Wednesday, August 27th, 2042, Newport, Bellevue, Washington.


    Finally in his office, Jason booted up the FullDive rig. The device hummed to life, familiar lights blinking on the neural headset. As he connected the port at the base of his neck, the tension melted away. His rig scanned his biometric data, preparing for tonight’s dive.


    His personal VR hub opened, and real life’s drabness dissolved into something vibrant, alive.


    The icon for A Realm Reforged Again hovered in the corner of his vision. He smiled, selecting it with a flick of his hand.


    The game booted up, the familiar logo materialising before his eyes. The lone character creation option appeared, the game waiting patiently for his selection.


    Jason texted M-E to say he was ready to play, and the reply came back almost instantly. They exchanged a few messages in rapid succession, and Jason smiled. M-E knew that healing always stressed him out, but he also knew he liked support roles. The idea of playing a wizard who could help outside of combat pleased him, and the irony of them being bookish did not escape his notice.


    But he wants me to recruit a healer? Jason thought. I guess I could try, but would it not be simpler to just roll a priest? As long as he picked either mage or priest, it should work out.


    He did not linger on the point, and simply thumbed up the request. He turned back his attention on the opening screen, finally selecting the lone option available to him.


    A voice and new prompt welcomed him to the first step of character creation: “Choose your creator.”


    Sixteen icons materialised and floated before him.


    Sid Meier once gave a talk called A game is a series of interesting decisions. Jason was familiar with it. But the legendary designer had cautioned others about what made up interesting decisions. Starting the game with a choice of sixteen gods, without information on the impact, why the choice matters, what was the trade-off between those… It all went against almost every instruction from that talk. Did the developers not pay attention?


    Jason scanned the icons. He was trying to figure out where to start, to determine which one to pick. Then he noticed one of them shone radiantly next to the others. It was the second pearl-white icon, but this one surrounded by a warm golden-yellow light.


    It called to him, like an overly eager student raising his or her arm, standing up, and shouting “Me, me, me!”


    He chuckled at the thought of a childish and immature creator-god.


    “Sure, sure. Let’s give you a chance,” he played along, selecting the icon.


    A short woman appeared, floating just a foot off the floor. She could not be taller than four and a half feet, though her soft, rhythmic hovering made it hard to gauge her exact height.


    She had silver hair and wore a white, flowing, shoulderless robe.


    From where he stood, he could see golden, reflective scales peppered across her body, clustered mostly around her joints—elbows, cheeks, shoulders and along the neck. A long, shimmering reptilian tail extended behind her, glowing with the same radiant gold.


    Two delicate fins sprouted where her ears would have been, arching back. Their bony spines fanned outward, with translucent membranes catching the light. They gave her an almost regal look, a creature of both sea and sky. She smiled at him; her glowing amethyst eyes locked onto his.


    The game’s interface introduced her. “Luxoria, the lady of compassion, goddess of radiance. Alignment: Light.”


    There was lore about the goddess and her clergy on floating windows, but Jason confirmed his selection without even reading them, shrugging. “Since I have no clue why this decision matters, you seem like a good enough choice to me!”


    The goddess faded away, but not before her smile stretched wider, almost smug now. She practically glowed with self-satisfaction, as if she’d known all along this moment would come. Her amethyst eyes shimmered, radiating approval—and ownership.


    A wave of sickening vertigo crashed into Jason. His body swayed, the world warping as if gravity had shifted. His balance shattered, and his legs buckled. He dropped to one knee, struggling for breath. Every inhale felt muted, distant, filtered through layers of fabric.


    A strange pressure pulsed at the sides of his head. He tried to focus, but every movement felt alien, like his body no longer belonged to him. His chest tightened with panic, but before he could fully process what was happening, he caught something off the corner of his vision..


    Shapes and lights flickered—game windows and menus opening and closing in rapid succession. A strange orchestra accompanied the flashing lights: non-diegetic button presses, sliders adjusting and menus closing.


    Suddenly, a pop-up window appeared, front and centre. He had no choice but to focus on it. A percentage crawled up slowly, with the text “Normal delta exceeded. Body calibration in progress, vestibular correction necessary.” He caught glimpses through the haze of his own confusion, unable to fully grasp what was happening.


    Slowly, the world steadied, the overwhelming wrongness retreating just enough for him to push himself back onto both feet. “Calibration complete. We apologise for the temporary discomfort.” The dizziness ebbed, but his new form still felt strange, too light, too different. He blinked, trying to focus as the menus faded away and control returned to his limbs, but the feeling of being in someone else’s skin lingered, an eerie reminder of the power he had just accepted.


