How Do Cultures Worldwide View Life After Death?

It was in the Era of Harmony, trillions of years ago, when Chaos first arrived. To stop all existence from growing rampantly and exhausting all sustenance, the Creator of the universe took on Chaos as its body, the void as its vigor, and black holes as its jaw—a combination to create a world-ending coffin, devouring the seas and setting lands aflame, reducing all to ashes! Later, millions of years ago, the gods waged wars against each other when the same coffin appeared out of nowhere, massacring their ranks and decimating the divine realm. Since then, it had gone missing, but its name continued to echo throughout the universe, leaving both gods and demons in fear! Millions of years later, a youth was buried alive and fused with the coffin where he was kept, and he became an undertaker whose name was heard throughout all worlds. "I'm really bad at saving lives, but I'm quite good with ending them," he said quietly with a cool visage. "I possess the Coffin of the Gods, and I can send anything and anyone to their deaths: humans, worlds… or even the gods themselves!"

The night I died, my whole family was busy celebrating my twin sister Elena's eighteenth birthday. Everyone thought Elena was going to die the next day. We're elves. My father worked as a clan guardian, and after Mom gave birth to Elena and me as twins, she stopped working altogether. We should have been a happy family. But from the moment we were born, Elena and I were bound by a witch's curse. Because Elena came into the world one minute before me, she took the full weight of it onto herself. She was never supposed to live past eighteen. From the day we were born, Elena was the family's treasure. Mom and Dad treated me like I owed her something. New toys went to her first. New dresses were always her pick. Every night, Mom would sit in Elena's room for at least an hour before she'd turn off the light. I always fell asleep alone. One night I had a nightmare and ran barefoot to find Mom. She was holding Elena and didn't even look up. "Go back to bed. Stop making a fuss." I kept telling myself: she's dying, of course they're kind to her. But every time I let something go, that splinter in my chest pushed a little deeper. Then the day the curse was supposed to take effect finally came, and naturally, that was the day my stomach cramped so badly I could barely stand. Mom and Dad didn't hesitate. They shoved me into the cellar and locked it from outside. I crouched on the stone floor with the smell of mildew everywhere and knocked on the door over and over. "Mom... Dad... my stomach really hurts, I can't even stand up... let me out, please..." One sentence came back through the door. "Your sister is dying tonight! Can you just give us one day? One day!" "But... Mom... I'm scared..." Nobody answered after that. The cellar went quiet. My eyelids grew heavy. My last thought was: if I were the one dying of a curse, would they come hold me too.

Three years after I died, my mother sent me twenty dollars for living expenses. Three years before that—the first time I ever asked my family for money—she said to me, offhand, "Sometimes I think you're just putting on an act. What's so unsanitary about a thirty-cent boxed meal? And why can't you wear a five-dollar down jacket? Face it, you're just more high-maintenance than your little brother." Later, when I needed twenty dollars to buy some cheap medicine for my stomachache, she blocked me immediately and cut off all contact—along with every relative we had. "Don't contact me anymore. I'm clearly not a good mother. I can't afford to give my son a life of luxury." But for my younger brother, who had just started high school, she spared no expense—renting him a three-bedroom apartment. Even the family dog got its own room. In the end, on the day my brother became the top scorer in the state, she finally remembered me. She took me off her block list and transferred twenty dollars. "It's only twenty dollars. Was it really worth giving your family the silent treatment for three whole years?" What she never knew was this— On the night my stomach ruptured, three years ago, I had already died. I couldn't afford to go to the hospital. I froze to death in the snow.

“WAKE UP, DANIELA!” The death warning, yet rather a call that Daniela dreamed about after walking up in the series of chances, greed, sacrifices, and the seven deadly sins, and from an inevitable chance to turn back into time and run into the loop of space and dimension. To her life that was surrounded with lies, blessed fate, but curse destiny she is entwined to save the person who is long dead from the present that she never had in the first place. Now being stunned by the life she never dreams of having, she runs toward the series of miseries behind the hidden books of the reincarnated blood she bares. “Death reincarnated, that is your world and your book.” To the chances that were led by greed, longing or hope, will the past that alters by the son of darkness, will long be able to vanish? What if what everyone knew was a lie, and the lie that they are trying to run away from is the truth they are seeking after all? Will the world they are walking that is filled with the unknown they only knew will lead them to the truth of who is the clone from the original? Can she solve the puzzle of the first book in her world that revolves in the mystery of a tarot deck? From the series of reincarnation and dimension can she solve the real mystery of ‘Who is the real dead one?’

Aryn's journey begins with the gift of strange and life-altering book. Aptly titled 'Rules of Death' it doesn't stop with the exposure of her own identity. The book holds knowledge and power Aryn can only begin to understand.

“An invisible thread connects those who are destined to meet. Regardless of the time, place, or any circumstances. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.” - Ancient Chinese Proverbs A story of best friends who later became lovers. Both dreamed of achieving the desired success. Planned to build a happy family, unfortunately it failed because an accident happened that would change the course of their lives. They were dead but their soul were awaken. Trying to find their way home. Their souls were resurrected in other people's bodies. Will they meet again? Will their paths ever meet? Will they be able to recognize each other in a body they do not own? Will their plan to have a family of their own come true?