SOWER: My Cultivation Creates Gods

15 | Where I Have Always Been

Wheat rustled around Rome, golden stalks swaying in a gentle breeze that carried the scent of soil and sunshine. He pushed himself up to sitting, his head foggy like he'd slept for a thousand years.

"What the actual hell?" 

The sky stretched above him in impossible shades of purple and blue, colors that had no business being natural. Clouds drifted lazily, white puffs against a backdrop that looked like someone had spilled watercolors across the horizon.

Rome patted himself down, feeling his chest, his legs, his—

"My arm." He stared at his left hand, turning it palm up, then down. Flexing the fingers. "I still have my arm."

The hand looked real. Felt real. He pinched the skin and winced at the sharp pain.

*Okay, so either I'm dead, or I'm hallucinating. Great options.*

He stood, wheat parting around him as he turned in a slow circle. Nothing but golden fields in every direction except—

A hill rose in the distance, and atop it sat a small farmhouse with a peaked roof and wraparound porch. Weathered wood siding, painted white a lifetime ago. Window shutters hanging slightly crooked.

Rome's breath caught.

"Grandpa's house?"

The old man had died when Rome was fourteen. The house had been sold years ago to pay for medical bills. Yet there it stood, exactly as Rome remembered it from childhood summers.

*This is messed up.*

His feet carried him forward through the wheat. The stalks brushed against his hands as he walked, real enough that he could feel their texture. The sun warmed his skin. Birds called from somewhere unseen.

*If this is the afterlife, it's weirdly specific.*

The hill wasn't steep, but Rome found himself breathing hard by the time he reached the top. The porch steps creaked under his weight, exactly the way they used to when he'd race up them as a kid.

"Hello?" His voice sounded small against the vastness of the wheat fields below. "Anybody home?"

No answer.

Rome approached the door—faded red with a tarnished brass knocker shaped like a lion's head. He reached for the handle and tried to turn it.

Locked.

"Figures." He sighed, then raised his fist to the door. "Hey! Anyone in there?"

He knocked three times.

The sound echoed strangely, each knock louder than it should have been. The third impact sent a vibration up his arm that didn't feel right.

The door remained closed, but Rome sensed something change. The air thickened. Pressure built like a storm front rolling in.

"What the—"

An invisible force slammed into his chest, throwing him backward off the porch. He flew through the air, arms windmilling, and landed hard on his back in the wheat.

Rome gasped.

His eyes snapped open.

White ceiling. Fluorescent lights. The steady beep of machines.

*A hospital room?*

Rome groaned, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. His head pounded like someone had taken a hammer to his skull.

"Fucking dream," he muttered. "Weird as sh—"

Wait.

Rome froze mid-sentence. Slowly, very slowly, he moved his hands away from his face. Both hands.

His left arm was there. Whole. Intact. No bloody stump, no missing limb, just... his arm.

"No way." He flexed his fingers. Rotated his wrist. Bent his elbow. "No fucking way."

It couldn't be real. He'd lost the arm. He remembered the soldier crushing it, remembered the pain, remembered watching Kiona escape while he bled out on the arena floor.

He remembered dying.

"Am I dead? Is this heaven?" Rome laughed, a slightly manic sound. "No way heaven has hospital rooms. This boring? With this lighting? God's got better taste than that."

『You are not dead, Rome.』

The voice came from nowhere and everywhere, cool and feminine. It was the same voice he'd heard in the arena before everything went black.

Rome sat up so fast that his vision swam. "Who said that? Where are you?"

『I am where I have always been. With you.』