Chapter 1: in the tunnel

 A new sensation began to emerge—not a sound, but a vibration. It was a low, resonant hum, a profound resonance that seemed to emanate from the very fabric of existence, growing steadily louder and more consuming. Seiichi, a detective who had faced countless criminals and stared into the abyss
 of human depravity, now confronted an experience entirely beyond his comprehension.
​“This isn’t right,” he thought. His mind was already a panicked engine running on fumes. “A hum? Where is the pain? Where are the sirens, the voices, the… the blood?”
​As the hum intensified, faint, ethereal lights began to appear in absolute darkness. They weren’t distant, winking stars, but more like nebulous, swirling clouds of iridescent luminescence. A gentle but insistent force, like an unseen current, began to pull his entire being toward these celestial dancers.
​He tried to call out, to scream, to demand answers from the silent void, but no sound escaped from his throat. His mind, a whirlwind of racing thoughts, desperately tried to piece together his final, mortal moments: the blinding, violent shotgun blast; the cruel, victorious faces of Kenji and Taro; the sudden, all-encompassing darkness.
​“Kenji and Taro,” the names had a bitter taste in his nonexistent mouth. “They won. After all these years, after every risk I took for justice, the scum actually won.”
​“Where am I?” he wondered. “What’s this… a coma? A hallucination?”
​This was not the end he had anticipated. Was this what came after? He felt a profound mixture of terror and awe as the strange, yet divinely beautiful; lights grew brighter, their vibrant hues bleeding together in a silent, cosmic symphony. His body, once a source of strength and pain, was now nothing more than a ghost, a fleeting memory.
​“They shot me. They killed me. So, this… this is death!” The bitter truth settled over him like a heavy shroud. He had dedicated his life to chasing justice, only to be extinguished in a chaotic, meaningless shootout. My career, my sacrifices, my very identity—all were just footnotes in an abrupt and brutal end. Was that all there? Just darkness and a cosmic light show? I expected a fire, or perhaps nothing at all. Not… this. He had reached the end of the line, and there was nothing left to do but surrender to the unknown.
One of the swirling clouds of light separated from the others, its colors coalescing into a shimmering, humanoid shape. It was an ethereal figure, a silhouette of pure, radiant energy that pulsed with an ineffable warmth. It extended a hand, not of corporeal flesh and bone, but of pure, incandescent energy.
The last thought he had was a single, quiet question, a final, unresisting surrender to the inevitable: “What happens now?” As his incorporeal form merged with the being of pure light, Seiichi ceased to be a detective, a victim, a man with a past. He became, for an instant that seemed timeless, pure awareness. The deluge of memories and foreign futures receded, leaving behind a crystalline clarity. He understood that the entity wasn't a god, or an angel, or a keeper of souls. (So, he thought at first)
It was a Conduit (maybe). It felt like a focusing lens for the fundamental energy of the cosmos—the very hum he had heard was the sound of its ceaseless creation and reabsorption.
The gentle, upward pull intensified, and the surrounding void fract Iured. It wasn't shattering but gloriously unveiling. The darkness he'd felt was only the veil of his own limited perception. Beyond it was nothing but everything.
He was not traveling to heaven or the afterlife; he was being folded back into existence.
The luminous Conduit did not speak, but projected a final, comforting impression: 'You are tired. Rest.'
​“This can’t be real,” he muttered, a desperate, frantic plea that was swallowed by the profound silence. “Am I dreaming? Is this some kind of fever dream, a delusion brought on by blood loss? It must be! I’ll be waking up in a hospital bed at any moment. God, let it be a hospital room.”
​The outstretched hand, a graceful phantom of light, remained. He fixated on it, his consciousness snagging on the simple, yet impossible, detail: A hand? He had just been a crumpled heap on an office floor, his life force ebbing away like sand from an hourglass. Now he was here, suspended in a cosmic void, with a being of light offering its hand. It’s an invitation. A pull. He felt the tug again, stronger now, an irresistible force that promised not to harm, but to guide. The hum, the resonant drone that permeated the void, reached a sudden, deafening crescendo, a symphony of existence itself.
​Hesitation was a luxury he could no longer afford. What’s the worst that can happen? I’m already dead. Driven by an inexplicable trust and a profound weariness of the darkness, he reached out.