    Jason took a deep breath, and everything felt natural again. Not “normal”. He knew everything was different now. But he no longer felt nauseous, he no longer struggled to breathe, and he was standing on his two feet, steady.


    “What—” he tried speaking, but froze at the sound of his voice: young, feminine. It sounded just like one of his student.


    “Okay, what just happened…?” he said out loud, the weird mismatch of his internal voice making it hard to complete a full sentence. That feeling was like the horrible echo you get when your voice got picked up by two microphones at once.


    “Choose your starting class”, a window suggested somewhat helpfully, as if in lieu of an actual answer.


    Jason shook his head. Her head? It felt strange. The extra weight of her fins and long silver hair were totally foreign. The calibration system, that revolutionary system created by the game’s developers, had taken away the discomfort of being in a non-human body, but only at the subconscious level. If he took the time to think about it consciously, he was still aware of everything, and how odd each sensation or how foreign each body part was. Jason stopped thinking about it, the feeling of disorientation lessening as he focused his mind elsewhere. It seemed the calibration system had limits. To be fair, it had to deal with more than having changed him into a non-human body. It was also a much smaller body. And a woman’s one at that.


    It was not until she noticed the golden scales covering her arms that the reason for the change hit her. Jason had chosen a creator, and now she was the creator. Luxoria. She twisted her torso and glanced behind her, catching sight of her own tail.


    There it was, the golden dracan tail adjusting itself to counter-balance the sudden movement.


    “Yep, that’s her, alright.”


    That mystery solved, and satisfied after a few minutes of inspecting her body, stretching her limbs and moving about, Jason decided it was time to tackle the next step of the character creation.


    Eight choices representing the starting classes lined up in front of her. “So, picking a class comes second?”


    Jason understood the colour-code immediately. Blue for tanks. Green for healers. Red for damage dealers. A flame, a book and a bow & arrow.


    “The book must be for mage,” she said.


    She considered finding which of the two healers was the priest. But she selected the mage class, as instructed by M-E. He knew the way those games worked, the social dynamics and responsibilities of party members. There was probably a good reason to pick mage over priest. Jason would just have to try extra hard to find a healer before the two of them met up. It was likely M-E would head over to the starting city of mages and priests. She recalled the name Luminara vaguely.


    She confirmed her selection, but part of the message that appeared next took her by surprise: “On Umber’s First Darksday of Harvestfall, 1442, Vaelith Dawnscale was born. May the sixteen watch over her as she blooms into her true self.”A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Jason protested, “Wait, wait! You forgot to let me choose my character’s appearance! And I didn’t pick a name!”


    Darkness swallowed her, and a new message glowed softly: “It’ll be alright, my precious hatchling. Now it’s time for Vaelith to wake up.”


    Vaelith drifted in darkness for a moment. When the darkness cleared, she blinked, disoriented. She was not in the game—she could somehow tell that immediately. Everything about the world felt familiar, but somehow wrong, like the afterimage of a dream clinging to her mind. The air was heavy and had a foggy quality to it; the light shimmering unnaturally, as though seen through a veil of steam.


    It’s a memory, she thought, but not quite. The courtyard—stone walls draped in ivy, the faint scent of earth—was unmistakable. One of the mage’s guildhall courtyards from her childhood apprenticeship. From Vaelith’s apprenticeship. But there was something off about the edges of things, a faint flickering at the corners of her vision, as though the scene were struggling to hold itself together, slipping between clarity and dissolution.


    Is this real? She was not sure. The paradox gripped her: she knew these were past events, yet she felt tethered to the present, able to act. Not just a passive observer of memories, but something more—a player on the stage. She could move, change things, alter the past. The confusion gnawed at her. This was not just recollection; it was a place in-between, somewhere she had not been before, a blurred boundary between memory and the now.


    She frowned, her tail twitching reflexively behind her, pulling her spine along with its foreign, yet paradoxically familiar, movements. How could she feel the odd pull of her own muscles in a memory?


