ook. I

  don’t even know where to start.

  If I had to explain it—and I

  really don’t want to, but let’s pretend I do—imagine being

  jammed inside a Rubik’s Cube mid-twist. Only the cube was made of

  office furniture, the laws of space were in on the joke, and we were

  apparently somewhere deep inside cosmic IKEA. One second I’m

  standing—sort of—and then I’m not. Just… floating. Panels of

  reality flip and fold around me like they’ve got somewhere to be.

  The room—what I’m guessing

  used to be a reception area—is shifting. But not in a

  cool, Michael Bay, gears-and-explosions kind of way. No, this is

  quieter. Slicker. Like shoji doors gliding on rails, except the

  floor's made of powdered moonlight, maybe sugar, definitely something

  mildly hallucinogenic. No sound. No tremor. Just this smooth,

  rearranged elegance.

  A desk blinks into existence.

  Massive. It plants itself at the far end of the

  now-completely-different room, which, surprise, is no longer a lobby.

  Nope. This is full “CEO’s private sanctum” vibes. Think

  high-rise evil overlord with a crush on nebula wallpaper.

  Right on the desk. Gold-plated

  name plaque. Ornate cursive.

  Boss-Ass-Bitch.

  I blink. “…Huh.”

  Still stuck on that when my brain

  finally catches up to something else: I’m standing. On a floor.

  Upright. Gravity has opinions again. Which is weird, because I could

  swear I was mid-astral tumble five seconds ago.

  I clear my throat. Not because I

  need to, but because it’s what you do when reality breaks and

  you’re trying to pretend you’re still a person. “Okay. Let’s

  just… shelve all that. What kind of afterlife is this

  supposed to be?”

  And then—footsteps.

  Soft. Deliberate. Like someone

  walking across polished marble with full legal ownership of not just

  the floor, but the very act of walking.

  The air shifts. Cooler. Sharper.

  It slices across my skin. My arms prickle like someone just whispered

  electricity into the room.

  And then she enters.

  Ishtar.

  Not in a floaty, ethereal,

  harp-solo way. No violins. No heavenly chorus. This isn’t “goddess

  as concept.” This is capital-P Presence. The kind that

  doesn’t announce itself—it just happens.

  Her hair’s slicked back,

  midnight oil turned to silk, falling over her shoulders. Her skin is

  molten caramel with a sun-god afterglow. And her eyes?

  Galaxies.

  Spinning. Judging. Beautiful and

  ancient and cruel. The kind of eyes that don’t just look

  at you—they audit you. And not in the fun, flirty way. I

  feel… small. Not metaphorically. I mean, literally smaller.

  She’s stunning. Obscenely so.

  But not in a “hot girl at the bar” kind of way. This is

  weaponized. Strategic. The kind of beauty you’d expect to find

  behind glass with a placard that says Do Not Touch (Seriously,

  She Bites).

  Gone is the void-silk nightgown I

  vaguely remember. In its place? White. Business. Tailored. A power

  suit so crisp it probably files taxes quarterly. It hugs her like

  it’s scared to wrinkle, heels clicking a slow stiletto metronome as

  she glides past me without a word.

  I feel human.

  Which, here, is code for: weak.

  Confused. In desperate need of context. Or maybe a therapist.

  She takes her seat behind the

  mahogany monolith with the practiced ease of someone who’s been a

  CEO of Reality for three cosmic epochs. Her fingers brush over a stack

  of documents—only they’re not documents. Not really. The ink

  gleams gold, but it moves. Slithers. Twists. Each word reshapes

  itself as if flexing for my benefit.

  Then,

  just like that, she stands. No drama. No strain. One blink she’s

  seated, the next she’s vertical—effortless, fluid.

  She leans on the

  desk—not in a casual way, but in a

  queen-who’s-bored-of-your-existence way. Dominant,

  practiced. Two fingers pluck a scroll—no, a contract, probably;

  maybe both, who even knows—and she flips through it like she’s

  reviewing my credit score before deciding whether I’m worth

  reincarnating… or incinerating.

