I’d died.

  For the second time in my cosmic existence, I had beefed it and died.

  Now here I was in an empty void, feeling no body, no brain, no pain—well, besides the pain of my own horrible failures—and knowing nothing about where I’d ended up or where I was going.

  Maybe this was the end.

  I had a good run, though. Two good runs! I had to have been luckier than most.

  Unless I was unluckier than most, missing out on an afterlife that maybe most souls could get to. For all I knew, most souls ended up going to Soft Cloud Heaven while I was circulating through a purgatory of rebirth on increasingly weird planets.

  Or maybe my afterlife was worse. Was this going to be my whole existence now: spiraling in infinity, with nothing but the memories, comforts, and regrets I’d built up in my lives?

  If that was the case, then…uh…I was going to have a progressively worse and worse time out here.

  Okay, so one thing besides my consciousness remained: my System.

  And one other thing was and would always remain true: the fact that Sierra was a jerk.

  How had she expected me to make it on my own in a world where I didn’t know the rules?! Yes, I had street smarts, but that meant nothing in a world with no streets. Yes, I knew a thing or two about the way that wild animals operated, but not ones with, like, magic tails and other mysterious spells! I knew about cat societies, not human ones—and in all my time in the Vencian Wood, I had never seen a single other cat!

  What had once seemed like a goddess-given opportunity, a chance for new growth and adventure, now felt like a cruel joke.

  A wrong move around humans had killed me. No, a wrong move around some humans had killed me. So much for banking on the kindness of strangers.

  In hindsight, I should have applied what I knew about Earth humans and their weaponry to these wizards too—I should have assumed that any spell of theirs could kill. But clearly Reed and her cabin, despite her own intimidating weapon, had given me a first impression of humanity that was too nice.

  Hm…well, as long as I had nothing else to do here: Stats.

  I trembled. It was no solace at all that I could move.

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  Map.

  Inventory.

  Help!

  …So this was what it’d all come to. The most blatantly important thing in my Help Desk, and it only now got activated.

  Existential Purpose.

  Never in a million years would I have read and reread this message so patiently, and so without rage, unless I was floating in the vastness of starless space like now.

  Amazingly, I thought I understood. Eventually. And I didn’t like it.

  The gist of it seemed to be, “Sierra is this thing called an Arkmagus. All Arkmagi are mean. Therefore, Sierra is mean.” With a dash of, “Taipha must never know why she exists, for reasons.”

  Part of me refused to take the message as soul-crushingly serious as it wanted to be taken.

  Part of me was terribly scared.

  Then the box expanded itself before my eyes, tacking on another note.

  “Encouraging”? Great! Lay it on me!

  Wait. This was such an obvious trick, and I was no fool. If anything, I was smarter than ever before, now that my Attack equaled my Intelligence and Wisdom.

  But…fine. I had nothing better to do than read it.

  Well, thank you for telling me that, Sierra. Thank you for laying your truth and intentions bare, thank you for only doing this at a time when I could literally do nothing with the information but go around in thought-circles chasing my own thought-tail for eternity.

  Yeah. Thanks.

  The box closed itself after a while. How long of a while? I couldn’t even track the minutes out here. It was all featureless and…

  Oh. I could see stars now.

  When had they blinked into existence? Had the firefly-like blips above and below me only just materialized, or had they been there, dimly?

  Ugh. I wished more than ever that I’d paid more attention to Vencia’s starscape. It did have stars, but the last time I’d been able to watch them, I’d been preoccupied by sheep and a quilt. And before then, I’d been preoccupied by…Reed and a quilt. Life was a racket of missed opportunities.

  At least now I was beginning to see a pretty nebula out ahead of me.

  Sweet. That almost took my mind off of the encroaching depression.

  It looked like a hollow cocoon of an egg, with stars of webbing stretched along its casing. The luminous fibers glowed with every color of the rainbow, growing brighter and brighter the closer I came.

  …Getting closer…

  But I felt totally stationary.

  I had no bodily motion, no momentum, and couldn’t feel a single current of air to let me know that movement was happening in the first place. And yet I was not stationary. I was moving toward that nebula, whether I wanted to or not.

  To be fair, I did want to. It looked so pretty. But the universe hadn’t asked me first. Kind of rude.

  Either I was speeding up, or the closeness and sheer size of the nebula were getting overwhelming now. Soon it was all I could see before me—then it was all around me.

  Then I was blazing forward.

  Stars and comets and gaseous space matter zoomed past me. The fabric of the universe tore across my vision fast enough to whip me in the face, but I felt nothing, only saw the majesty of things parading past, each bit for a fraction of a second. My impression was nothing but kaleidoscope, pure color and speed—

  And then a planet, just a single planet replaced the nebula—

  Familiar clouds and atmosphere—was I coming home?!

  Down below, a castle—

  I filled with fear. Either I was going to phase through like a ghost, or crash through, and my mortal instincts hadn’t left me yet. I shut my eyes tight.

  I didn’t open them for several seconds. Not until I heard a sound, the first sound to greet my ears since my afterlife began.

  “I don’t think this Vencia project is going well.”