    Vaelith’s head twitched involuntarily, the fins on the sides of her head vibrating slightly as they caught the distant voices of students that filled the halls. She frowned. The words sounded clear enough, but they did not travel like they used to. There was something strange in the way sounds carried now, something layered beneath the vibrations. It reminded her of Jason’s anhedonia—that muted, distant feeling that had once dulled every emotion. Joy, sorrow, fear, even pain—detectable, but muffled. Life had been there, but never sharp enough, never close enough to touch. But now… now, the world felt sharp. Alive! Every sound, every vibration, seemed to cut through her, clearer than before, almost too clear.


    But no, it was not exactly the same as how she perceived sounds now. There was an extra layer to them—like she was not simply hearing the sound, but feeling the vibrations ripple through her bones. She rubbed the side of her head, her fingers brushing the ridged fin beneath her hair, trying to dull the constant hum of sound waves catching on her scales.


    A jolt of pain shot through her the moment she touched them. The voices of students warped, growing sharp, piercing, and she winced, jerking her hand away. Her fingers tingled as though the bones themselves had picked up some strange current. That had been intense. Just how sensitive were those things?


    She hesitated, then touched the fins again, softer this time, covering as much of them as she could with her hands. The world around her shifted. Voices twisted, became deeper, and felt more distant. The chirping birds faded into a dull hum. It felt like listening underwater; the sounds muted and vibrating faintly around her. Vaelith’s heart skipped a beat.


    This was not human hearing. It was not even close to how Jason processed sounds.


    To her, every sound was much clearer. She could somehow judge their distance and provenance far better. They each had a texture and richness to it that no human ears could ever register. It would take time getting used to all the nuances.


    But somehow, all of it filled her heart with a sense of hope. Was that a dracan thing, or did everyone normally hear this well? She recalled how long Jason had lived with poor eyesight, blissfully unaware of his difficulties. How everything had changed, and how he could finally see so much more clearly when he first started wearing glasses. Was this the same?


    She let go of her fins and took stock of her surroundings again, this time more alert and attentive.


    There was a hum of magical energy that buzzed softly through the air, vibrating like the quiet thrum of a tuning fork. Students hurried to their classes, chatting loudly as they passed, some glancing at her. But most simply ignored her. The courtyard was alive with motion, but Vaelith felt disconnected—like she was not fully present.


    She looked down at her herself. She was wearing a humble hempen robe, a rope belt tied at the waist. It was too tall, too loose for her. She saw the rolled-up sleeves. She knew—or was it recalled?—it would be fully far too easy for her hands to disappear behind the excess cloth otherwise.


    Next to her, there was a stack of well-worn textbooks. Her precious books. She did not need to open them to know they were full of lessons, notes, diagrams, rituals and incantations, penned by her own hand at first… Until she learned how to use her floating magical quill. She recalled that lesson with a smile.


    She stood up, trying to shake off the overwhelming sense that something was deeply, deeply wrong.


    She took a hesitant step forward, feeling the subtle shift in her centre of gravity. Her body moved differently—fluid, balanced, as though every muscle had already learned to work with her tail. Each step felt instinctual, her tail counterbalancing every motion with a grace Jason’s body had never known. The ease of it unnerved her, the effortless way this body knew itself even as her mind rebelled. Jason’s old body had always felt clumsy, too heavy in all the wrong places. But Vaelith’s? Vaelith’s body was weightless, each step precise, instinctive, as if she were finally moving in sync with herself.


    She took a few steps toward a nearby fountain, her tail flicked behind her again, an automatic movement she did not will. Focusing on it, Vaelith stilled her tail, but as soon as stopped concentrating, it moved again—subtly, naturally—adjusting her balance as she walked. She froze, fear crawling up her spine. Her body was doing things she had not even asked it to.


    Her reflection shimmered faintly in the water. Violet, luminous eyes stared back, and something inside her recoiled. This was not Jason’s face. It was Vaelith’s. A mirror of a younger Luxoria—the creator she had chosen earlier.


    The person a part of her yearned to be. She silenced that part of her.


    “This isn’t me,” Vaelith said with a trembling whisper in her new soft voice. Her fingers brushed the hollow of her throat, and she froze again. Of course, there was no sign of Adam’s apple, but something else surprised her. It was not just the texture—smoother, thinner—it was the way the touch felt. Foreign. Her mind scrambled, desperately trying to hold on to the memory of Jason’s old body—broad, human, familiar. But that memory was slipping like sand through her fingers.


    She shook her head, trying to force the memory back, trying to feel like herself again. But she could not. No matter how hard she tried to summon the weight and solidity of Jason’s form, it was dissolving. Fading.


