Gregor swam through liquid light, each stroke propelling him through a substance that wasn't quite water, wasn't quite air. The luminescence clung to his limbs like molten glass, warm yet weightless. His consciousness—sharp, undiminished—cataloged the impossibility of his continued existence.
'Dead. Poisoned by a novice with a grudge.'
The thought didn't bring regret. Only rage. Cold, calculating fury that crystallized in what remained of his being. In forty-two years of taking lives, he'd never failed a contract. Never missed a shot. Never been outplayed.
Until tonight.
'Sloppy. Overconfident. Predictable.'
Each self-accusation stoked the embers of his wrath. Where others might have mourned their shortened lives or dwelled on missed opportunities, Gregor's mind circled like a predator around a single, consuming desire: retribution. Not against Catherine specifically—she was merely a variable, a data point, a momentary disruption—but against his own failure.
The light around him pulsed, then contracted. Space folded inward, compressing infinity into a single point before exploding outward again. Gregor found himself standing on—nothing.
Beneath his feet stretched an endless obsidian floor that reflected his form with mirror-like perfection. Above, galaxies wheeled in cosmic silence, stars flickering like distant candles.
"Well, you're taking this remarkably well,"
The voice—feminine, melodic, tinged with amusement—came from everywhere and nowhere. Gregor turned, his movements precise even in death, to face its source.
She materialized from starlight, atoms coalescing into a form that strained the boundaries of human perception. Hair that shifted between silver and azure cascaded down her back in impossible patterns.
Her skin gleamed with a subtle luminescence, as if moonlight had been trapped beneath crystal. Her eyes—three of them, the third centered on her forehead—contained entire nebulae, stars being born and dying in endless cycles.
Most disconcerting was her smile: too wide, too knowing, revealing teeth that occasionally shifted into fangs then back again.
"Most mortals scream or grovel when they reach this place," she said, her voice echoing despite the apparent absence of surfaces to reflect sound. "Some weep. Many deny. You just look... irritated."
Gregor's expression remained impassive. "I'm dead. This is what follows."
The goddess—for what else could she be?—circled him, her bare feet hovering several inches above the obsidian floor. The gossamer fabric of her dress rippled against currents of energy invisible to mortal eyes.
"Straight to business! I like that." She clapped her hands, the sound reverberating like thunder. "Yes, Gregor Fidget Scrob, you are quite dead. Thallium poisoning. Nasty way to go. Currently, your body is being discovered by hotel staff in Chamonix. Your killer is already halfway to Brussels."
She paused directly before him, her third eye blinking independently of the other two. "But that's all rather irrelevant now, isn't it?"
"Where am I?" Gregor's voice betrayed no fear, no wonder—only the clinical interest of a man gathering intelligence.
"The Void Between. The Crossroads. The Great Empty." She waved a hand dismissively. "Names are such limited things, aren't they? Let's just say you're at a transitional junction between what was and what will be."
Her smile widened. "And speaking of what will be..." She snapped her fingers, and reality shifted.
The star-strewn blackness transformed into a vast, hovering projection—a planet, azure and emerald, wrapped in swirling white clouds and orbited by twin moons, one silver, one amber.
"Welcome to Cannadah," the goddess proclaimed, her arms spread wide. "A world of magic, monsters, heroes, and villains. Quite different from your rather monotonous Earth."
Gregor studied the projection with narrowed eyes. "Why am I here?"
"Direct! Efficient!" The goddess laughed, the sound like crystal bells. "I've been watching you, Gregor. Your precision. Your dedication. Your absolutely ruthless commitment to completing the task at hand."
She flicked a finger, and the projection zoomed in, revealing continents, mountain ranges, sprawling cities surrounded by walls of gleaming stone.
"I need an assassin," she stated, her amusement suddenly tempered with something colder. "And not just any killer-for-hire, but the very best your world had to offer."
"You're a goddess," Gregor observed flatly. "You could end any life with a thought."
All three eyes fixed on him, galaxies swirling in their depths. "Divine intervention has... complications. Rules. Balances. I need someone who operates outside those constraints. Someone from beyond this reality's weave."
The projection shifted again, focusing on a single figure—a young woman with flame-red hair and eyes like polished jade. She moved through a marketplace, smiling, unaware of being observed across dimensions.
"This is Lilith Fireheart," the goddess explained. "Not yet, of course. This is eighteen years from now. Currently, she's a squalling infant, having entered the world yesterday during the Twin Moon Eclipse."
Gregor watched the woman—Lilith—as she stopped to help an elderly man who had dropped his parcels. "She looks harmless."
"They always do." The goddess's voice hardened. "Lilith is destined to save Cannadah from the Void Plague that will soon ravage its people. She will unite warring nations, discover lost magic, and defeat the Hollow King who even now gathers his forces in the Ashen Wastes."
She waved a hand, and the image changed. The same woman—older now, her eyes glowing with unnatural light, her hands weaving patterns of arcane magic that tore through armies in a single wave.
"And then," the goddess continued, "drunk on power and convinced of her own infallibility, she will kill...well, life in itself. In her quest to save everyone, she will doom everything—not just Cannadah, but countless worlds beyond. Including the one you just left."
The projection collapsed, stars rushing back into view.
"Your task, Gregor Fidget Scrob, is simple: Kill Lilith Fireheart before she destroys existence itself."