The one pulling strings, nudging me along like a pawn on a board.

  “Quick on the uptake,” they said, their voice curling like smoke, rich with amusement. There was a casual flick of their hand, as if going through notes on an invisible screen. “Comfortable going with the flow, neither weak-willed nor overly temperamental. Very good, Victor Moore. Its assessment of you is rather favorable, and these are some of the main qualities we look for in mortal souls. You really were an ideal candidate, all the way up until the more… unfortunate circumstances surrounding your passing.”

  Its assessment? Favorable qualities? Mortal souls and unfortunate circumstances?

  Countless questions pressed against the back of my teeth, yet only one managed to slip free.

  “Candidate for what?” I asked.

  A pause. Just long enough for the silence to feel deliberate.

  “A second chance, of course.”

  Their tone was honeyed, pleasant—so perfectly pleasant that it only made me trust them less.

  They were toying with me. I knew it as surely as I knew the ache in my chest wasn’t there anymore. To them, this was a game, but not one where the rules were designed for me to win.

  “Are you God?” I asked, the words slipping out before I could second-guess them.

  Their posture stiffened ever so slightly, a subtle shift that made me feel as though I’d brushed against something sharp.

  “I had thought of you as an atheist, Mister Moore,” they said, their tone careful now, the earlier ease tempered. “Would you disagree with that assumption?”

  From their tone, I could tell that my answer was important. That it might irrevocably change the course of our discussion. For better or worse, however, I wasn’t sure.

  “Agnostic,” I said after a moment of deliberation, carefully keeping my options open. “Never had much reason to believe one way or the other. Until, well…” I gestured vaguely at the room around us, its glowing lanterns and lacquered wood. “The moment I died.”

  “And are you planning to invoke the name of any god or religion from your world now?” they asked, their tone still measured, still watchful.

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” I replied, hoping that my measured tone came across as casual confidence. In truth, I had no idea whose name I’d even invoke. Buddha? Zeus? The capital-G God himself? “Should I?”

  “It would mean a lot more paperwork for us,” they said, their voice adopting a dryness that felt startlingly mundane, given the circumstances. “And frankly, I don’t think it would do you much good. Your soul was still labeled unaffiliated when you died. Now, being dead, you don’t exactly have a lot of leverage over what happens to it. At best, you’d summon a lot of hyenas trying to rip themselves a piece of the bounty.”

  There was a sigh, soft but heavy, like the sound of someone loosening their tie after a long day.

  “Usually, that’s where we come in—the Brokers,” they continued. “Ears that would listen and hear your wishes out. But before we could get to you, you’d already managed to slip through the cracks in a rather…unconventional way.”

  I felt the weight of their gaze again, like a subtle pressure pressing down on my skin. Then, quieter, almost to themselves, they added, “A soul-merge, really? Have you never learned how to take a hint?”

  I wasn’t sure if I was meant to hear that last part, but it hardly mattered. My lips curled into a faint smile as a voice—his voice—rose unbidden from my mouth.

  “Is it wrong that I do not want to—”

  And then, silence.

  The words stopped, not because they were finished but because I had cut them off. Reflexively, I’d clenched down on my own tongue, halting the flow of his thoughts spilling out of my mouth. To my surprise, it worked. To his surprise too, if the jolt of disoriented emotion mixing with my own was anything to go by.

  Well. This was new.

  The Broker’s laugh rang out, sharp and clear, like glass breaking in a quiet room. “Well, now. That’s unexpected,” they said, the shadows on their face curling into shapes I couldn’t quite define. “But I suppose that’s what you get, Mister Feng, for invoking contracts you can’t even begin to comprehend. Whatever leverage you had back in your world, in your body, isn’t worth much here.”

  They rose from their chair with a languid grace, but the shadows remained glued to their head like a mask, stubborn and deliberate. It reminded me of stage lighting, the kind meant to leave just enough obscured to keep the audience guessing. “No, it seems here, our dear Victor is in charge,” they said, their tone edged with amusement as they began to circle me, deliberate and unhurried. “How. Interesting.”

  Their steps were soft, measured, like a predator in no rush to pounce. “I must say, you’d already captured my attention with your performance during that little… botched tutorial of yours. But this? Oh, this changes things. It certainly does.”

  They came full circle and settled back into their chair with a fluid motion, steepling their fingers and leaning forward as if to examine me anew. “Well then, Victor—do you mind if I call you Victor?”

  “By all means,” I said, relieved to find that here, in this strange, shadowy limbo, I truly was in control. Liang’s presence was a murmur at the edge of my thoughts, nothing more. Unless I let him, he wouldn’t be able to interfere.

  I could feel his displeasure coalesce somewhere in the back of my mind, but I ignore it.

  “Brilliant.” Once more, the Broker’s tone was pleasant—too pleasant—and for the life of me, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the brilliance they spoke of was the kind that ended with a dagger in someone’s back. “I suppose an explanation is in order then. The one you should’ve received before our little incident turned everything upside down. Now, where to start…”

  Their fingers tapped rhythmically against the armrest, a thoughtful cadence that filled the space between their words. “Ah, yes. Perhaps with this: what do you think a game really is, Victor? Entertainment? A story? A distraction?”

  They tilted their head, and though I couldn’t see their face, I could feel their attention settle on me like a weight. “You’ve played many games in your time. But have you ever considered the role you play in them? And more importantly—” Their voice dropped, turning sharp as a blade, “—what happens when you stop playing?”