A Short Treatise on the Afterlife (1): What Lies Beyond Death?
As one who has lived for long years as a servant of the Life Goddess, the thorn-like question embedded deep in my heart has tormented me beyond endurance. For what purpose is life born? For what does it live? For what does it die? The Mother of Life told me that the answers to such questions must come from within oneself, and so I pressed on through the doubts. What is life? What is death? For what should one live? My hands, weathered by ages of life, have become those of a wrinkled old man, and a haze has begun to cloud my eyes. Every part of my body now reminds me viscerally that the time granted to me draws short.
The conclusion I reached after endless contemplation across those long years may differ from others', so I shall not set it down here. Instead, I take up my pen to record what the Mother of Life told me of the Underworld. May these words prove of some aid to fellow seekers.
… Where there is light, there is shadow; where there is birth, there is death. All living things are born, they live, and they die. At that final destination, the creature's soul sheds its shell of flesh. Yet this is no liberation. What awaits is a merciless judgment upon one's life.
The reapers who gather souls are everywhere. These furtive harvesters of the world stalk its shadows, clutching massive scythes as they roam to reap the souls of the departed. No soul escapes their grasp. Death is inevitable, and so are they. No corner of this world lacks darkness, and through any darkness they can pass—leaving no place beyond their reach.
Yet they are not hearts as cold as glacial ice. Before departing for the Underworld, they grant a moment to leave final words for one's kin. If family lingers nearby, they lend the strength to speak in one's own voice; if not, they permit a last message delivered through a dream. Perhaps these reapers are gentle souls at heart.
But one must never presume upon their mercy to beg for more time. A single word is all they offer. Covet anything beyond, and the chill scythe claims its harvest without delay.
Thus seized by the reaper's hand, the soul traverses realms of endless cold, arriving at last before the gates of the Underworld. Beyond those gates of pitch-black stone lies another world entirely. One passes through a deep cavern of obsidian rock, enduring the piercing gaze of the guardian statue that wards the Underworld, only to emerge into a sight unimaginable after such a tunnel: a vast river stretching to horizons unseen.
A river so broad its far shore defies the eye, brimming with jet-black waters. Its pebbled banks are strewn with tiny smooth stones. Known by many names, this is the river that sunders the mortal realm from the Underworld—a stark divide between the living and the dead. Call it Samdocheon or the River Styx; it ensures the living never cross by accident, and the dead never return to the land of breath. The mighty current stands eternal sentinel.
As one follows its course, ghostly children appear along the bank. Children of the Underworld. The souls of these poor innocents are condemned to linger here. Children who perished before their parents. Children who never reached adulthood. Children whose deaths hammered iron spikes of grief into their parents' hearts. Such wretched souls cannot descend to the Underworld's depths; instead, they haunt the riverbank, gazing into its sable depths.
And in those waters, visions of their living parents shimmer forth. In the Underworld's oppressive silence, the children cannot tear their eyes from those reflected faces. I have not witnessed it myself, but the thought fills me with profound sorrow. The children stare endlessly at their parents left behind in the living world—at parents tormented by loss, wracked in the void their child once filled.
Making mournful faces, the children reach out unthinkingly to touch the water. But those images are mere phantoms; the ripples from tiny hands only distort them further. Grieving yet, the children cheer silently for their parents to rise above the pain someday. Through those visions, they come to know how deeply they were cherished. Thus, the pure resentments of innocent young souls are washed clean by the current.
At length, the children gazing into the river rise from their vigil. They depart the bank precisely when their parents arrive in the Underworld. Then the children rush to grasp those familiar hands, descending together to the layers below. Cruel, one might call it—but for souls too young to grasp life or death, such an arrangement is essential. Children denied full lives, denied even adulthood, must learn they were beloved.
But what if the long-awaited parents prove unworthy? Beast-like wretches unmoved by their child's death? Filth who rained violence upon the child? Parents, in the end, who caused that death? Upon reaching the Underworld, if they spurn the child's frail grasp…
The child erupts in heartbroken wails. When those cries echo across the bank, a woman emerges from the gloom. Known as the Ghost Mother, she hails from the eastern lands—a tragic figure who lost her husband young, then her sole child, her only kin. Unable to forget, she gathered orphans bereft of parents and raised them. But witnessing abusers who tormented and cast out their young, madness overtook her; with bare hands, she rent those parents asunder. Executed for murder, her vengeful spirit lingered. The Mother of Life, moved to pity, claimed her soul and set her to guard the Underworld's children.
Wearing a bamboo hat and a veil of dark cloth over her face, the Ghost Mother drags a massive, thick blade across the ground. She approaches the sobbing child and gently wipes away the tears. Then she seizes the offending parent's throat and drags them away. She flays their flesh in thin strips from every inch of their body—until true remorse dawns, wrongs are confessed, and full reflection achieved. Even as mere souls, bereft of flesh, they thrash in agony as if skinned alive. Once flayed bare, a morsel of their own meat crammed into their maw, they are cast down to the depths below.
But such parents are vanishingly few. To this day, children arrived before their sires gaze into the river-mirror, yearning for their parents' coming—yet praying it comes as late as fate allows. The Underworld's first layer exists for these children and their eventual reunions.
The descent to layers below lies beyond that mighty river, so reapers escort the dead aboard a vessel at the weathered dock along the bank. There rides the sole craft to brave the waters: a decrepit boat on the verge of foundering. Its ferryman is a tongueless mute. Once silver-tongued and cunning, he wheedled three extra years from the reaper sent for him with glib pleas. When three years passed, he tried the same trick anew. His tongue fell to the reaper's black scythe, and for his deceptions—extending life through lies—he is doomed eternally as Underworld ferryman.
Self-inflicted, one might say. Yet since that day, the grace reapers grant the dying shrank from a full night to mere moments for one final word. No doubt countless souls curse that ferryman.
He demands passage fare from each passenger—and though the dead arrive destitute, somehow a small pouch appears in their bosom, yielding the coin. That toll? The aid they rendered others in life, repaid by gratitude. Good deeds in the mortal coil serve as currency in death.
Live selfishly, spurning or harming others, and you arrive unable to pay. Such cases are rare, the Mother of Life assured—no cause for worry. Yet if one should exist… what fate awaits? She uttered not a syllable on the matter, leaving me nothing to record. I can only pray no soul has ever walked the world aiding none.