Heat.

  Everyone always said that the smoke was what killed people. It wasn’t. Not always. Sometimes it was the fmes. Sometimes the heat melted the skin and the fire spread all the way inside. Smoke, no matter how thick and toxic, was the least of his concerns when his mouth had melted shut and his nose was charred all the way to the bone.

  How the fire had started didn’t matter. It spread fast, and enveloped him in a matter of moments. He hoped his father, at least, had survived. His mother didn’t. She was the first thing he had seen when he opened the door. Like a wailing crimson banshee, he saw her run screaming across the living room. She fell moments ter, her body shut down most functions. Most. She still screamed as her bckened body hit the floor and broke apart at the knees.

  He loved his mother. He had loved her. She had always doted on him. Her relentless love for him had, at one point, likely caused his early-teen rebellious phase. Stop loving me so damn much, let me live my life! He had gotten his shit together in his mid-teens.

  He knew, just as she knew, that she had spoiled him, and a spoiled teenager always reverted to a six-year-old when encountering any and all opposition. Even when that opposition was a mother’s care and adoration. Luckily, he’d matured quickly, giving him several more years of enjoying his mother’s love before the inferno took it all away, this time forever.

  His father was somewhere in the house, though his screams were nowhere to be heard. He might’ve been the first to die. He might be stuck in the garage, or the basement, maybe blocked by debris somewhere. He might’ve been crushed by anything, at this point. Weirdly, that’s what the melting son hoped for. That his father had gone quickly, never hearing his wife’s screams or seeing his son turned to ash.

  He loved his father. While his mother doted on him enough for two of them, his father was always what he needed. If his mother’s care for him were the storm, his father would always be the eye. He was the calm. No one had the power to talk him down like his father did. No one had the power to motivate him like his father did. He didn’t always get what he wanted from the man, far from it. He always got what he needed, however.

  One would think that when your entire body was being burned to cinders, you’d notice when it stopped. Like exiting an outdoor sauna and running out into the snow. The change from roaring heat to cold, cold fresh air. It was instantaneous. He didn’t notice. It might be because his skin was the thing on fire, he didn’t know. But the fact that it wasn’t anymore wasn’t the first thing he noticed, nor was it the weight of debris which had fallen on top of him suddenly lifting. It certainly wasn’t the suddenly breathable air, or his sudden ability to actually breathe again.

  No, what he noticed first was the change of surroundings. Still screaming from the bottom of his crispy lungs, it was easy to notice when all the bck smoke and glowing embers, all the rubble and burning childhood memories, just vanished and was repced by a barely lit room with dark double doors and an unreadable sign over them.

  Unsure whether to stop screaming, he looked around with barely open eyes. He was most certainly hallucinating. It was just a coping mechanism. Maybe something like freezing to death, where at the end, you would feel warm and comfortable right before your body halted all functions.

  Turning his head to the left, he noticed a small stand carrying a vase and a small pot with a pnt to its right. To his right he saw the mirror image of the other side of the room. The same exact kind of vase and pot, even the pnt looked identical, though he didn’t recognise the species. He wasn’t screaming anymore.

  “Violent. Check!” a voice from behind him said.

  Erik swirled around and practically jumped backwards towards the double doors, raising his arms in front of him to protect himself. Now in front of him was a small, more brightly lit reception desk filled with two neat stacks of paper, a smaller potted pnt and a small rectangur box next to a small inkwell. Behind the desk stood a man with a gentle smile that looked more practised than well-meaning.

  “What? Who are you?” Erik burst after a few seconds had passed. “Where am I?”

  “Peon #23, Paperwork Division of New Arrivals. I simply deduced that your death had a violent cause, and took the initiative to start filling out the form. Saves you some time, right?” the man said, keeping his practised smile the entire sentence.

  While obviously fake, he was better at it than most people Erik had met before. That said, a fake smile was always obvious. Erik was certain a genuine smile was impossible to fake. Fake ones were almost always kind of… eerie.

  “Right… None of that made sense. And what’s that about my death you so casually brought up?” Erik asked, but he felt he already knew the answer. It was obvious really, but some part of him was still clinging to the hope of life. That wouldn’t change right away, he was sure of it, but maybe having it expined directly would speed up the process.

  “Right, yes. One of those” the man started, then straightened his back and continued with a most formal and practised tone. “I regret to inform you, dear arrival, that you have recently lost your all-too-precious life. As such, I, Insert Name, am here to help you through this most difficult of times, and to guide you forwards, so that you may one day soon look back at your life on its pne and be happy that you have started on a new journey here at Pce.”

