Throughout your life, no realization was stranger than that of your death.

At first, of course, you didn't think you were dead. Like a sleepless night, you knew nothing about yourself, didn't even acknowledge your existence. It was blackness, and it was endless.

Until it wasn't.

Amid the omnipresence of death, you saw a silhouette. A human form standing before a window, turned away from you. Even if they couldn't be identified, you knew this was a very important person in your life—maybe a person whose love would've reached you even in the afterlife. Slowly, over a period that could have lasted seconds or millennia, the environment around the figure formed: the modern windows framing the woodland, the warm room where you'd spent many nights together, and the bed in which you now found yourself.

The figure turned to you.

"I read something in that comic book I've told you about," they whispered. "There was this character that said that everybody wonders what lies beyond life. And that eventually everybody gets to find out."

The silhouette faced you across the room; you still couldn't distinguish their features.

"I think that's what makes us special, or cursed: we don't have to die to know what lies beyond."