Awakenings

The Shinigami Realm - The End of Time

Shinigami. The name evokes all sorts of images, does it not? Of death, certainly. Destruction, despair, the reaping of countless souls.

Among those who remember,that is.

And there are so few who remember, now. Those lost souls wandering the desolate landscapes that remain of this world, this universe - have you any idea how long you have slumbered here, among my kind? How long since you gave your life, your very essence for those who remembered you only long enough to bury the remains of your earthly shell?

So self sacrificing. So noble, so pure of heart. I wonder ... are you really? How boring! How would it all play out, if you could do it all over again? Would you like to find out?

Ah, but I see your hesitation, your lack of understanding. Your fear, even. Fear is so common among your kind - especially when confronted with that which is more than you are. Or even the very different, I suppose. And this realm is as different from your own as you can possibly imagine, is it not?

Your world, little mortal, is so interesting if only because it is so chaotic. We Shinigami ... we would never think up half the things you humans do! There is a darkness in you we could not begin to touch, a deceit buried in every heart. Where is yours, I wonder? What would it take to weed it out? You, who would sacrifice your life for a single soul - you, who would give your life for a stranger. You intrigue me, if only for that reason alone.

But why, I must ask? Why only twenty three days? Did you fear the days leading up to your death, fear the repercussions of accepting the powers of one of my Shinigami, even if only for such a short period of time?

Did you fear that it would corrupt you, turn you in to one of us? In to the grasping, needy, lying things that you had fought against your entire life?

Or was it the waiting you feared - to be a dead man walking, to know that your end was near ... was that your fear? To live those final days, knowing how much you had left undone, how many would suffer without you there to protect them.

All those children, even those adults you gathered around you, all seeking desperately for some way to survive in the hellish landscape they were forced to call home. You fought so desperately to save them, to protect them. Were you frightened to watch it all crumble around you?

You interest me, little mortal, in the way that few of your kind do, these days. You would be a worthy Shinigami ... not of the sort that inhabit our world today, but the Shinigami of old ... those great and terrible beings that once walked these paths, before the sand and the dust and the decay. Those Shinigami - my greatest of creations ... they were great and terrible beings of mercy, of judgement. Once, they looked down upon your world with sadness, with pity, and with a gentle eye to weed out the evil, the wicked. They have become twisted and rotten, the sand that eats away at all slowly stealing their minds, their souls, until ... well. Until this.

But the Shinigami as they once existed ... ah, what a sight they were.

Tell me, little mortal - what sort of Shinigami would YOU make? Would you be merciful to the weak, stand in judgement upon the guilty? Or would you fall as so many Shinigami before you - fall to the excess, to the boredom, to the knowledge that all is unchanging, never ending, that all your struggles for naught?

Shall we find out?