Afterlight

A story for those who've lost a loved one.

They called it the Afterlight, not heaven, not a place of judgment or gates or thrones, but something softer. Something quieter. A world resting just above the clouds, hidden in the glow where sunlight lingers longest. From the ground, the sky looked empty. Just drifting white and endless blue. But it wasn't.
Up there, entire cities breathed in silence, woven from mist and memory. Streets curved like ribbons of light. Homes were shaped by the hearts of those who lived in them. Some looked like childhood houses. Others like places that never existed except in dreams. And the people, those who had left the world below were not gone. They were simply... elsewhere.
High above the world, where the sky held more than weather, the Afterlight stretched on, gentle, endless, and full. A place not of endings, but of presence. Where love didn't stop. Where it changed shape. And where, in ways small and quiet and constant, no one was ever truly gone.