Reincarnated into my third life:watch me defy the fate

Silence, it was the first thing Veythor noticed—deafening, absolute silence. No sound of rain, no crackle of flame, not even the echo of his own breath. The world had been swallowed whole, and he with it.

He opened his eyes or thought he did. There was no light, only a faint hue of ash-grey that clung to his skin like dust. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of wet soil and something ancient that breathed beneath it. He tried to move, but his limbs felt trapped, restrained not by earth but by a strange stillness that gripped his will.

"What... is this place?" he murmured.

His voice sounded wrong and muted, as if the world itself refused to carry his words.

He glanced around; the ground rippled faintly beneath him, translucent as liquid glass. Through it, he could almost see faces... vague and shifting murmuring beneath the surface like drowned memories.

Am I dead?

For a moment, he almost laughed. The irony of it... a man who mocked heavens, buried by the soil of the very world he sought to outwit. But something in him refused the idea. Death felt too quiet for this.

A low hum began to rise, deep and sorrowful, vibrating through the unseen space. Then, a voice not quite male or female whispered from somewhere far, yet painfully near.

"You speak of justice and survival as if they are different things… Thunder-born one."

Veythor froze—the title struck him like lightning through his spine. His body sat stiff, every nerve numb.

"Fuck… I can't feel my body."

Then, with a single blink, the darkness shattered. He found himself somewhere entirely different—a place painted in colors too vivid for the real world. There were trees, vast and beautiful, their leaves glimmering faintly as if dusted with gold. Flowers bloomed in endless hues along a mountainside; above them, clouds drifted so close he felt he could reach out and catch one.

"What is this place… and what was that voice?" he murmured, his voice smaller than he intended.

Slowly, he stood, stretching his stiff limbs. The air was alive—fresh and clean, carrying the sweet scent of wild blooms. The wind brushed past his face, cool and soft. Daylight spread gently across the landscape.

"This place…" he whispered, closing his eyes. "Have I ever been somewhere like this? It feels… nostalgic."

He took another breath, then spoke louder, as if to the wind itself.

"Mother… I'll be coming to you soon. Just watch over me and bless me. I will destroy the world and come to you."

His hand clenched, trembling slightly with that quiet vow.

"Destroy the world? Sounds interesting."

Veythor froze again... his blood ran cold.

That voice.

He turned slowly, every motion stiff, his eyes wide. There was nothing.... no one. He exhaled, a quiet sigh of relief escaping his lips.

"Why are you spacing out? So pathetic."

The voice laughed—light, mocking. This time, Veythor whipped around fully, eyes darting through the greenery. His expression shifted from shock to disbelief, his jaw slackening, then tightening into a frown.

There, sitting on a moss-covered rock, was a squirrel. It nibbled calmly on a nut, tail flicking lazily, ears twitching now and then. But its eyes... those sharp, unblinking eyes were fixed directly on Veythor.

Veythor narrowed his eyes and leaned into the staring contest, the silence between him and the little creature stretching like a taut wire; then, to his surprise, the squirrel spoke.

"You… human, what are you staring at?" it asked, still locked on him with that unblinking, absurd boldness.

Veythor's pupils flicked, surprise for an instant widening his gaze, and then his lips curved into a faint, knowing smirk. A talking squirrel interesting, he thought, and the smirk deepened as curiosity warmed into amusement.

"What are you?" he asked at last, and before the question had even finished forming the squirrel flicked something small... a nut at him with an unnaturally swift throw. Veythor jerked sideways, the projectile whizzing past his ear.

"That was close," he murmured, steadying himself as the tiny echo of the impact died away.

"Can't you see what I am?" the squirrel snapped back, voice sharp with mischief. Veythor raised an eyebrow, amused rather than threatened.

"I don't think a squirrel can speak human words like that," he replied, letting the skepticism lace his tone. "You must be something else. Am I wrong?"

His confidence did not falter. In the same breath, the small animal shivered, fur rippling and compressing, and where whiskers and tail had been a moment before a woman now stood lĺroughly in her twenties, not classically beautiful, but every inch human in form and motion.

