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The Afterlife is a 'world' parallel to the living world of Medius and existed first. It is the location of the home realms of the three gods Mother Gaia (Heaven), Father Syndel (Hell) and Death (Purgatory) as well as where the souls of Medians go when they die.

Geography[]

The rough geography of the Afterlife is that Purgatory is in the "center" between Heaven and Hell separated from both of those by the River of Lost Souls (the Styx). The Styx appears to have a spatial warping effect, as Death can cross the river in his boat but souls that have been delivered to Hell cannot swim across it back to Purgatory. Either there is a powerful current that the boat is immune to or the river is infinitely wide, which would prevent flying across as well.

By its nature, the Afterlife is ethereal, so physical laws can behave oddly and behave significantly differently in different places. Sizes and distances are not necessarily fixed and there is no natural cosmology like a sun or moon. While Heaven, Hell and Purgatory all overlook the same river and seem to share some boundaries, they all have different skies and conditions: nighttime in Hell is complete darkness, but barely exists in Heaven.

Workings[]

Beings in the Afterlife do not need to eat food to survive, although this can vary from location to location: souls in Hell can be tortured to feel starvation. A notable oddity is that the souls of dead Medians can be killed but it only applies temporarily, they simply reappear back to normal the next "day"; this relief does not apply to the native Demons and Angels who can be killed permanently.

Median souls naturally find their way to the Afterlife; Death's job is to find those that slip through the cracks and guide them. Souls then end up in Judgment, where Death determines the soul's afterlife. The process involves a seemingly magic book that lists the name of everyone and their registered destination when they died, like a reservations ledger. Rarely the book will declare "undetermined" as the destination which requires Death make the decision himself manually, using magic scales. However, the book has proven to be wrong about some souls' date of death[1]; Blue suggests this is due to Demons invading Medius.[2]

Death is seemingly the most influential being in the Afterlife, as he is responsible for delivering souls to both Heaven and Hell as well as controlling Purgatory directly. He also created the guardian creatures Cerberus to guard the Gates of Hell and Drazil to guard the Gates of Heaven. When not on duty, he rests in his castle, which stands over the river and is possibly part of Purgatory.

Reincarnation[]

SoulCycle SD891

Darius explaining the workings of the Afterlife.

All souls that have been dead for more than a certain (unknown) amount of time, regardless of destination in the Afterlife, are supposed to reincarnate and be born again on Medius, creating a soul cycle. Death is supposedly responsible for recollecting the souls and performing a ritual for this as well. A Median soul's life energy is mixed with others and can be reincarnated as any of the five races of Medius.

Neither Angels nor Demons have an afterlife: their souls are sent back to Gaia and Syndel respectively, and immediately remade into a new Angel or Demon.

It is unknown whether Medians have any knowledge of their past lives or afterlives; however, Angels believe that Medians tortured in Hell become better people after reincarnating, which implies the afterlife is not just a reward or punishment at the end of a Median's life, but something that affects their next life as well.[3]

Locations[]

References[]

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