He wasn’t alone. Figures moved in the distance, half-remembered faces that felt like home. A woman approached—his grandmother, who had passed when he was seven. She didn't look old or frail; she looked like a memory of summer.

Elias didn’t feel the impact. One moment, there was the screech of tires and the blinding glare of high beams; the next, there was only a profound, heavy silence. The frantic world of steel and asphalt had vanished, replaced by a soft, amber-tinted fog that felt like a warm blanket.

"You are at the threshold," she replied, gesturing toward a vast, golden river that seemed to flow upward into a sky filled with colors he had no names for. "Life there is just the first draft. Here, we are the architects. Every dream you ever had, every kind word you spoke—they are the stones we use to build this place".

"It’s not quite what you expected, is it?" she asked. Her voice wasn’t a sound but a thought that blossomed in his mind.