Chapter 1: Barren Lands

It is not if you wield a blade

It is how you wield it

Srishta woke up from this very long night; he couldn’t remember much of it. It felt as if he had forgotten very important information, or more so, that very important information had been ripped out of his head directly. Tears were flowing from his eyes, but he did not realize that until he looked at himself in the mirror of his bathroom while grabbing his toothbrush. He completely forgot why he was crying. He held his toothbrush still in his hands for a few minutes while he was staring at himself crying in the mirror, trying to fill the gap in his memory.

“There was a voice, I remember that.”

He muttered to himself while staring at himself crying in the mirror. Suddenly, as if all the guilt of the last years had finally been too much for him, he collapsed, he started screaming and punched his mirror. Glass shattered throughout his bathroom, and a few pieces went inside his hand. His hand started bleeding profusely as if trying to appease the sins he had committed.

“Why, why, why, I hate this job. I absolutely despise it. I wanted to help people, build things, not destroy things. Look at me now, a piece of shit worth nothing but a few dimes.”

He screamed with no further purpose than to unleash the guilt he has been feeling for the past few years while punching the ground up until both his fists were bleeding. He punched and punched and punched and cried some more up until his body physically couldn’t handle it anymore.

“The worst of it all is that I know, I’ll get up again.”

He was right. He got up again as if nothing had just happened; his mind didn’t understand, but his body did. Old habits die hard. He cleaned up the mess he had made as a robot, and the tears suddenly ended.

“I’ll be late for work.”

As if nothing had happened, he bandaged both his fists and his left arm, which he had used to punch the mirror. While grabbing a last shard of mirror, he muttered to himself.

“You absolutely disgust me.”

After that, his usual routine started up again. He brushed his teeth.

“Now my arm can barely hold my toothbrush, all of that for absolutely nothing.”

He continued brushing his teeth with no emotion, as if a dam had collapsed, letting go of all the water and then rebuilding itself within literal seconds. He was his old self again, with his emotions of guilt put very far away inside of him. After brushing his teeth, he jumped into the shower and cleaned himself with the usual soap he always cleans himself with. This was the only thing he liked spending his money on: expensive soap.

“Gotta rush a little.”

He continued his routine. Preparing himself without any time for breakfast, he headed out fully clothed with his suitcase, as if nothing had happened that morning except that people with the right eye would observe his hands in bandages; that was all that was different from him and his usual self in the morning.

He walked to work, as he always did. The workers were there early today, and he passed them as he did every other day. He was about to cross the street when he saw a child crossing it. It was obviously a child who wasn’t accustomed to taking this route to school.

“Oh yeah, it’s the first day of school, I completely forgot.”

The child anxiously crossed the road. It was a small child with longer hair. Srishta couldn’t discern if it were a boy or a girl. They walked the street without checking if there was a car coming; unfortunately for the child, there was.

A truck was coming full speed ahead without noticing the child.

Suddenly, as if struck by lightning, he remembered. She told him she needed help.

“Who was she again? Cha-”

He suddenly noticed the truck, without thinking, he went on a full sprint to get to the child on time. He pushed the child away from the road; it was a brutal push, but it was better than certain death.

Srishta just had time to turn his head towards the truck to see his own death coming at him. As if time slowed down, he had a rush of thoughts before going to his inevitable end.

“So, this is how it ends?”

He thought of his parents.

“I stacked away a good amount of money, and they’ll take good care of it. I hope they spend it a bit on some charity, which would help me get to a good afterlife”

He thought about all the hard work he put in and what it amounted to.

“I lived a miserable life. I wish I could start over, but I guess that is not how it works. At least I’ll be able to have a good rest now, couldn’t sleep with all the guilt before”

It was the first time he admitted to himself that he felt guilt.

“I hope that if there is an afterlife. I can create beautiful things, things people can enjoy and not weapons of mass murder.”

He closed his eyes one last time, not wanting to look death straight in the eyes.

“Your prayer has been answered, Srishta Saange.”

Srishta heard a voice within his final moments, but it was not the same voice as he had heard before. It was an entirely different voice, a voice not from this world.

Suddenly, he wasn’t in front of a truck anymore.

“State what you need.”

A female figure of strong stature sat on a white throne in an abyss of darkness.

Srishta suddenly stood on top of the stained glass windows. He looked at the floor, which was a rose window. It had a beautiful design, mostly purple in colour. He looked at it better and saw that it had the image of a man with a crown on top of his head while he was asleep. There were also four other smaller circles surrounding him, each with a different symbol. It was a gear, a fist, a sort of musical instrument and a scientific symbol he could barely recognise from his time at high school.

“What are you looking at the prophecy for? State what you need.”

The female figure on top of the white throne said. She said it with a strong voice, not a voice that would make you scared, but a voice that would make you do what she asks you to do.

“Where am I?”

Srishta had no idea what was happening.

“Never read or watched an ‘isekai’ before? I thought you people were familiar with this concept; we borrowed it from you. Either way, state what you need so we can move on from this.”

She said it in the firmest tone Srishta has ever heard.

“Is this hell? Am I here to expiate my sins?”

Srishta was not scared of asking this question; he was ready for his punishment.

“You’re not here because of guilt, you’re here to have another chance. What you do with it is entirely up to you. I am ready to give you another chance, that’s what you begged for during your last moments, right? So what are you complaining about? State what you need.”

Srishta started understanding his situation. This was a new shot at a new life.

“So, I get another shot at life. Do I get reborn again and do it all over again? You talked about a prophecy. What am I? The chosen one that has to save everybody or something?”

The female figure started laughing.

“Who do you think you are? ‘The chosen one’, it’s just a prophecy, even if it was true, there is no ‘chosen one’ in that prophecy. Thinking you’re ‘the chosen one’ automatically disqualifies you from being the one in the middle that you just saw.”

“I understood absolutely nothing of what you just said”

“Doesn’t matter, long story short, you’ll be transported to another world. You get a new shot for… reasons. Those reasons might be revealed to you later or not. It doesn’t matter. If you ask one more question, I’ll see it as a no and will transport you back to your old world where you can enjoy your last moments bleeding out on the pavement.”

Srishta didn’t understand much of his situation, but he had another chance to do it all over again. He thought for a few moments about what he needed to do well, and it came to him.

“I don’t need anything but these two hands I have been given to do good. I’ll put them to good use. Of course, this head of mine ain’t that bad either, that is all I will need.”

The female figure seemed pleased by that answer.

“Maybe you’re not too bad after all.”

Suddenly, he got transported again. He looked around and saw barren land, with barely any plants.

“I must be dreaming.”

He reflexively looked at his hands to check if he was dreaming; they were still in bandages and bleeding.

Srishta looked around for any sign of life, but he found none. Trees without leaves, lands without any greenery. He touched the soil, and it was dry.

“I guess this is where I’ll have to start.”

He looked at his hand.

“This will be all I need.”