  “Not even trying, huh? I’m sure you could’ve at least filled in one of those bnks?” Erik asked, finding at least some humour in the well-practised, but still awful, welcoming speech. The peon’s eyebrow raised a little. Maybe he was impressed?

  “That speech is aeons old, and severely outdated. I apologise, but no one really cares anymore. You are dead, and this is Afterlife,” he said, gesturing to everything around him with both his arms. “As a Remnant, you don’t share the same afterlife as the Regurs do. Instead, you are here. Not Heaven, not Hell, not Pixelmania or any of the other ones. Anyway, it really isn’t my job to tell you any of this, and as such, I won’t. Name?”

  “I’m not telling you shit before you start making sense, Peon 35”. While the irritatingly polite face of Peon certainly had helped Erik calm down after a mildly horrific and painful death, now it was just starting to infuriate him again. Erik could remain calm in the worst of circumstances, but this was his life they were talking about. He wanted answers.

  “Listen, bro… I just fill out the forms. All the expnations, emotions and politically correct babble and nonsense comes ter. So can we fill out this form so you can cry ter?”

  That fucking smile.

  “Erik Fried,” Erik relented.

  “Age?”

  A remarkably small number of questions ter, Peon Some-number-or-other opened the double doors and showed Erik to the next room. The room was practically identical to the one he was in, except there was a pair of double doors on two opposite sides, and the reception desk had instead repced the vase and pnt on one side of the room.

  A practically identical man to Peon sat behind the desk in the next room and rose when Erik entered. The second man nodded in greeting to Peon as Peon shut the doors behind Erik, staying behind in his own room.

  “Welcome! Welcome! I’m Peon #15 of the Frequently Asked Questions Division of New Arrivals! I’m here to help you come to terms with your new reality of deadness! Spoiler alert! It’s practically the same as liveness!” the new Peon shouted with gusto,

  “So… There are more of you?” Erik asked. He was actually intrigued at these guys who looked like twins, but seemed to be numbered at least as high as… twenty-seven? What number had the first one been again?

  “Oh, yes! There is at least one Peon for every division in every branch of Afterlife!” the new Peon answered, still almost shouting, but keeping a polite smile all the same.

  “Can you maybe… tone it down some?”

  “Yes! Oh… Yes, I can. Sorry,” the Peon said, starting out just the same as before, but really pulling it back straight away.

  “Great. So you’re here to answer any questions I may have about this pce and the small issue of my death?” Erik asked, walking to the side of the double doors he had emerged from and leaning back against the wall.

  “Indeed. I will answer to the best of my abilities, but be aware that there is a small limitation regarding time…” the Peon, now speaking like a normal person, answered.

  “How long do we have?” Erik asked, looking around for a clock or something so he could keep the time.

  “A day.”

  “Shit, I thought you meant like 10 minutes or something. I don’t have a full day’s worth of questions, that’s for sure. But why the time limit?”

  “Well, any Remnant coming to Afterlife can only stay for three months. After that time has passed, they will be violently expelled back to their world, unless they go through the portal voluntarily. The reason for this is simple - Afterlife is a rest stop of sorts. You die and come here. Here you will come to terms with your death, figure out what to do next before finally, and hopefully willingly, go back home.”

  “Wait… Back home? To do what, exactly? I’m dead. Am I supposed to haunt people, or something?” Erik asked, already sensing that for every answer he got, he’d get several new questions to ask. Maybe a day wasn’t as generous as he thought it was.

  “Well, that’s up to you. As a Remnant, you-”

  “Stop. What’s a Remnant?”

  “A Remnant is… lots of things, really. In your world, you have gods or legends, or stories of great people doing amazing deeds, correct?” Peon asked.

  He didn’t even know where Erik was from? How many worlds were there for them not to even ask him that on the questionnaire earlier?

  “Err… Several religions, beliefs and myths, yes. That’s what you mean?” Erik answered, shrugging in confusion.

  “Excellent. Well, in all likelihood, many of those could be rooted in truth, and those gods and heroes were most likely Remnants. Beings of great power. Actually Remnant is more of a generalisation. Vampires, werewolves and such are different types of Remnants. We use the word Remnant because they are what is left of the First People.”

  “First People?”

  “Yes, the first to live in this universe. Some think they even created it, but no one knows that for certain.”“So vampires and werewolves are real? And when they die they come here?” Erik asked. Hell, he was dead, and still he was asking two twins called Peon questions. It was the day to start believing in the supernatural.

