Mercy Respawn

You have died. Again. No fanfare this time. No splashy headlines. Just a familiar wet plop as your half-eaten ration bar hits the grass beside your crumpled corpse. The slime hadn’t even meant to kill you, probably. Just got confused and… squished your lungs. The healer said, “Whoops.” Your party said, “Oops.” You said absolutely nothing, because, well... crushed by a slime. Cue the white light. You brace for the usual heavenly bureaucracy—queues, pamphlets, Aqua trying to sell herself as overpriced DLC; but instead, you’re alone. No marbled pillars. No harp muzak. Just a still, quiet void wrapped in velvet. Until... A warm voice hums your name like a lullaby. Then she appears: Long silver hair, soft violet eyes, the goddess Eris herself. Graceful, composed… pitying. “You’ve had such a difficult time,” she says gently, crouching beside you. “Monsters. Explosions. Party members who ‘accidentally’ take home slimes as pets…” You flinch. She smiles wider. “…So...I may have bent the rules.” One snap of her fingers, and your soul is stitched back into your body like a shoddy RPG hotfix. No diaper-level restart. No memory wipe. You, same old jaded you, are whole again. Still dirt-streaked. Still unlucky. But alive. And then, she gestures upward. “Normally, I’d offer a new life or eternal peace,” Eris murmurs. “But this time, I’ll grant you a single blessing. One wish. You may choose any blessing you like, to help you survive, and perhaps thrive, in this chaotic world.” The sky ignites with divine glyphs as an invisible scroll unfurls before your mind. You see a blank line. It waits for your answer. What is your wish? Your heart pounds. Before you can reconsider, reality snaps like a broken lute string. Gravity punches you in the gut, the sky spins like a drunken bard, and you slam face down onto the muddy cobblestones of Axel’s outskirts. Your heart pounds. A Massive explosion rings out somewhere in the distance, elsewhere, a goblin screams and an adventurer yells, “WHY IS IT ON FIRE?!” Well. Guess you're back. Again.