"Oh ho.... a shapeshifter," Veythor said, laughter bubbling up; it amused him to see the impossible made mundane before his eyes, a trick he had not expected.

"Human child, what is so funny?" the woman asked, voice even, but carrying an edge that made Veythor fold his smile into something narrower.

"No… it was only a clever trick," he admitted, shaking his head with mock regret. "I won't pry into what you are, but do enlighten me: for what reason have you brought me here?"

His eyes had thinned to slits, half-lidded in that languid, dangerous way he favored. The woman's mouth curved into a small smile; she cocked her head.

"Why do you assume I brought you here?" she answered, as if the puzzle were obvious.

"Intuition," he said, as if the single word were a game-piece dropped on the table between them, and smirked again.

"Just that?" she responded, the smile on her face turning a shade more sinister. "Well, you are actually right."

"Then please, enlighten me," he said, the invitation a whisper that dripped with both boredom and appetite.

The woman scoffed softly. "Hmph—straight to the point, are we? Very eager." Her tone held no impatience, only the slow amusement of someone who had waited longer than centuries.

"Maybe," Veythor answered, voice low, and though the word was small the atmosphere around it seemed to thicken with intent; there was an undercurrent of malice in his soft politeness.

"Then listen," the woman said, settling into the role of teller and judge alike. "Assume I am an entity who has lived over a hundred and fifty years. The place where we stand is not real in the way you think; it is my imaginative world, a terrain born only in my mind. I have asked a single question to humans for over ninety years... warriors, sages, philosophers, teachers and no one has offered a satisfying answer. Now, to my own amusement and curiosity, I wish to pose it to you."

Veythor chuckled softly, the sound low and amused as a man hearing a riddle he had all the leisure in the world to unravel. "And if I refuse to answer?" he asked, curiosity laced with dangerous challenge.

The woman's smile sharpened into a smirk of its own. "Then I will kill you on the spot."

"Wow, very scary," Veythor mocked with a tilt of the head, the dismissal a practiced, effortless thing on his tongue.

"And if I answer wrong?" he continued, as if bargaining for the terms of some private duel.

"Then you are dead as well," she replied, voice even, as if stating a simple law.

Veythor's smirk broadened at the stakes. "Is that so? Then ask your question. Let us see how far this will go."

The woman's expression shifted into something more solemn; she inhaled once, the breath like a bell tolling, and then began to speak in a voice at once patient and sharp.

"Humans are endlessly interesting and peculiar; in my century and a half I have met the brilliant and the gullible, the powerful and the weak, rulers and beggars, holy men and criminals. What I found most consistent among them all, what tied every kind together despite their differences, was a single thread: greed. Every human, deep in their heart, harbors some form of greed. Now tell me: why is that so? Why do humans possess greed?"

Veythor's face did not change; only his eyes flicked as they worked, processing, weighing, tasting possibilities in the air. Different humans hold different hungers, he thought: hunger for power, hunger for wealth, hunger for love. Yet beneath those varied cravings there is a root a simpler, more universal hunger.

"There are many kinds of greed," he said, voice smooth and deliberate, "but the greediest, the most common and most deep-seated among humans, is the greed to sleep peacefully without thought to close one's eyes and be free of worry. Those who never know the nights broken by fear, those who have never tasted the raw ache of insomnia born of dread, they hold a peace most will envy. The desire to return to a sleep that grants no nightmares, a sleep that denies the weight of the world that is the truest, quietest greed. Those who have suffered sleepless nights know the cruelty of being awake, of hours stretching like knives; they know how long a single anxious night can feel."

When his answer fell into the clearing, the woman's face registered first astonishment, then a dawning recognition so complete it left her momentarily mute. It was not the answer she had anticipated; it pried open some hidden lock in her long memory. At first she laughed, softly at first and then louder, the sound rising and shifting from a small chuckle to a peal of genuine amusement that quickly swelled into the rich, satisfied laughter of someone who had finally been given what she had sought.