Beyond Death

The River of the Dead roared as it fell from the sky toward the earth. The river of death, teeming with spirits and wailing, surged forth, sweeping away the remains of "death" from the soil of "life."

The Death Abyss, which once overflowed with darkness and blood, was now filled with the waters of the River of the Dead. Within this deep, ethereal blue river, serene yet melancholy faces drifted by—the final sighs of the living.

The firmament suddenly tore open, and blood-red lightning wove a web of cracks among the clouds. Thirty-three inverted bronze doors manifested out of thin air, their surfaces embossed with reliefs of a hundred thousand struggling souls. It was from these gates that the waters of the River of the Dead poured down from the world of the deceased.

The air began to crystallize as the final sighs of countless spirits froze into falling icicles. Cyan-purple ghost fires flared up from cracks in the ground, their flames flickering with revolving lantern phantoms that only those on the verge of death could see.

Within the halls of the academy, cries of terror rose one after another.

“What... what is that?!”

“Father... No, no... I see my long-dead father on the other side of the window...”

The people in the academy watched in horror as the floor-to-ceiling windows reflected a blood-red crescent moon from another dimension—a world belonging solely to the dead.

The thunderous rattling of chains echoed from the center of the earth. In an instant, all sound vanished. In the absolute silence, flocks of crows swarmed from every direction, their hoarse cries carrying decay and fear. As their black feathers blotted out the light of the sky, She lowered Her body from the heavens, Her pale hair cascading down like the Milky Way falling to earth.

She reclined within the night, Her hundred-thousand-meter black skirt forming the pitch-black darkness of the world. The blood-red moon slowly faded, transforming into a crimson cross behind Her, inscribed with the names of gods She had personally slain and erased from existence.

Her toes pressed against the void as She descended steps woven from blood-red moonlight and the River of the Dead, Her obsidian high heels clicking softly. Within the folds of Her pitch-black skirt, blood-colored Manjusaka were hidden.

The funeral dirge of creation was sung by all living beings at this moment. The frequency of the earth's core's vibrations perfectly matched the Death Movement of the 《Gregorian Chant》.

“What on earth did you experience after the twilight...” Judgment, the one responsible for presiding over the sins and punishments of all living beings, paled beneath this divine radiance. The fear from the time of the twilight enveloped Him once more, for the ultimate deity chosen by fate had finally revealed Her true form in this instant.

Or perhaps, after the twilight, even fate had shattered along with the disordered world. The God of Death had surpassed death itself, becoming the ultimate answer to which all forms of existence must bow—the end of all things, and the final undertaker.

“I shall bring all things to an end, before the birth of everything,” Jormungandr said faintly, Her voice devoid of any fluctuation. “Not just ‘everything,’ but ‘all’ and ‘any.’”

“Except... ‘the Original.’” She raised a hand, and the countless screaming crows transformed into liquid darkness, condensing upon a blood-red handle forged from “death.” Finally, a scythe that severed the boundary between “life” and “death” appeared in Her hand.

“Die...” She sighed softly. The pitch-black scythe struck the orb of light that burned as fiercely as a sun, within which Judgment was still writing the sins of “death.”

A blood-red flash cleaved through the incandescent sun. Within the azure-gold flames, crystal roses of blood slowly bloomed, growing rapidly from Judgment's body where the strike had landed. They appeared before every intelligent being; upon every petal, the most painful silhouettes of those beings' lives and their most feared moments of death were reflected.

Some tried to peer into this magnificent scene of divine descent, but every human below the level of Calamity class who possessed the capacity for thought began to fall into a logical hell of "why do I exist?" Once they reached the conclusion that they should not exist, they would attempt to destroy themselves by any means possible.

“Thank you...” A trace of color returned to Judgment's divine eyes. His dim gaze turned azure-gold for a brief moment before he began to dissipate. All the haze seemed to have vanished; this was no longer a contest between two gods.

“Death is not the end,” He said softly, with a faint smile.

The cracks in the blood-red sky began to stitch themselves shut. Those web-like scarlet patterns curled inward, and the thirty-three inverted bronze doors slowly closed. Then, as if billions of years had passed under the erosion of time, they gradually turned to drifting ash and vanished into the air.

The River of the Dead began to recede. As the blood-red water evaporated, it left behind crystallized memory fragments that refracted hundreds of millions of unfinished life lanterns under the setting sun. Within these dramas that ended in regret, the God of Death departed, as if She had never descended at all.

Only the clocks remained; from that moment on, their second hands no longer turned, silently testifying that a deity of fate who stood above time had descended for a single instant.

“Why do I exist?” Li Yue, submerged in the lake, asked herself. She barely managed to find a sliver of her remaining self-will amidst the massive divinity and the overwhelming madness. At this moment, she didn't want to move even a fraction of an inch.

In her ears, the Eternal Requiem that She had been humming continued to echo, soothing her soul.

“Perhaps ‘Li Yue’ shouldn't exist either? I... just...” Li Yue murmured, sinking through the seawater, until a force pulled at her arm, dragging her toward the surface.

It was a blue silhouette.