The day she died was a normal one, for her. It was an expected day, one that had years of buildup for it. She’d been slowly dying for sixteen years, born cursed and living through nothing short of miracles and a stubborn will. But no matter how strong a will, sixteen years would wear anyone down, would erode the staunchest of wills and souls.

She had lived a cursed life from before she was born, a congenital heart defect. At the tender age of three days she underwent her first surgery where they repaired the hole. All seemed well and good, she lived the first few years of her life happily like a normal child. Until she was rushed to the ER after she suddenly passed out at the park and had almost no pulse. The doctors found out that the initial heart surgery hadn’t been done properly and the hole had reopened, worse than before. There had also apparently been an issue with her valves that hadn’t been seen when she was a newborn, but had grown with age.

At five she was put on the transplant list while she was stuck for a while in a hospital bed hooked up to more machines than her young mind could count. Several doing the work her damaged heart no longer could until a temporary solution was found. She barely remembered that time, it was all a blur of white coats and scrubs, being carried to and from the hospital. She was lucky, she got a transplant incredibly quickly; she only had a year to wait as opposed to the average of three to five years.

She suffered the normal symptoms of a new organ, her body adjusting to the foreign heart. After three months with no severe reactions she was released, to live her life again. She was six, almost seven, by then and expected to rejoin society and school for the first time. It was hard, she was weak in comparison to her peers and behind on the subjects they’d been learning. She couldn’t play at recess or gym, always made to sit to the side under the watchful eye of an adult while her peers got to frolic and enjoy being kids.

She had three years this time, where she slowly gained strength and began to live once more as a child. Making friends, going to sleepovers and parties, going on vacations to theme parks. Her parents spoiled her, their only child and one they’d almost lost twice now.

However when she was looking forward to her eleventh birthday, a big party had been planned at a local theme park where Valerie was determined to get herself sick on cake and rollercoasters. The pain that had been slowly plaguing her was finally too much to hide. The pain in her leg made her collapse in tears and her parents had her bundled up in the car and on the way to the hospital once more.

They found out she had bone cancer. It apparently had a high survival rate, provided the cancer didn’t metastasize. Which, with her luck, it had. It had already started to spread to her lungs, the shortness of breath she’d pushed aside as a result of her transplant had been the cancer growing, as had the pain in her legs.

Surgery was prepped and planned for them to try to remove the largest tumors. She was out of it for a while afterwards, though when she woke there were gifts from her friends and classmates around her bed. The gifts were dulled with the knowledge that she would need to undergo chemotherapy to try to manage the other tumors either too small or too precarious to remove. At eleven she had more scars on her body than any of her peers, and by the time she was close to twelve she had far less hair than them as well.

Not that she was too sure, as she’d been pulled from public schools with the start of her chemotherapy because of the hit it gave to her immune system. Combined with her transplanted heart her body was simply far too delicate to be around others her age, in a place where germs grew and gathered en mass.

Everytime they thought they’d cleared the cancer and the tumors, she’d go home with some level of hope in her heart. Until she went for a checkup only to find out the cancer had regrown once more. It was like a morbid game of whack a mole. And slowly her body wasted away, until at fifteen she was in the hospital full time. She barely saw her parents by then, they were pulling so many overtime hours they hardly had time to sleep just to cover the cost of her medical bills. She knew her college fund had been drained to pay for the surgeries and chemotherapy by the time she was thirteen.

Yet they still managed to give her presents, small things to brighten up her days in the dreary hospital room. Gaming systems and new games for her to lose herself in. Books that would take her far from the world and failing body she inhabited. She had no friends to speak of, the ones from her younger days long gone. She was friendly with several other children in the ward she was in, other children with terminal illnesses and their futures stolen by failing bodies that refused to work as they should. Yet it was depressing, to see them fading away much as she was. Even more saddening was when they disappeared from their beds, gone forever. Their life cut short far too soon.

So she threw herself into games, where she could be strong and powerful. Where the things that would hurt her were nothing more than ‘villains’ she could defeat. All the evil in the world condensed into singular beings that, once defeated, returned the world to a perfect utopia. Where no teenage girl had to watch her body become nothing more than skin and bones because her radiation made her puke up whatever small bits of food she could get down her throat.

So it was a few days after her sixteenth birthday, when she had just finished replaying her favorite game, Realm Of Hope, for the eighth time that she knew her time had finally come.

She had fought death so many times before, shoved his scythe from her neck with bared teeth. Cursed him until she was blue in the face with her chest heaving. Yet this time when the familiar specter haunted her room she couldn’t find the energy to put up a fight. She’d lived sixteen years cursed with a feeble body that was breaking down slowly.

She knew she would never see her twentieth birthday, had heard doctors telling her parents that very thing when they thought she was asleep. She’d never get to travel the world, see other countries. She’d never get to go to prom, or learn to drive. She’d never go to college, or join a sorority. What was she fighting for? A miserable life filled with white hospital rooms and serenaded by the discordant beeping of machines?

