Life is a curious, fickle bitch who's whims and fancies are so often beyond the scope of the human mind. We are born when we never asked for such a thing in the first place, and we die just when we are starting to appreciate the situation as a whole. Death comes to us all, we are told that the moment we are old enough to comprehend the concept. Death was the end, the finale, the "Game Over" screen. At least, thats what they kept telling me.

As it was I was beginning to think I had been lied to. True, I did see a light at the end of a long tunnel but it was certainly not the soft glow of heaven. It was a cold, artificial light belonging to the face of an oncoming train. My ears were still ringing from its horn, and I could almost taste the sparks on my tongue...if I had a tongue. From what I could tell, I was all of a disembodied consciousness floating in an endless black abyss. This, of course, should have been alarming to me in general but then again I was already dead so I didn't feel like I had much to worry about.

Still, even without a body or a life to lose I found myself wondering about what would happen next. Religion had obviously offered various potential retirement homes for the soul, but I had yet to see anything but the black. No pearly gates for the pure of heart, nor did I see the flaming office door for the chronic masturbators. Nothing but the empty dark.

At least, there WAS nothing in the empty dark until the great golden eye.

Now calling it golden may have been unduly generous, for it was more a sickly yellow than anything. Labeling it an eye as well, may have been erroneous. There was no pupil, just a great spiral beginning in the center of the orb and spreading out to the edges. No lashes, just frame of blackness. In truth nothing remotely relateable to an eye, save for its general shape and its intense focus directed at myself.

But I was already dead, and just like own disembodied situation I was not as nearly as alarmed as I might have should have been at this development. Being deceased seemed to do a great deal to chill one out, all in all.

And then a voice echoed in the darkness, the eye spoke. Even remaining motionless in the void I knew the voice came from it, and not just because it was the only thing around to speak. Its words echoed in me, reverberated in my bones, and struck me with a chord of odd familiarity.

The voice was mesmerizing, its tones relaxing. Nothing like you would expect a giant spiraled eye to sound like, at least considering the current circumstances. It was kindly, wizened, and smooth. Something you would associate with a beloved grandfather, or a friendly librarian. It was the sort of voice that could read a child a bedtime story, and have them asleep before they finished the first page. The kind of voice you would trust implicitly.

The words it spoke lingered in my mind for a time, but I can no longer recall them now. With the words long since faded, all that remains were the feelings they had given me. The eye had spoken of hope, of dreams, of chances lost and something that might be regained. I remember it told me that I could make right a missed opportunity, that I could be the hero that I never had been able to be in my first go around.

And it wouldn't cost me a penny.

It obviously was some form of ethereal scam. With deals like this, there was always a catch. Anything too good to be true had to have some little devil in the details, waiting for you to turn your back before it shoved its pitchfork right up your unsuspecting ass. I should have known better, and some part of me DID know better. A little nagging voice in the back of my mind, warning me that everything wasn't as it seemed.

But I gave in. I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. How could I not? Yeah sure, it was peaceful here, floating in the endless nothing but I knew that an eternity of that would soon drive me insane. That, and how on earth could I pass up a chance to live again? I gave my assent.

I knew I had made a mistake when below the eye opened up a vast maw of humongous teeth, and the little voice cautioning me in the back of my mind let out what I was damn sure was a long suffering sigh. Of course, with the rows of massive serrated ivory columns lined up right in front of me I was more preoccupied with screaming. There was laughter. Deep, booming, and all the while unnerving when it harmonized with my terrified screeches. Then the spiral pupil of the eye began to spin, and I lost all sense of everything.

When my wits finally returned to me it was plain to see that everything had changed. Most of the sensations I was bombarded were well known to me, but overwhelming. My newly returned eyes were blinded by the assaulting light, and I opened my mouth involuntarily to cry out. That in turn turned out to be its own mistake as I began to choke and gag when the wretched taste of dust, mold, and rot filled my mouth. I was torn between grasping at my throat, and trying to clutching my ears for even my own pained sounds were intolerable.

