Death gained a unique insight into the way Akko's mind operates. It was like a large ball of yarn; each question taking a thread and unravelling it little by little. Eventually the ball would reveal more threads sticking out in all directions, and each of those threads would reveal more and more threads which would connect to threads knotted to other threads, and once the core is revealed it would just be another ball of yarn to be unravelled. He already knew this of course, he knew everything about everyone, but there is an expansive distance between knowing something and experiencing something.

"Mr Death? Why are you a big skeleton in a robe with a scythe?"

WERE YOU EXPECTING ME TO LOOK DIFFERENT?

"No. I'm just wondering why this form specifically?"

DO YOU THINK ANIMALS UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF DEATH, OR DO THEY JUST OBSERVE THAT THINGS STOP LIVING? I HAVE EXISTED SINCE LIFE FIRST STARTED AND I SHALL BE HERE TILL THE FINAL LIFE ENDS. IT IS ONLY RECENTLY THAT THIS FORM HAS BEEN GIVEN TO ME, BY YOU; NOT YOU SPECIFICALLY, BUT BY HUMANS. WHEN DEATH STOPPED BEING THE ABSENCE OF LIFE AND BECAME WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LIFE ENDS.

"How recent?"

ROUGHLY 1.5 MILLION YEARS AGO

"That's not very recent"

FOR YOU, PERHAPS

Death raised his scythe into the air and thrust it into the space before Binky. It pierced the space and sank into the air. With a quick downward thrust, the scythe's blade split and fractured the very fabric of reality. Third dimensional shards broke off and fell away as Death pulled the scythe back towards him. Akko stared in awe at what was left. A perfectly 2D hole in reality; completely flat and cracked at the edges. The effect was hard to look at and gave her a slight headache.

Binky trotted into it.

"Where are we going?"

HOME

Akko held onto Binky's reigns with excited anticipation. What does the house of death look like? Is it some ethereal dark dimension filled with the souls of the lost clamouring for an escape? Is it some horrific hellscape where the souls of the damned are sent to their eternal punishment? Is it a grand castle adorned with skeletal motifs, and does Death rest upon a great, black throne where he waits until the souls of the departed are ready for collection? All these expectations swirled and swarmed her mind. Such a powerful and omnipresent being must dwell within a place befitting that of his stature. Surely, he must have a place where he can see all of creation and find those that are ready to move on from life. The centre of the universe. She would stand at the balcony of the house of death and look out at the entirety of the universe laid out before her, a sight that no mortal creature had ever seen before and possibly will never see again.

It's a shame that they stopped at a quaint English cottage.

"Is this it?"

IS WHAT IT?

"Your house."

YES

"… I was expecting a little bit more."

YOU HAVE A LOT OF EXPECTATIONS FOR SOMETHING YOU HAVE ONLY MET RECENTLY.

They both dismounted Binky, who trotted off to his nearby stable, and they walked through Death's front garden.

The first thing which struck Akko was the colour of the place. She though there was no colour; only black and white. Then she realised that this wasn't the case. Everything was made up of hundreds of different shades of black: the plants, the sky, the cottage, all of it. The only things that were not black was Binky – who was a creamy sort of colour – and oddly enough a red cross painted on Death's front door.

"What this?" Akko said, pointing at the cross.

AH THAT. IT'S A PART OF THIS PLACE'S CREATION.

The next thing which struck Akko was the cobblestones after she tripped over a loose branch jutting from the hedge. After a short moment of writing in agony an embarrassment, Akko turned to take vengeance on the offensive piece of shrubbery. She poked it, prodded it, pulled it, kicked it and even jumped up and down on it a little until she came to a strange conclusion.

The small, black branch was completely unmovable. Aside from the gate, everything in the garden was unmovable. And something about the whole place felt wrong, aside from everything being a different colour of black. This was exemplified in the windows of the cottage which were completely opaque; nothing was visible through them, which begs the question: who make a window which cannot be seen through? Usually it would be people with something to hide, but that would require other people to hide said things from, so that can't be the reason.

"Mr Death, are the plants supposed to be like this? Mr Death?"

The Reaper was nowhere to be seen.

Akko went to the door of the small English cottage and tried to open it. Just like the plants, it was unmovable. She decided to politely knock on it. It should have been a knock anyway, but the door was made of some unknown material that it just ended up sounding like a dull thud.

I WAS WAITING FOR YOU. WHY AREN'T YOU INSIDE? Death questioned, poking his head through the perfectly solid door. The sudden presence of a skull startled Akko and she reeled back slightly.

"Well there's this door in the way."

HAVE YOU TRIED WALKING THROUGH IT?

Akko looked at the door for a moment, tapped it lightly with her knuckles, then gave it a half-hearted push.

