|COMPLETE| Life after death, ironically enough, does not live up to expectations.
When the entirety of the afterlife is upended by unexpected chaos after the gods took a leisurely vacation, Death himself enlists Evyionne's help to find out what went...
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From: Webtoon Black Ice. Original image. -*-
What followed utter chaos was silence. Cold, dark, empty. The world around me, if it could even be considered that, was a cruel haze of light and dark. Dreams, reality, and memories became a jumbling mess. Every darkness in my soul had been pulled free; given faces and voices that took form and sat on my shoulders like the devil in my ear. They played my guilts, mistakes, and regrets like a song on repeat.
Once or twice, I felt as though I was tipping down the road to madness. None of my attempts to escape them was successful and, eventually, I grew weary. I sat still and allowed myself to be swallowed whole.
Soon, I learned that, in my acceptance, these strange shadows—formed from what I assumed were my sins—would drain themselves and vanish after a while. In their embrace, I would feel unbearably cold. It stung. Like my flesh crumbled off the bone and latched onto the icy shadows. Warmth would occasionally seep in to offer some comfort, a form of reprieve and a reminder somehow, before plunging me back into the torment.
In a way, it was much too cruel. I was given a taste of the good thing intermittently—like a drop of water in a sweltering desert. I would have preferred it if they had left my there without giving me a taste of salvation.
I was unsure how long I stayed that way, but when the last of the shadows disappeared, I finally got to open my eyes. The world became a vivid, crushing reality. The sky loomed and the walls narrowed, bearing down on me from all sides. This pressure was different, but it was a welcome change from the empty weightlessness that I had been feeling until then.
I took a deep breath, tasting the warm air. It was almost as though I had gone through a thousand years of sleep. My body didn't feel like my own—it was jerky, uncontrollable, and weak. I felt numb all over.
A lullaby drifted into my ears, reminiscent of those stars.
The events of that time had now become like a distant memory. However, I could recount every detail I experienced. I was sure I didn't hallucinate everything.
I stirred and found myself nestled in a cotton mattress and fluffy blankets. The stars and moon hang above me in thin strings. They circled the sky. A horse tailed the figure of a deer in their midst.
Confusion and wonder bloomed at the back of my mind, yet my brain was too muddled to comprehend what was going on clearly.
Tired, I slipped back to sleep.
And on it went—a cycle of dream and waking moments. Though I feared this was another one of those torturous reminders, the coldness I expected never came. Instead, I was constantly embraced in warmth and comfort, encapsulated in loving whispers and bathed in the sweetest of songs.
I heard distinct voices whenever I would get the chance to open my eyes. However, they talked in a strange language I could not understand. On more than one occasion, I saw a woman with amaranthine eyes peering down at me. There were love and sadness and worry—tugging on the woman's brows, wrinkling her forehead, bearing down on the corners of her lips. Despite this, the woman would reach in to touch my cheek and sing me a song untiringly. Day in. Day out. The woman was a presence that was always by my side.