In my confused mishmash of motions I somehow managed to trip myself up. I fell to the ground sideways, landing in a puddle of what felt like flaming demon piss and crashing hard on the stone beneath it. The impact on my shoulder felt like a truck had hit me, and my coughing doubled as another squeal escaped my lips. As I thrashed about like an agonized cuttlefish, I accidentally splashed some of that aforementioned demon piss onto my face. To my immense surprise, it was by some small measure soothing.

Soothing enough to cause pause my panicked frenzy long enough for me to get some sense of what was going on. A few more rough coughs slipped me by before I gained control of my lungs and evened my own breathing. During that, I remembered as well how to close my eyes and thus shut off a huge portion over the sensory overload that was tormenting me. My side was still throbbing from the fall, my ears were still ringing, and even with my coughing having subsided that awful taste still danced on my tongue.

Even with all that taken into account, with my eyes closed and coughing ceased I was already feeling a great better. Now that bar wasn't particularly high set admittedly, but it was still a hell of an improvement. My spirits lifted even higher when the burning sensation of the liquid faded completely, and I realized that it wasn't flaming demon piss as I first had concluded but water instead. The tiniest amount that had made its way into my mouth still attested to its similarities to demon piss, but that was in taste alone.

So I layed there for some time, eyes closed, resting in the puddle. After a while the ringing and throbbing both went the way of the dinosaurs and I felt brave enough to crack one eye open. I winced as the light violently penetrated my poor pupil in a way reminiscent of inmate on inmate violation, but I was able to keep the lids open long enough to adjust.

The first thing I was able to make out with my now useful sight was a gaping hole in the center of the stone ceiling above me. From its uneven edges, and the decrepit state of the stone in general it was obviously not an architectural skylight, but an accidental one born of age and disrepair. A few loose bricks elsewhere in the ceiling did little to reassure me that the entire construction wasn't about to fall down and kill me...again.

I opened my other eye and after a period of intense squinting a little more came into focus but the light was altogether still too sharp. Thankfully a cloud lazily drifted overhead, muting the light and dulling its intensity. This also had the added effect of softening the ambiance of the entire room, soothing my frazzled nerves further.

A strange thought struck me, and I had to prevent myself from chuckling lest the coughing return with a vengeance. Screaming, crying, senses assaulted and thrashing about, I figured this must be what its like to be born again. Literally. That was followed by the question of whether I had simply popped into existence right here, or if I had fallen through that sky vagina overhead.

That last thought DID force a chuckle out of me and I immediately regretted it. I raised one of my hands from the water, and I could feel the droplets splash against my chest as I moved it to my face. When it came into view I paused, something was off.

It took only a moment for my eyes to refocus from my possible stony birth canal onto my arm, and when they did my coughs died in my throat, smothered by a lump. That wasn't my hand, that COULDN'T be my hand. My hand was human. My hand was smooth. My hand certainly didn't look like hand of the lovechild of the Mummy and a strip of beef jerky.

The skin was reddish brown, and shriveled up like a dried corpse. I could see almost every joint in my fingers, the knuckle bones distinct and sharp. Suspended in disbelief, I reflexively moved my fingers hoping beyond reason that they were somehow in the water and that what I was looking at wasn't a part of my body. The noise I made when the emaciated digits followed my commands was less than dignified to say the least. To be honest I was half expecting them to crackle and fall off any second, but they moved easily and smoothly despite their looks.

On auto-pilot I lifted up the rest of my arm to look at it in the light, and there were apparently no breaks on this nope train. My eyes traced the protruding bones, and the strong lines of the ligaments from the tips of my fingers down my wrist and along my forearm. Everywhere my eyes strayed I saw only the same corpselike flesh that was now my own. The swallow of fear was reflexive.