    She looked down at her hands again—slender, alien. The golden scales on her wrists reminded her how she was not quite human. Her dracan tail swayed naturally with each breath, each heartbeat, as though it had always been there, always been a part of her. This body isn’t mine. I’m just borrowing it. But beneath the fear, beneath the confusion, something darker—something she did not want to acknowledge—stirred.


    This felt... right. Horrifyingly, deeply right. And that realisation made her breath catch in her throat.


    That was when a group of homini children passed by, whispering and pointing.


    “Look, it’s the goddess’s shadow,” a boy said with a snicker.


    Beside him, a girl frowned.


    “More like an imitation,” she said, her tone biting tone.


    “She thinks she’s so much better than all of us,” another girl said with a sneer.


    Vaelith felt a flicker of vulnerability. She was almost a full head shorter than them, and their words stung like sharp thorns. She had not chosen this body, and neither had Jason. Why bully someone for something beyond their control?


    The memories of moments like these flooded back, old wounds—teasing, rejection, pain. The echoes of that past life seemed to claw at her insides, as if those same jabs had hurt him long before Vaelith had ever existed. Most of those memories ended in tears, and too frequently in bruises as well.


    Her heart raced. She could feel they sensed her fear, the way their eyes lingered on her with quiet cruelty. Thankfully, that was enough for them today. After a few moments, the group turned away, laughing and muttering as they walked off.


    Even as their backs disappeared into the crowd, their words echoed in her head, cutting deeper than she expected. Whenever people looked at her, they saw the goddess’s reflection, not Jason. Not the man who taught middle school, who drove an electric SUV, who had a life outside this fantasy world. But as their whispers dug into her, she could not shake the quiet, unsettling truth crawling up her spine: this body, this face—it did not feel as wrong as it should.


    A voice, gentle and comforting, resonated within her, as if rising from deep inside: “Embrace who you are, my little hatchling. Be without fear.”


    Her breath caught. The words wrapped around her like a warm blanket, but her mind was a chaotic tangle of thoughts. Why did this body feel... right? It had to be wrong, she thought, clinging desperately to that belief. But beneath the denial, that whisper—that quiet, almost inaudible truth—kept nagging at her, pulling at her insides.


    Once more, she took stock of herself, looking down at the golden scales tracing delicate patterns across her wrists and forearms. Her tail twitched reflexively behind her, coiling in frustration, but instead of revulsion, a strange comfort settled into her muscles.


    She tried to shake the thought, to shove it back down. “It’s the dragon parts,” she said in a mutter, folding her arms across her chest and rubbing at the smooth scales on her forearms. “It’s not me. The fins, the tail, the scales. That’s what feels weird.” Her tail swayed, curling and coiling as though it had a mind of its own. “No human would feel okay with this.” She tried to convince herself. But the question kept haunting her. Am I even still human?


    As she repeated the question, her mind drifted back to the way her body felt while walking through the academy halls, her steps light and precise, her body in perfect alignment. She did not want to admit it, but there was something deeply, unsettlingly right about this. And that terrified her.


    She really wanted to believe it. But the more she sank into the sensation, the more the world around her felt... right. Alive! All her senses felt so much sharper. She was not just hearing sounds. She was feeling them. The vibrations themselves were threading through her bones, giving her a new sense of presence she had never experienced before.


    Her tail curled behind her, the fins on her head fluttered in the breeze, and for a brief, terrifying moment, Vaelith let out a small breath of relief. This body felt more real than Jason’s ever had.


    And she hated how much she liked it.


    “This is wrong,” Vaelith said, whispering. But the words held no conviction. There was no fight at all behind them. Her voice was small, trembling with confusion. Jason had spent years perfecting the art of being satisfied with nothing. Or rather, the art of appearing satisfied. He had learned to live in a shell of quiet resignation, where joy was something distant and unreachable, something only others could taste. And now, for the first time, as things felt... truly right, truly alive—he could feel the creeping urge to shut it down. As if allowing himself this moment of alignment, this rare sense of belonging in his own skin, was selfish. As if he did not deserve to feel good, to feel whole.


    She clenched her fists, feeling the weight of the truth creep in around the edges of her mind.


    It was not the tail, the scales, or even the fins that felt wrong. It was Jason’s body—the heavy, stiff memory of it, distant and dull—that no longer belonged.


    Her vision shifted, the memory dissolving. As it faded, Vaelith felt a part of herself—no, a part of Jason’s past—fade along with it.