Respawn

Julia approached the gravestone, an opened envelope in one hand. Her mother had given it to her a few days ago, saying that she was old enough to learn about the family's strange history, and that she should get out to see it soon. It hadn't really made much sense to her until she had looked in the envelope that she had been gifted. At first she had been confused - she had been to the gravestone of her great great great great great great great grandfather before, and the inscription was one that had been placed as a joke, seeing as before he had gone off to war, he had always loved gaming.

"Here lies Robert Dennings: Hero. Father. Gamer. Respawning in 1..."

It had always read that way for as long as she could remember, which was what made the contents of the envelope so bizarre. In it were pictures taken over the last few hundred years, all of the very gravestone in which her distant relative was buried. And in each picture it said the same - except for the number, which had progressively gotten lower with time. There was no evidence of the tombstone being tampered with. No cracks around the number, no unevenness with how i was carved, no layers having been taken away in order to put in new numbers. They had simply changed, unseen, unaccountably.

She wasn't sure what it meant, or why her mother had encouraged to visit his grave with this newfound knowledge, but even had her mother not said so, she could feel her curiosity edging her onwards. She wanted to know what it meant. And she had the strangest feeling that the sooner she went to find out, the better. It had still taken her a few days, just because his grave was an hour's drive away, and she had a fairly demanding job, but she was there as soon as was possible for her.

Kneeling down before the gravestone, brushing the dirt and dust off of its face with her free hand. It was one of the few graveyards left, and one of the few gravestones left in it. Only because he had been a war hero. Only because they paid for him to stay. The stone was old and the engravings were faded after centuries of slow wear, but she could still so clearly read that "1."

Until, before her very eyes, it changed. It didn't even change to a zero. The last two words simply vanished without a sound, and the grave clearly read "Respawning..."

Then she felt the earth shifting beneath her feet. She jumped back and watched as the gravestone broke clean in two without warning, falling aside as the ground rose, the floor of grass breaking apart and throwing dirt to the wayside.

This was it. Centuries of confusion and anticipation. She thought it had been a joke.

But he was respawning.