"Yes?"

OK. ONE SECOND. Death pulled his head back through the door and a moment later it had disappeared.

"How did you do that?" Queried Akko.

IT'S MY DOOR.

"No not that. I mean the walking through walls thing. Not even the most senior of witches can do that."

THINGS LIKE THE LAWS OF PHYSICS AND TIME ARE JUST SMALL THINGS FOR ME TO WORK AROUND.

The inside of the cottage appeared to be as one would expect; the floor was tiled with wood but felt like a completely different material; the side tables were aligned with picture frames but no pictures; the coat rack was filled with coats but remained unmovable. A grandfather clock stood at the end of the entrance hall, repetitiously ticking away, pendulum swinging rhythmically left to right and right to left. Yet the clocks hands did not move.

Death walked through a wall and into another room.

Something clicked in Akko's mind. This entire place was built wrong. Not completely wrong, it knew that it had to have windows, plants, doors, tables, pictures, but it did not know why. It did not know the true purpose of why everything had to be where it was; a coat rack to hang wearable coats on for easy access, a window to look out on the world and let sunlight in, picture frames to store memories of friends and loved ones.

The place lacked life.

Akko looked into the place where a door had previously been and looked into the houses' representation of a kitchen. Nothing really out of the ordinary, all things considered. There was a fridge, stove, sink, dining table, all the usual items someone would expect to be there. Although there was an abundance of cats. Akko was puzzled, but overall, not surprised.

She continued onward to the room Death skulked into.

There was a strange noise emanating for further down into the hallway. She couldn't tell exactly what it was, yet it sounded very familiar, like the constant, low rumble of the ocean.

She made a right turn into the final room of the hall and what she saw almost overloaded her eyes to the point where she started experiencing vertigo.

Hourglass timers.

An uncountable number of shelves each holding an uncountable number of hourglass timers filled a room which appeared to stretch on to infinity. Each hourglass filled with sand falling from the future, through the funnel of the present, and into the past; the act of which, for a single hourglass, completely silent, but for an innumerable number of them collected together in an infinite space formed into a single powerful roar.

Akko ran down the aisles in excited fascination, looking at the labels attached to each and every hourglass. Every single one had a name, and if you concentrated hard enough, you could make out images within the glass. It looked like people going about their daily lives, at least as far as Akko could tell.

It wasn't just people either. The unfathomably large shelves split off into different sections for all kinds of creatures, plants, animals, bacteria, even some things Akko didn't know existed. The phoenix was particularly annoying, whenever its lifetimer ran out, you would have to flip it right back over.

She wandered her way down the aisles, the almost infinite view giving her a slight dizzy sensation, until she happened upon the centre. The was a large table in the middle with the map of the world etched into it. Beyond the table, Death sat at an imposing desk, skulls carved into its design, perusing the pages of an old, large book. He was reading through and jotting notes down onto a scroll.

"This is amazing!" Akko blurted out, the echo of her voice quickly lost to the roar of the falling sands. "Is this everyone in the world?"

UNIVERSE, Death said, eye holes still fixated on the book.

"Really? Well that explains the weird looking ones near the back. Do you need to find all of these people when their sands run out?"

NO. JUST A FEW SPECIFIC CASES. THAT'S WHAT THIS BOOK IS FOR. IMAGINE IT LIKE MONARCHY, YOU KNOW THE QUEEN RULES OVER YOU, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN SHE HAS TO BARGE INTO YOUR HOUSE AND DEMAND YOU MAKE HER A CUP OF TEA.

Akko took quick notice of a small table next to the desk. On it sat a single lifetimer. When she took a closer look, she found something odd about it. It contained no sand. Instead, there was a strange violet mist which morphed and flowed through its funnel into both the top and bottom segments. She tried to peer deeply into it, but what visions there should have been were only met with a kind of static effect.

"What's wrong with this one?"

SOMEONES LIFE ISN'T WORKING THE WAY IT SHOULD.

"How so?"

THEY ARE NEITHER LIVING OR DYING. AND THEY'RE USING SOME VERY OLD MAGIC TO DO IT. THEY HAVE FOUND A WAY TO HIDE FROM ME.

Akko tried read the name engraved on the metal plaque near the base of the lifetimer, but it appeared to have been scratched off.

"So, haven't you done anything about this?"

AN OPPORTUNITY WILL PRESENT ITSELF, I'M SURE. I'M VERY PATIENT.

Death closed the great book, rolled the scroll up, and placed it into his robe.

IT'S TIME WE WERE OFF.

"Already?" Akko said.

SOULS NEED TO BE COLLECTED. THEY NEED TO BE RECYCLED. THE WHEEL OF LIFE TURNS, AND WE MUST BE THERE TO TURN IT.