  And I feel

  it.

  Not just the pose.

  The pull. That invisible weight threading through my ribs

  like silk wire, wrapping tighter with every heartbeat. A whisper

  curling behind my ears. Pressure blooming just behind my eyes. Some

  deep, ancient, lizard-brain urge to kneel. Submit. Worship.

  Which—no, thank

  you.

  "Really?"

  I mutter, like I'm trying to cough the feeling out of my throat.

  “We’re doing this now?”

  Her gaze finds

  mine. Not sharp. Not sudden. Just… there—like she was

  already watching, just waiting for me to catch up. She tilts her

  head, curious-cat style.

  “Interesting…”

  she purrs, like she’s inspecting a line of bad code and deciding

  whether it’s a bug or a feature.

  I squint at her.

  “So, is this the game? Soul DMV? Celestial HR? Purgatory with mood

  lighting and a dominatrix theme?”

  That earns a

  smile.

  Not a comforting

  one. Not even a normal one. It unfolds like a slow poison.

  Smooth. Pretty. Absolutely venomous. A smile that says yes,

  and also you don’t even know what game you just agreed to play.

  "Dominatrix?"

  she echoes, almost laughing—but not quite. The sound slips through

  the air like perfume laced with carbon monoxide. “No, darling.”

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  I open my mouth to

  fire back something clever and deeply unwise—

  She moves.

  No prep. No

  wind-up. One second she’s across the desk, and then she’s behind

  me, and I don’t even see it happen. Fingers—cool and

  humming like static—brush the base of my skull.

  And I’m sitting.

  I didn’t sit.

  I didn’t move.

  I blinked, and

  suddenly I’m slotted into the chair like a misbehaving NPC snapped

  back to spawn by a smug dev running cleanup mode.

  I try to speak.

  Can’t. Thoughts buffer. Mouth open, words nowhere.

  Her fingers drift

  into my hair.

  Slow. Precise.

  There's heat—too focused, too alive. Something coils down my spine

  like a whisper made of teeth.

  “Son of a—!”

  I jolt, lurching back like I touched a live wire with my soul. My

  chair skids, heart doing cardio it didn’t sign up for. “Stop

  that! What the hell was that?!”

  She doesn’t even

  blink. Just leans in again, like my panic is the punchline of a joke

  only she knows.

  Her breath brushes

  my ear. Warm. Soft. Laced with static and intent.

  “Oh, darling…”

  Her voice? A scalpel in a sugar cube. “I can do many things.”

  I swallow. Hard.

  Honestly, fainting

  dramatically is starting to sound less like cowardice and more

  like a viable strategic response.

  Our eyes lock.

  The gravity-thing

  kicks back in. Stronger this time. Everything in me just wants to

  fall forward and call it enlightenment.

  No.

  I drag myself

  upright, breath ragged, every muscle humming with leftover terror. My

  lungs can’t decide if they're empty or overclocked. I can feel

  her irritation now.

  She twitches.

  Just a flicker.

  But there it is. A tiny fracture in her divine mask. She tilts her

  head the other way now—recalculating, like she just discovered her

  shiny new soul-toy came with a factory defect.

  “That’s the

  third time,” she says, voice lower now, laced with something almost

  like curiosity. “Most don’t fight it once. Let alone thrice.”

  Her fingers steeple under her chin, and her eyes narrow. “So now I

  have to ask... how are you doing that?”

  “Yo, Ish…

  don’t break the guy just yet.”

  A voice, lazy and

  amused, echoes across the space like someone hit play on a stoner

  podcast in a cathedral.

  Zen.

  Oh, thank every

  pantheon and backup deity with a half-decent HR department.

  He’s stretched

  sideways across a floating couch—which, yeah, floats, because of

  course it does—draped like a man who’s emotionally checked out

  three dimensions ago. Long tangled hair, patchy scruff, and a purple

  suit that somehow screams street prophet meets Coachella dropout.