​The hand of light touched him, and a torrent of images and sensations, a veritable deluge of a lifetime, flooded his mind. It was a kaleidoscope of memories, a condensed autobiography in a single, breathtaking instant. He saw fragments of his past: his childhood, a tapestry of laughter and innocent joys; his first successful case as a detective, the exhilarating triumph of justice served; the faces of people he’d loved and lost—the gentle smile of his mother, the stoic nod of his father, the camaraderie of a former partner.
​“Wait. No, stop! I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to relive it!”
​But then, the cascade of images shifted, and he saw things that were utterly alien and deeply unsettling. Glimpses of a future he would never have: a life of peace and quiet contentment; a different path where he chose love over duty; a world that was not his to inhabit. These aren’t my memories! Whose life is this? Is this what I threw away? The visceral pain, the paralyzing fear, and the profound confusion that had defined his final moments dissolved, replaced by a profound, all-encompassing sense of peace. He felt himself being pulled, not just forward into the luminous being, but upwards, as if being lifted out of the suffocating, mortal darkness and into a new, unknown existence.
​The last thought he had was a single, quiet question. A final, unresisting surrender to the inevitable: “What happens now? Just tell me.
As his incorporeal form merged with the being of pure light, Seiichi ceased to be a detective, a victim, a man with a past. He became, for a timeless instant, pure awareness. The deluge of memories and foreign futures receded, leaving behind a crystalline clarity. He understood that the entity wasn’t a god, or an angel, or a keeper of souls. (So, he thought at first).
​It was a Conduit. It felt like a focusing lens for the fundamental energy of the cosmos—the very hum he had heard was the sound of its ceaseless creation and reabsorption.
​“A Conduit. A channel. It’s not judging me; it’s… processing me.”
​The gentle, upward pull intensified, and the surrounding void fractured. It wasn’t shattering but gloriously unveiling. The darkness he’d felt was only the veil of his own limited perception. Beyond it was nothing but everything.
​“I’m not going to heaven or the afterlife; I’m being folded back into existence. I’m going home, but not the home I knew.”
​The luminous Conduit did not speak, but projected a final, comforting impression: “You are tired. Rest.”
​Then, the final, stunning truth: his life, the decades spent pursuing justice, was a single, perfect note in a grand, infinite symphony. There was no judgment, no reward, and no punishment—only integration.
The iridescent luminescence that had been the swirling clouds now exploded into a sea of absolute, blinding yet not painful white. He was no longer Seiichi, the detective; he was a particle of the eternal flow. The warmth was all-consuming, a return to a primal, undifferentiated state. He felt the echo of every life that had ever been lived, a silent, joyful chorus that dissolved his singularity. His fears, his pain, and his very identity were shed like old, unnecessary skin.
The resonant hum peaked, a sound that was also a color, a feeling, and a truth.
A sudden, rapid jerk with speed moved Seiichi heavenward.
*******
“…. Whuff!”
 His corporeal particles began to reconfigure, coalescing as if interweaving a novel helix of DNA, meticulously orchestrated by the ephemeral transit of time. He was undergoing a metempsychosis transfer into the cycle of palingenesis. His fundamental essence was being annealed—a placid, incandescent ember compressed into the adamantine matrix of a nascent existence. Time, unfurled and unbounded, attenuated him, sculpting his emergent physique from extra-terrestrial particulate matter.
 With sudden astonishment, Seiichi's eyes slowly opened, widening with perplexed inquiry. A wave of disorientation, a visceral rejection of the serene, infinite void he’d just left, washed over him.
“Where...where am I?” He articulated, his voice a hollow rasp in the cool, echoing space.
He was recumbent on a smooth, frigid stone floor, the air thick with the mineral scent of water and the subtle, earthy fragrance of incense. The aural signature of the chamber was dominated by the mellifluous sound of running water—a soft, consistent tapestry of sound created by fountains cascading down intricately carved tiers of a sacred basin.
His mind was a maelstrom of bewilderment. The crystalline clarity of his moments as pure awareness had fractured, replaced by an overwhelming cognitive dissonance. He was now tethered to a body, a singular point of focus, yet that body felt both intimately familiar and strangely alien. The memory of his death—the blinding shotgun blast—and the sublime experience of the Conduit existed side-by-side, irreconcilable truths that shattered his sense of reality.