  “Yes, and yes, but no.” Peon answered.

  “…What?”

  “Yes, they are real, and technically they do come here when they die, but also, they do not. You see, while Remnants come to Afterlife when they die, only the ones that haven't awakened to their power come to Afterlife. Once, they say people were born with the power, and ter, the Remnants could awaken to their powers while still alive. Nowadays, the blood has been so diluted and weakened that most never awaken to their powers at all, and those who do, only do so when they die. As such, the Afterlife was created to assist the ones who awaken to their power in death. It’s a bit complex, as you might expect.” Peon answered.

  “So, I’m a descendant of a First People Person, but the bloodline is so diluted that my awakening to that power, even in death, was improbable, at best?”“Yes.”

  “And since I did wake to these so-called powers, I woke up here in Afterlife, where I can stay for three months. Those already awakened to their powers, do not come here when they die, right?”

  “Yes!” Peon was growing more enthusiastic as Erik showed his understanding of his situation. “As one might say… they be dead.”

  “And… Wait, so what am I, exactly?”

  “Hm? Oh, I don’t know that. That comes ter.”

  Erik was impressed, and slightly terrified, of how many questions he could ask. He didn’t even get tired of asking, or listening to the answers, no matter how long-winded some of them were. While he quickly got through the important questions about what, when, where and things like magic and the supernatural, the next hundred questions or so were more like extra tidbits of information that helped fill in the smaller gaps. It was actually quite nice.

  Given the time limit of one day, though, he didn’t see the need to stick around and wait until he came up with more questions. If he stayed the entire day, that would mean more than one percent of his time in Afterlife. If that was the maximum allotted time he got for questions now, he was certain he’d need all the time he would get ter for whatever came next.

  With that, he thanked Peon fifty-three or whatever, and once again was guided through the next set of doors.

  “Follow this hallway down that way. There you will undergo a genetic test and discover your bloodline.. Ta-ta!” Peon said, gesturing down to the right of the hallway and quickly shut the doors behind Erik.

  Since being a Remnant was genetic, or at least followed several bloodlines, there was a chance his mother or father would be here as well, but Erik knew the chances were small. Erik had asked how many Remnants there were in Afterlife at any given time, and Peon had said it was between zero and one, maybe two at the absolute most.

  The universe was quite rge, and based on Peon's complex expnation of the interaction of different worlds, the universe seemed to be… multi-yered, as well? Considering the amount of worlds, or pnets, those Remnants could be from, the chances were practically zero that Erik would spend his time with anyone from Earth, much less one of his parents.

  In some ways, that saddened him. He would love to see his parents again. Yet in other ways, ways he couldn’t even describe, he wasn’t sad about it at all. This mix of feelings both worried and intrigued him.

  Erik shrugged and went down the hallway. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but the hallway was remarkably simir to the two previous rooms. The same vase on the stand and the potted pnt was mirrored on either side of the hallway. Equidistant between the pnt and vase was a set of dark double doors, and this pattern repeated endlessly in one direction, as he couldn’t see the end of the straight hallway on the left side.

  To the right, in the direction he was told to go, there were only about a few dozen sets of doors to walk. He should have expected the eternal hallway-thing. Such a cssic. Zero props for the interior designer of the pce, though. He walked half the distance without seeing anyone else. He had stopped to hold his breath and listen for anything, but other than the sounds he made himself, it was deathly silent. It made sense. The chance of someone exiting from another room in the New Arrivals section at the same time as him were abysmal at best, even when his mother, and likely his father, died at mostly the same time as him, and one of them would possess a Remnant bloodline.

  A bit further than the halfway point, however, a set of doors in front of him opened, and a Peon showed a young woman out, giving her the same directions he had gotten. She looked human as far as Erik could see.

  She wore a bck hoodie and bck-and-white striped tights. The hoodie reached down to the middle of her thighs covering any other pieces of clothing she might’ve worn except her also bck-and-white shoes. Her hair was dark brown and neatly braided into one rge braid, the length of which id limp over her hood and reached the middle of her back. After the Peon shut the doors behind her, Erik called out to the woman.

  “Hey!” he said. The woman turned the other way, and started walking. He tried again, lightly jogging towards her.

  The young woman slightly turned her head in his direction, looked straight at him for a brief moment, then turned her head back. She kept walking the entire time.

  “Fine. Hab Spanish, maybe?”

