A/N: Hello again, everybody. I'm back with another story: a oneshot (possibly a series of them) about the afterlife of the humans who used the Death Note. A little warning, though: this one quite possibly has a few religious undertones inspired subconsciously by Dante's The Divine Comedy (I guess...I'm kinda making this up as I go).
Anyways, without further ado, I give you Purgatory.
A bleak and dismal world, filled with almost nothing but monochrome grey: grey rocks, grey sand, grey sky, and almost indiscernible grey clouds. Grey. Perfect for limbo, a purgatory for the souls. Neither black nor white, just caught in between.
Shinigami were the only living beings here, not that anything else could technically be considered alive. Their purpose of the nonlife they were cursed with was supposedly to kill people—humans in the world of the living. No one knew why this was or where they had come from. Most decided to waste the time they gained from executing their 'purpose' gambling, eating, or sleeping, amongst other things in pursuit of escaping their unending boredom.
Very few, the numbers steadily declining every day, actually wrote in their weapon of death—the Death Note. One, the king, no longer needed to; he had been in semi-existence for far longer than any being could remember—himself included.
One shinigami decided that he was sick of this purgatory and so decided to go to the human world and stir trouble. He stole another's Death Note and then left, eager to wreak havoc on hundreds of unfortunate humans.
This shinigami was named Ryuk. Another followed him, but 'died' because this shinigami, Rem, went against her purpose—she saved the life of a human by killing two.
Ryuk returned, only to quickly become tired of the never ending grey again after achieving his goal. A few insignificant shinigami had wondered endlessly: "Where did we come from?" "Where do we go?" "Why do we take these forms?"
Needless to say, they were ridiculed, told to forget their thoughts and abandon their theories for another game or more food. And so they did.
But not all of them. There was one, an eon ago, at a time when the Shinigami King himself was young and furiously scribing within his Note. Her name long forgotten, she had solved the riddles of their existence.
But no one listened. So no one remembered.
One day—or night, or whatever it was for there was no sun to heat the dead soil and no moon to chill the air—four shinigami awoke, only to see an unending grey.
One, a large, dully-colored gold stood. Tarnished silver wings sprouted from his back and would have resembled an angel's save for the fact that they were torn and tattered.
Another two woke near the first. The smallest of the pair was a pitch black color. Its long legs and upper body were clothed in a ripped lacy blood red dress, crafted entirely of what appeared to be spiders' webs. What was incredibly unusual about this shinigami was that it had two faces, one on each of the sides of the head they shared, where the cheeks should be. If one was to look at it directly, one would see only a blank, smooth expanse, absent of any indentation.
The other was a faded light with dingy yellow spikes covering its body. Its bright eyes were opened wide as were the eyes of the other shinigami, its faces already bickering with the other.
That, however, stopped as the six eyes of these shinigami witnessed the other awaken—for he was none other than their leader.
No one in the Shinigami Realm read books, that is, unless you counted when shinigami would brag over the people they'd killed, if any, and showed them to their comrades in death.
That was why no one but the Shinigami King knew about one of the few books that existed.
It was written by the forgotten shinigami and was more of a short essay.
Since only the Shinigami King knew about it and only he read things other than names and methods of killing, only he knew the answers to those long-ridiculed questions. All were contained within this book entitled The Shinigami's Purpose, Birth, and Existence.
How is a Shinigami born?
A shinigami is born when a human uses the Death Note for its true purpose. However, there have also been cases of shinigami becoming demons and going to Hell and angels becoming shinigami, as well as the opposite case.
Why do Shinigami take the forms they do?
As explained above, humans, angels, and demons can become shinigami. The nature of the form they take is based on the nature of their sin. For instance, a human that used the Death Note out of greed would presumably be decorated/embedded with fine jewels and gold. If a demon becomes a shinigami, their form is the combination of all sins that they have committed. If the said hypothetical demon had committed Sloth, Gluttony, and others, like murder, it would probably be a lazy, dimwitted, impaired, obese being with the color of blood somewhere on its body.
What is the Shinigami's purpose in its life?
A shinigami cannot live, so logically, it cannot die. This assumption is true since the only beings that have the capacity to truly live and die reside in the Human Realm.
Even so, shinigamis' 'lives' can end in the form that they have currently as a shinigami.
As shinigami the Realm in which we live is between Heaven and Hell and is so called a limbo or, more accurately, Purgatory.
It has been proven that in order to 'kill' a shinigami, said shinigami must care deeply and sincerely for a human and extend that human's lifetime by intervening with its cause of death.
The Shinigami's physical form is then reduced to a pile of sand, rust, and other substances.
However, it is my firm belief that a shinigami does not die when this happens. Instead, through their love and sacrifice, their spirit is transformed and reborn into that of an angel's and is sent to Heaven.
On the other hand, if a shinigami lives long enough by killing with the Death Note, they will eventually burst into flames, become a demon, and be delivered to Hell, as proven by the last Shinigami King.
Why is the Shinigami Realm grey and where is it?
The Shinigami Realm is located between Heaven, which is white, and Hell, which is black. Simple mixing of colors tells you that you get grey—directly in between black and white, fittingly so for the Shinigami Realm, Purgatory.
The Human Realm can be seen as a type of Purgatory, also, although as more of a preliminary phase—those who do exceedingly well or bad are sent directly to Heaven or Hell respectfully while those who are in between with no clear direction are sent to Purgatory. Out of that group, those who have used the Death Note are sent here to the Shinigami Realm. From Purgatory and the Shinigami Realm, a being there can be sent up or down.
Following the above theory, the alignment of the worlds can be illustrated as such is below:
Heaven
Human World--------Shinigami Realm/Purgatory
Hell
Notice how the Human World and Shinigami Realm are side by side even though we peer down into the Human World. This is caused by the distortion of physics.
Ryuk looked up from the purple whirling vortex, ending his observation of the Human World and the aftermath of his visit. What he saw made him cackle mischievously.
Coming over the horizon, three figures appeared, one larger than the others and flying above them. Both were looking adoringly at the shinigami above them, although one seemed to have a twitch that made it appear as if each side of its face was fighting to see the dominant figure.
Again Ryuk cackled, louder this time. Oh, he would have fun again. Because, of course, it wasn't everyday a new shinigami came to be, much less four. And what made it even better was the fact that he had known them all, once upon a time.
That's the end of Purgatory...more than likely. Please review and be on the look out for the next chapter of my FFVII stories, All That Remains and Untitled (this one will take a bit longer than ATR)!