So she smiled at Death like an old friend and when he reached out his hand this time she grasped it. As her world faded to black she heard the shrill screaming of medical machines calling for aid. Heard the rushing of doctors and nurses as they tried to reignite the smothered fire of life in her chest. Yet this time they couldn’t bring her back from the calm void that called to her.

Where am I? Was death always so...soothing? This is amazing, I don't feel pain, or nausea, I feel at peace. She mused in her mind as she floated in black nothingness. She reveled in how her body, or was it a soul now, didn’t ache. How her chest didn’t cry out at every breath, how her bones didn’t feel like cracked glass.

She didn’t know how long she floated in the peaceful void, she thought time passed but her thoughts moved so slowly she couldn’t tell. She had thought death would be boring, with nothing to do for eternity, yet she didn’t feel bored. She felt good. For the first time in her memory she felt good.

However her peaceful existence in the void was interrupted suddenly and she found herself tumbling down onto white marble floors, her hands and knees making contact. No pain erupted from the sudden fall, just the knowledge that she had hit hard ground. It took several minutes for her thoughts to speed up from the glacial slowness they’d been at when she was in the void.

When her mind finally caught up she whipped her head up and looked around, taking in the scenery. She was in some kind of white marble...temple? She had never seen one in real life but she’d seen pictures of ruins of temples, and they looked similar. There were columns, decorated with images of feminine and masculine shapes, some were holding things like water or fire. Others wielded weapons, spears and swords and bows. Some even held staffs or books, looking like mages from a fantasy game. She turned her head up, trying to see where the columns ended only to see the ceiling obscured by white clouds.

Looking back down she slowly stood, turning in circles as she took in the temple. It was massive, so large she couldn’t see the walls, unless the walls were white clouds that further obscured her view. It looked almost like the entire temple had been formed from clouds, and since she was dead she was inclined to believe it was a possibility.

“Am I in heaven? Is that a place?” She mused aloud, for no purpose other than to hear her own voice. There was no one around her to hear, and she felt like it’d been a millennium since she’d heard her own voice. It rang through the space, clear and bright. Not ragged and breathy as it had been for the last months of her life.

“Depends on what you mean by Heaven, I suppose,” A voice responded and the girl jumped, spinning in place to confront the new presence.

There had been no one there a moment ago, but now a being stood there. Looking at them hurt a bit, and their form was distorted like how the air above hot sand would shimmer. She could make out an adrogynous form, long golden hair falling to the ground behind the being. Their body, what she could see of it, was a dark tan the same color she knew girls her age had strived for. A loose white robe covered the being though towards their knees the white seemed to fade to clouds, much like the temple she was in. She couldn’t discern the being’s face, the longer the girl looked the more her head ached. All she could distinctly see were two golden eyes, fathomless and eternal.

“Who are you?” The girl asked as she took a step back from the being. They radiated pure power, in a way she couldn’t find a comparison to. If she had to be asked to describe a God she’d have pointed at the being before her, there was no other explanation.

“You can call me Vita, though I’ve gone by many names through many different worlds and eons.” The being, Vita, said. Their voice didn’t have a sound, per se, it both thundered around the girl and sang in her blood. She wasn’t sure if Vita actually spoke or if it was just a universal truth being made apparent to her.

“Come Valeri,” Vita spoke and the girl didn’t understand the word they said, yet it resonated with her in a way nothing had before. The word somehow encapsulated the very essence of her being, everything she had been, was and would ever be.

“I-I don’t understand,” She shook her head and Vita smiled, or she felt that they smiled since she couldn’t see their face, and held out a hand.

“I know, that's okay. You lived a hard life for one so young. Though it’s not the first difficult life you’ve lived, and it won’t be the last,” Vita’s words were calming, and she felt her confusion and panic fading. Without conscious thought she reached out and grabbed Vita’s hand and the world they were in shifted, all of it turning to clouds and reforming so fast the girl felt her mind spin unable to fully keep up with it.

Wait, did they just confirm reincarnation? Her mind finally registered the earlier words, and she wondered why she didn’t remember her previous lives, why only the most recent?

“You have many questions, but I do not have much time to explain it all to you. We Gods aren’t allowed to dally too long with the souls of mortals,” Vita’s words seemed to hold some minor regret and the girl opened her mouth, wanting to ask the questions burning in her mind anyways yet no words came out.

“Sit,” Vita commanded and she felt her body, or was it still a soul, move on its own as she collapsed into a chair made of clouds. Vita herself took a seat across from her, a pool appearing between them. The water was pitch black, it reminded her of the void she’d so recently left.

“Through your lives you’ve gathered enough karma that I can intervene somewhat in the next life you take. You’ve suffered so much, for so long, that it’s enough for the System to allow this. However, do not be mistaken, this is not an unselfish thing I’m doing. There is a world that needs intervention, the fate it has written for itself will prove to be catastrophic for it. However this fate can be changed, with a little help,” Vita nodded at her. The girl was stuck in open mouthed shock, questions and thoughts running through her mind at a breakneck pace.

“How are my parents?” She asked the most important question that burned in her mind. She didn’t know how long it had been since she had died, but she wanted to know if her parents had recovered.