Languidly, he pushed himself to an erect posture. His muscles protested with a deep, unfamiliar ache, yet they responded with a fluid grace he hadn't known as a detective. As he gained his footing, his gaze fell upon his clothing. The dark, business-like attire he’d worn during his final, disastrous stakeout was now little more than shredded, sudden rags, clinging tenuously to his newly formed physique. The tattered fabric was the last vestige of Detective Seiichi, a cruel reminder of the life that was brutally extinguished, and the existential conundrum of the life that had just begun.
He was physically whole, but irrevocably changed, left alone within this architectural marvel of stone and water.
​His visual perception, initially obscured by a momentary discomposure following the profound transition, now sharpened with an abrupt, almost disconcerting clarity, meticulously surveying the enigmatic confines of his new quarter.
​He executed a deliberate, reflexive blink, and the lingering mental haze dissipated. The ensuing sight was a breathtaking, yet logically incongruous, fusion of the elemental and the ethereal. The chamber was an immense, octagonal space hewn from what appeared to be a singular, flawless matrix of obsidian. Its surface was so profoundly dark it seemed to actively absorb the scant illumination. This pervasive generosity was dramatically counterpoised by the hypnotic glow of the cascading hydroscopes. A triumvirate of tiers, crafted from polished, verdigris-hued marble, formed a monumental circular basin at the nexus of the floor. From the ledges of the upper two tiers, an astonishing multitude of fine, argent streams of water poured forth, weaving a shimmering, diaphanous curtain that captured and refracted the subtle, iridescent light filtering from an unseen apex.
He looked down at his hands, and they were his hands: calloused, strong, and undeniably human. He ran a hand over his face; no horns, no scales. His body felt solid, whole, and familiar. The dark, business-like attire of his suit, though damp and crumpled, was still intact.
“Normal,” he muttered, a raw surge of disbelief and frustration overriding his perplexity. The Conduit, the light, the rebirth—it had all been a dying hallucination. He was simply alive, somehow, in a strange, echoing room.
He pushed himself to an erect posture. His muscles protested with a deep, familiar ache, yet they responded with the stiffness of a man who had taken a devastating beating. As he gained his footing, his gaze swept over the obsidian temple, taking in the fountains and the iridescent light with the calm skepticism of a detective facing a bizarre crime scene.
Then, the normalcy was shattered.
A knife-sharp, excruciating pain erupted on the left side of his thorax. It was a shock of pure agony, so vivid and localized it felt like a white-hot spike had been driven straight through him. The pain was plain to see; not on his skin, but a searing, internal truth that made him gasp and double over.
“No,” he choked out, his eyes wide with dawning horror. “The bullet…”
The gunshot, the final, brutal evidence of his death, was still there. Despite the “cosmic journey,” the reconfiguration of his DNA, and the promise of a new existence, the mortal injury remained, burning a devastating hole in his physical reality. 
“...Where...am I?” he articulated, his voice a hollow rasp, in the cool echoing space. The air, crisp scent of ozone's wet stone, seemed to press in on Seiichi, yet he felt an odd lightness in his newly formed bones.
“What is this place?” he whispered, the question echoing faintly off the walls... His focus shifted from the spectacular fountains erected around the enclosure area. As he’d moved around, he noticed inscriptions, almost imperceptibly, about details of a language he couldn’t recognize. A single, deep carved symbol that was illuminated by the stray refraction of the water-light.
His eyes newly sharp, scanned the rest of the octagonal chamber, searching for a doorway with a hidden passageway, or any sign that he was not utterly alone in this crystalline tomb of water and stone.
Drip, drip. The sound of the droplets, heavy and rhythmic, began to pierce the constant, flowing melody of the fountains.
He took a step back from the archway, his bare feet registering the frigid temperature of the floor. As he moved, the motion created a subtle yet immediate shift in the water of the Grand Central Basin. The continuous streams cascading from tiers created a vast, surface-tension dome in the center, a layer of the undisturbed stillness. But his movements, amplified by the resonant properties of the octagonal chamber, caused a gentle, pendulum-like oscillation in the surrounding pool.
As he walked with a low sloshing sound back and forth beneath the flowing movement of water in his feet. Shh-whoosh, shh-whoosh! He continued to move, steps; heavy were the moments he felt he was there for days inside that wide tunnel ‘temple.’