Tentatively I lifted my left hand to join my right in my field of view, in order to feel directly and confirm that what I was seeing was real. My left hand was just as fucked up as my right, and I was afraid to find out what the sensations of my own skin would be. Despite my earlier smoothness of motion, I could see my fingers shaking as jerky approached jerky.

It felt like touching an old boot. Tough, leathery, it lacked the warm, supple give of flesh as I knew it. Despite its rougher appearance, it felt smoother than I initially gave it credit for. Though, as I continued to...touch myself I noticed that while pain had been sharp and bright before most other tactile sensations felt muted. Dulled. It wasn't far fetched to think that my nerve endings were just as atrophied as everything else seemed to be.

As I rubbed my hands over each other a new detail caught my attention. On the back of my left hand was what looked a to be a blemish. I brought it closer to my face and it revealed itself to not be a blemish but in fact a hole. It was maybe an inch across, and it looked to go deep. Deep enough that I was sure it should have gone all the way through but all I could see when I looked into it was blackness. I flipped over my hand to view the palm, in order to be sure.

Yup. Nothing. My palm was completely fine, aside from the obvious horrific disfiguration of course. Flipping it back around I stared deep into that mark, and it seemed to be endless. The longer I stared the stranger I began to feel, and I felt like I could get lost in the endless of it, and I might have had I not seen the most curious detail of all.

That being that I was on fire. Or rather, the hole was edged by a tiny ring of flame, only barely burning and almost missable when not being intently examined. Something clicked in my head, an inkling of an idea I didn't quite yet understand fully. Not that it mattered much at the moment, as I was torn between screaming further at everything I had seen (Coughing be damned) or trying to see how far I could get my finger into my hole.

...Ahem

What I mean to say is that I was thinking about getting knuckle deep into my dark ring.

Wait, fuck, thats worse.

I decided against sodomizing my own hand and let both of them rest on my chest. I nearly hissed when I felt the same leathery skin on my sternum. It wasn't terribly surprising, but I just hadn't thought it through. Of course the rest of my body would be just as jerky like as my arms, it was logical to assume all of me had gone this route.

It took alot of effort to keep myself from touching my own face because with everything I was processing I didn't think I could handle feeling for myself what I already knew. I wasn't the vainest person in the world, but there is something special about a human face that ties directly to who you are. To find out what my face was like, to understand just what may have been lost could prove to be too much for me. Hell, I hadn't even bothered to check...

With a quickness only mirrored by my earlier crazed motions I sat up and looked down at myself. Particularly, my crotch. I barely registered that for the most part I was near naked, save for a loincloth around my waist; hiding my junk from the wraths of the world. I nearly tore the clothing's fabric in a frenzied grasping motion, the greatest fear a man can have fueling this manic burst of movement. Finally my undead eyes were able to see the cause of my concern, and I felt the need to cry.

I wont go into detail about what I saw, but lets just say that my fears were validated and if I was feeling regret about the deal I had made I was downright angry about it now. There are just some things you don't mess with man, some things are just too sacred.

Although even through my physical pride was...wounded I still had some left over in my soul. Now that I was sitting up, I chose to switch my focus from my current physiological issues to the pressing environmental ones at hand. Certainly my ability to do so was grounded in my strong emotional fortitude, and not that I was about to cry if I kept my attention on my current disfigurations.

I was in a room, made of various cuts of the same kind of stone. Dark gray, damp from moisture and occasionally tinted with green where moss and mold had set in. The room itself wasn't particularly large, from where I was sitting it might have been twelve feet by twelve feet if perfectly square. In one corner there was a pile of straw, looking to be as damp as the puddle I was still sitting in. In various other spots of the room I could see a couple of small to medium sized pots. Only about one or two of which seemed to be mostly intact, the rest having cracked or shattered.

