For a moment, I was dead. I think it was the bending of my body and the contortion of my neck that killed me, if not the drive of steel through my arm and near shearing that sent me into a downward spiral, but for a moment, the moments between breaths, I was dead, and I knew only a dryness.

Where I opened my eyes next, staring into the dry land of Two Fields, and I stared up upon the brown sky, covered in dust and the whispers beyond the aether. This was not the white cloud of heaven nor the burning pits of hell, but somewhere else, where I walked.

I was not alone, I found, and I gazed upon the face of god, though no god I knew, and found myself terribly small before the dark majesty that was Him. I gazed up, higher than the stars were to earth, and found the burning novae that were his eyes, and it was not light that fluttered through him, but the antithisis of light, the reverse of light, a dusty darkness that consumed.

I stared upon Him, his wings wider than the thousand hoods of allmighty Shesha, and his voice rang out, calling all spirits of the dead to join Him, to come to Him.

All the dead came to Him, and I stood before Him, to be judged as worthy or unworthy. I gazed upon the terrible majesty of Death, and His hand fell to touch my face.

"No. Not yet ready." I was awash, in disappointment, and felt my stomach fall away from me, and the great darkness denied me join with the oblivion, the sweet, endless oblivion, that was promiced to all who stared into the eyes of Death.

And I breathed again, even as my soul wished that I hadn't...