Death was not empty.
That was the first thing Noah learned on the other side of it. The immense darkness that had folded around him thinned, and sensation returned without a body to carry it, and he found himself standing upon an endless sea of red.
It was heavy.
Heavy the way a debt is heavy, the way a name spoken at the wrong funeral is heavy, and the red stretched out to every horizon without a single wave, thick and still and patient, and across its surface, floating in their countless numbers…
Were bodies.
All those he had killed.
They floated face-up as far as any sight could reach! The countless he had killed in his home world when it was still tiny. Those from the dungeons, beasts and horrors he had cleaved through by the thousands for essence! Those from the Beast World, from Atlantis, from the Demon World, warriors and monarchs and soldiers who had stood in formations against him.