For the most part I was the only "living" thing I could see, except for a few dark shadows that skirted the edges of the room I assumed to be rats. At least, I hoped they were rats. No real reason to worry otherwise but I had just experienced a bunch of weird shit so far and at this point I wasn't going to take anything for granted. I figured that doing that would do a good bit to prepare me for whatever might come my way. Of course, that still didn't make it easier to understand why I was lacking pants and only had a loincloth to my name.

As much as id like to joke about it, it really sitting up I was able to see the majority of my body and really drove home just how twisted my form had become. I couldn't stand to look at it any longer, and made up my mind to get up and hopefully to find some pants. Shoes as well, would certainly be appreciated. Clothes in generally really were needed, since I had no idea where or when I was and even if public nudity was accepted I doubted horrific aberrations were commonplace enough to warrant letting my raisin nipples out.

So I leaned myself further forward and placed a palm against the ground and shifted my weight onto it before moving my feet underneath me and pushing. Thus, for the very first time I stood up in this new world unknown to me, of my own will and power. My legs wobbled a bit beneath me, but held firm. I shivered a bit as the disgusting water dripped off of my backside, the sensation being unique as the drops moved through the many canals of my crinkled skin.I would have gotten goosebumps, but that same skin rendered it impossible.

Now it was time to get out of this filthy room, and to see what this second chance really had to offer me. Whatever came next, whatever new surprises were in store, I was ready for them! Or at least thats what I told myself, but hey! In the right situations a little bravado goes a long way, and as it was I could use any comfort I could get.

So I glanced on last time at the skylight before turning around to see the wall that had been behind me the entire time, and the door I was sure would be there.

I froze, confused and more than a little perturbed. The door was there to the far right, though calling it a gate seemed more appropriate than door. But that obviously wasn't what had me stopped, no. It was the large letters, hand painted in a dark red smear I was sure had been blood, that stretched from one side of the wall to the other. They were not just random letters mind you, with their creepy powers combined they formed five words and...a doll? Seemed to be stuck on the wall at the end of the sentence as some form of demented punctuation mark.

I took a step towards the macabre mural and reached for the doll, which was affixed by a nail through its strange dress. It was faceless, with spindly arms and legs and an all around dingy look to it. After pulling it from the wall, I looked at it close. Something about it tickled the back of my brain. It was familiar to me, I had seen it before. Somewhere. But where?

I looked back to the wall but then my eyes snapped back to the doll. In the second I had looked away I swore I saw it twitch in a way inanimate scraps of fabric and stuffing shouldn't do. Ever. For ANY reason. Yet as I stared it down, it gave no indications at all of being anything but a strange little doll. I shook my head, and cautiously moved my eyes away from the doll and back to the wall. Ready the entire time for it to either burst into flames or to try and leap out of my hands and tear out my throat.

It wasn't paranoia, it was legitimate concern dammit.

But doll aside, the words were still a pretty big concern. Unlike the doll there was no familiarity in them, nothing I recognized save for the medium they were painted in and the occasional hand print belaying their method of transcription. I felt the need to read them aloud, and so my first coherent words in this new world were thus.

"Long may the sun shine?"

So, my dear readers, what do you think? Is it what you were expecting, or perhaps hoping?

Or shall I expect you outside of my window with torches and pitchforks in the middle of the night?

I mean I know most of you were ready to lynch me after being so long gone, and that is fair.

Maybe I have become a Lord of Cinder, art thou unkindled?

My story is long and convoluted, and now is not the time, nor the place for it.

Before I get back to writing Chapter 2: Estus Flask I have two people i'd like to thank...ironically.

Terran34, if you are reading this now id like to thank you personally.

Your review was well thought out, and all in all contained some fantastic advice.

A great deal of which was taken to heart, and I feel that you will see that reflected in this chapter.

As for the second "Thank you", it is not for any one soul. It is for all of you.

While it has certainly been a while since you have seen me, I never forgot any of you.

Thank you all for reading, for waiting, and for staying with me for so long.

Lets have a hell of a good time with this eh?

PRAISE THE SUN