  He yawns. Waves.

  Scratches his beard like he’s mildly inconvenienced by the tension

  in the room.

  Ishtar groans.

  Audibly. Her eyes roll with such celestial force I half-expect a

  solar flare to erupt behind them.

  “Oh, all

  right, Zen,” she sighs,

  saccharine and deadly.

  "You two just gonna sit there and mess with

  me?" I snap, hands flailing. "Seriously? This is what death

  looks like? Discount IKEA office, smug deities, and mental kung fu?"

  Zen flashes a lazy grin. The kind that says he’s

  either high or just way too comfortable being unhelpful.

  "You

  still don’t get it, do you, man?"

  He stretches, bones popping like a bag of

  microwave popcorn. "This whole place? It’s like… a divine

  conglomerate. OmniCorp, but make it metaphysical. They run

  everything—realms, rebirths, cosmic HR… whatever."

  I blink. Slowly.

  "...So you’re telling me I died and woke up

  in a celestial call center?"

  "More or less."

  I rub my temples. "Nope. Nope, I reject this.

  I am not some randomized intern in the goddamn spiritual IT

  department."

  Zen just shrugs. "You'll get used to it.

  Everyone does. Or they implode. It’s like onboarding with extra

  screaming."

  I shoot them both a glare. "Right. And let me

  guess—you two are in charge? Some divine sibling rivalry with

  office perks?"

  Ishtar chuckles. Low. Dangerous. Way too satisfied

  with herself.

  Zen lazily gestures toward her. "Ish? Yeah,

  she’s head of ‘aggressive micromanagement.’"

  Her smile slices through the air like a guillotine

  made of lipstick and malice.

  "I prefer ‘decisive oversight.’ Much

  cleaner than ‘passive incompetence.’"

  I squint at them. "Okay, then riddle me

  this—what the hell is Eidolon?"

  Zen cracks his neck. "Not Earth."

  I blink. Again. "No shit, Sherlock. I figured

  that out after the eight-foot orc tried to make me into a floor

  stain."

  Ishtar purrs, trailing a finger along my jaw like

  she’s browsing a menu. "We saw that. Quite the performance.

  Very… visceral."

  I jerk away from her touch. “You two had

  something to do with that, didn’t you?”

  Zen raises his hands like a kid caught holding the

  detonator. "Okay, yeah—so, about that—" He winces. “The

  Board needed a body, man. And your nephew… he was prime

  metaphysical real estate.”

  My brain screeches to a halt. “Wait—you were

  gonna kill my nephew?”

  “What? No. No-no. Not kill. Just… coma. Little

  celestial bump. Harmless-ish.”

  I clench my fists. Tight enough my knuckles crack.

  "You absolute—"

  Ishtar laughs.

  And then—of course—she swings a leg over mine

  like we’re at prom, settles on my lap, and traces a line down my

  chest with two fingers like she’s writing her name in invisible

  ink.

  I go completely rigid. "WOAH. Nope. HR.

  That’s an HR violation. That’s, like, five HR violations."

  Her eyes gleam. “Darling… I am HR.”

  Zen groans. "Ish, seriously. Consent. Cosmic

  backlash is real."

  I look between them. One part divine dominatrix,

  one part baked cult leader. And I’ve somehow ended up between them

  like the world’s least qualified therapist.

  All I can do is shake my head. Just… process

  buffering.

  “…Fuck.”

  Ishtar leans in, her voice low and silk-drenched.

  "Is that an invitation?"

  Zen throws up his hands. “Whoa, man. Don’t

  encourage her. That’s like—feeding a hydra espresso.”

  I blow out a breath. "So now what?"

  Ishtar grins, wicked and triumphant.

  “Well, darling,” she says, brushing imaginary

  dust from my shirt, “my twin brother’s little cock-up...

  is now my new toy.”