“Hm,” Vita mused, and she sensed she had managed to actually surprise the Deity before her.

“They lived full lives after your passing, each reaching well into their nineties. They grieved your passing for years, though the notebooks you’d left to them soothed the ache, and prevented them from splitting apart. They took your advice, and adopted a daughter who was eleven. The girl went on to develop an alternate treatment for cancer that was far less harsh on patients' bodies, inspired by tales of you and your own notebooks. She called the treatment ‘Valkyrie’s Promise’, and even opened a non-profit organisation to fund the foster system. She got married, and had a daughter she named after you. While you were not the one who came up with the cure, if not for your notebooks she would’ve never gone on to do her great deeds. So some of your karmic value is also a result of this,” Vita explained the facts dispassionatly, and while she was grateful for the information it still felt far too little.

Still she could feel tears dripping down her face. Her mother had always called her ‘My Little Valkyrie’. Her parents had never thought they’d have a child and the pregnancy had been a hard one. They’d named her after the Valkyries, in the hope she would inherit a warrior's spirit. In a way she had, her deep stubbornness was one of the only reasons she’d lived for so long. Though the name she’d been given slipped through her mind like water slid through fingers. For some reason she felt no panic over that fact, her mind easily skipping over that typically disturbing fact. Her sadness and grief over her parents was left untouched and filled her with it’s bittersweetness.

Vita let her process the emotions, while she was sad that she’d missed her parents' lives, and never gotten to meet her sister, she was glad they’d had good lives. That her notebooks she’d labored over had done as she’d wanted. She knew that her parents would be devastated when she died, she’d seen how they were pulling apart. She’d wanted to let them at least keep that love they’d had even after she was gone. Rubbing at her eyes the girl pushed the tumultuous emotions down and turned to Vita, her next question primed and ready.

“Why?” She asked, so simple yet the question bore the burden of a hundred others. Vita seemed to understand exactly what she meant though.

“While we Gods can intervene somewhat in worlds we cannot disrupt the fate of it ourselves too much, nor can we influence free will in any meaningful way. However if this world is allowed to continue on its current path its darkness will not only consume it, but hundreds of others. That is a big enough threat that we are allowed to take a more active role. Along with the karma you’ve accumulated it has combined to this,” Vita waved around them,

“So the solution for this is that I ask you to take your next life in this world. You will be given boons, for this life will not be easy either. This world is familiar to you though you’ve never been there. All memories relating to it will be preserved in perfect clarity, and you can never lose them. Some of your memories from your past life will be gone, for some of the knowledge would be detrimental to this one. You will also be given some manner of assistance in the new world, to make your task easier. Far more than other mortals are privy to,” Vita continued to explain and the girl’s mind frantically tried to keep up. Most of what the Deity was saying made little sense to her, too little context was being provided.

Yet what she could gather was Vita was asking her to go to a world and save it, like a Hero from a book. The mere thought made her want to agree, years spent dreaming of exactly this kind of scenario flashed through her mind. So long she had wanted to be a Hero, to be strong and capable. To defeat anything that hurt her with a blade or a spell. And it sounded like she would have her own types of cheats, whatever knowledge it was that Vita was speaking of must be useful if it was mentioned. Though the boons she spoke of were rather vague, it could be anything from a better ability to cook cookies to the ability to turn herself into a dragon.

“What are these boons?” She asked, she needed more information to make a choice here.

“Those I cannot tell you until you accept, as while I can give an intent the System will still take over and modify them,” Vita explained and the girl huffed in annoyance, what was this System that seemed to be tying the hands of a literal God?

“What is the System?” She asked instead and she could feel Vita’s amusement at the question.

“It is what governs all worlds and universes. You could consider it the ultimate God, above all my brethren and I,” Vita responded, though the explanation was enough of a riddle that the girl felt she’d learned no more than she'd known a minute before.

“You’re not making this choice easy,” she grumbled, freezing when she realized she’d just sassed a God. Yet Vita seemed to be amused by it, and a feeling like laughter surrounded them.

“Yes, I suppose I am not. Yet this is all the information I can give you, and our time is running short. Accept this offer, or simply return to the void to be reincarnated at a later time in a different world, all memories of your life and this interaction gone, and leave your fate to utter chance,” Vita held out two hands. One held a glowing sphere of white light and she knew intrinsically that if she touched that sphere she’d be accepting Vita’s first offer. The other hand held a black sphere and Valerie knew it would return her to the void, but strip her of her memories.

She stared at the options, then at Vita. Yet the Godly being didn’t say anything else, and she could no longer detect any emotions from them. She looked back at the options and reached out a tentative hand hovering in the middle of them. She closed her eyes and reached out, hand grasping an orb that felt somehow more real than the chair she sat on.

“Thank you Valerie. For your choice and aid, You will be bestowed boons. Please, change the fate of the world,” Vita spoke and the girl’s eyes shot open, catching on the white orb in her hand.

It began to melt, the liquid dripping into the black void under her hand. As the drops hit the surface the color changed to a bright white and she felt her soul being sucked into it. Her eyes looked up and right before her vision was overcome with white she caught a glimpse of a wide grin.