  Erik stopped jogging and decided to take his time. He didn’t need her. He just thought since they both were recently deceased, they could stick together, especially if they were both humans from Earth. If she was from another pnet, she really wouldn’t understand him, right? Maybe even if she did understand him, it was a cultural thing?

  A snicker came from in front of him. He looked around, but couldn’t see anyone else other than the woman. A short while ter, the woman stopped walking and burst out with a snorting ugh. What the hell?

  “It really wasn’t that funny…” Erik said, continuing towards the now halted woman. It seemed she couldn’t stop ughing, and kept it up until Erik had reached her. She didn’t stop until a painstaking while ter. Erik didn’t mind. It was nice to see someone ugh in a pce like this. Eventually, she managed to rein herself in, though still holding a wide smile.

  “I’m Jessie. I’m sorry about earlier. I was just a bit bummed about the whole dying thing.”

  “It’s okay. I’m sorry for your loss?” Erik shrugged and attempted a friendly smile. Jessie chuckled.

  “Thanks. So, what are you? Wolfman or Dracu?” she asked, gesturing to keep going down the hallway along with her.

  “Not sure yet. Do you know?” Erik responded.

  “Witch, I think. So the story in our family goes, at least. Supposedly a long line of witches.”

  “Well, duh. We’re Remnants right? The long line is literally the longest line. All the way to the first people ever, supposedly,” Erik said.

  “I guess you’re right, yeah. I retract my previous statement. I come from a frickin’ long line of witches,” she corrected.

  The pair soon reached their destination, and were met with a Peon each. There was a single door behind each of them, on either side of a vase and pnt. Figures.

  “Mr. Fried?”“Miss Callum?”

  The two Peons spoke in unison. The left one called for Erik, and the right one for Jessie.

  “Well, I guess we’ll see each other ter. Good luck!” Erik said, and followed his Peon through his door. As soon as the door closed, Erik realised he didn’t really know if they would see each other again. They were both going to be there for three months, but he didn’t know if they would be around other people for that time. Did he just make a complete fool of himself?

  “So, is this the genetic test to see what kind of Remnant I am?” Erik asked, looking around.

  Now that he had come to really expect the same vase, pnt and desk, this dark, undecorated tiny hallway felt eerily out of pce. A single door was opened from the other side as he approached the end of the 10 metre or so long hallway, and he walked through it. The Peon behind him didn’t seem to talk much. Another Peon greeted him on the other side, this one carrying a stone sb like a smart tablet.

  “I have your test results, Mr Fried,” the newest Peon said, gesturing at the sb with his head. Was there some kind of scanning system built into the walls of this specific hallway?

  “You are a-” he started, then stopped suddenly. It wasn’t so much that he stopped talking, but stopped entirely. Stopped breathing, stopped moving, stopped… everything.

  “Yes..?” Erik asked.

  A hole in the wall beside the paused Peon formed from nothing, almost like a portal in movies or video games. A new face ducked out head first, this one not resembling any of the other Peons.

  “Mr… Fried?” the man asked, looking at the palm of his hand. Even in death, Erik sighed.

  “It’s pronounced freed,” he responded, but nodded yes.

  “Of course, my apologies. Please, follow me.”

  The man then disappeared in the blink of an eye. Erik wasn’t quite sure what to make of this, but he didn’t have much reason to say no. Erik casually walked through the hole in the wall. He half-expected one of those white rooms, but this one was actually quite nice.

  It had more than two different decorations, it had a spsh of colour, it even had a small refrigerator in one corner. A couple of brown gss bottles in one of the corners was all Erik could see in there. This guy had style. He was likely part of the upper echelon of this pce, considering his office, though he looked identical to all the other Peons.

  “So, Mr Fried. As you probably guessed, this is about your genetic test,” the man started.

  “The small hallway was some sort of scanner?” Erik interrupted.

  “Quite right. Listen… The results…”

  The guy was scrambling. Erik figured something might’ve been wrong when this guy had stopped the Peon to talk to Erik himself, but even this guy didn’t know what to say right now. Was it that bad? Maybe this had all been some kind of mistake.

  Jessie’s family supposedly had stories about these things, that she came from a family of witches, but this was all new to Erik. None of his departed family members had suddenly risen from the grave as far as he knew.

  “So, you can control those other Peon-things? That’s neat,” Erik attempted to break the ice, or at least the silence.

  The man sighed and slouched his shoulders.

  “Listen, Erik, was it? What I’m about to tell you will probably shake you to your very core. Nothing will ever be the same. I’m not sure your mind can even survive this news…” the man started. He seemed much more determined this time around. “You… are a Titan.”