Once and then again

Prologue

Even Shinigami don't know what happens after death.

Oh they know enough and certainly more than the humans know but there is still something that they can't predict, something that even they don't know. The shinigami have no idea what happens if a Shinigami is struck down by a blade. They are what happens after death but even they can die and they, just like humans have no idea what will come. It is that uncertainty that fear of what is to come that keeps them-just a little bit-alive. No one wants to die but it's not the dying itself that they fear. It's what comes after, the oblivion, the solitude, the punishment or the reward that is what people are afraid of and that is why, from the new born human, to the eldest Shinigami we all cling to life, to family, to friends because above all it is a basic human trait not to want to be alone.

Even hollows don't know what happens after death.

They know what happens to the ones they eat of course and they know what happens to the souls and the shinigami that they hunt, that is simple enough, those souls are dinner. They don't however know what happens to themselves, what happens to the hollows that are cleansed by a shinigami's blade. They are animals in every sense of the word, driven by hunger and instinct and need and yet…they fear death. Each time they fight a shinigami, every time they are cut down, they scream. They too, just like the Shinigami, just like the humans, fear death. It is that, that little spark, that fear that keeps, even the blood thirstiest most soul-less just a little bit human.

Humans know even less then the Shinigami and hollow, out of the three they are the only ones who are alive. They are the ones that death has touched the least, after all they have never experienced it like the other two have done. As such they are the ones that know the least about death, even as they watch the people around them fall they don't experience it and one they do they are no longer classified as human. They are souls.

No one knows what life is like after death and no soul know what the death of death is but…what if someone did?