The pain ended instantly. None of it lingered. Her body went numb. Except it wasn't numb — numbness is your nerves signalling an absence of feeling where the feeling should be — it was more like being hit with a pillow and having it envelop you, and of course she did not have a body. 

| Nothing.

She stood in utter darkness, feeling hard ground under her bare feet, hoping for a breeze across her bare skin that never came, breathing in stale air, waiting. There was no way to even measure passage of time, outside of counting — thankfully, she was familiar with loneliness and eventlessness already, enough to have her mind settle into the usual routine. 

 Finally, she heard steps behind her. She didn't need to turn around, just smiled a little.
"You're late! I'm not your boss anymore, but old habits die hard, I see."
"I am not Mori." said Mori. "Sorry I'm late, though, we've had to set up a lot of stuff. Come. We have much to discuss." She swung her scythe and carved a gash in thin air, which pulled itself apart to open into a rather ordinary, if ancient-looking, elevator. She stepped in, and Fubuki did not wait for an invitation.

| Nothing.

"So, uh. First. The Mori you knew, she is me, but I am not her. She's gone, sorry. Technically speaking, she's an avatar-aspect of the underworld collective that got merged back in. I'm doing this 'cuz it's a form you're comfortable with. Cliche, right? You can refer to me as Mori, just don't be surprised if we don't perfectly match."

"All those years I've thought you're an American girl with terminal chuuni. Why did you get involved in our field of work?"

"Think of Mori the Internet star as a spy. We divined that this field of work was going to be very important, and it turned out to will have been... because of you. But more on that later."

The elevator was clearly going down, the air smelling ever stronger of sulfur and chlorine.

"Are we going... you know?" Fubuki did not need to specify.

"Oh? No. Not currently, no. Later, I don't know. It's just a very rarely used part of the complex, there's industrial equipment running nearby. We're you expecting... ah, nvm." Mori took a break from staring at her shoes and saw the old fox on the verge of crying. She took a step and gave her a hug.  "Everything's going to be OK. Not a promise, though, promises are binding here. Look, do you want a blanket?" She felt vigorous nodding and pulled one from under her cloak. Still shaking, Fubuki wrapped herself in it. 

"This is an IKEA blanket. Why do you... have those here?"

"The company died a few decades ago, so we own everything they had now. Metalegal loophole. Neat, huh?"

The elevator came to an abrupt stop, its doors swung open with a metallic clang. Mori gently took Fubuki's hand in hers, fingers wrapping inbetween fingers, and walked out, then forward. 

"This is an unusual situation to begin with, you know. We were not even supposed to be here in the first place. Kitsunes do not usually have souls."

"Ah. I'm a kumiho, actually. I rarely bring it up and let people live with assumptions. Back in the Joseon kingdom, my grandfather ... " 

"Your grandfather actually cheated on his wife. You were taken into the family and raised as her own. You are a kitsune."

"Sounds like someone had a thing for foxes, huh?" 

"You could say that."

"So... Where are we going? Or do you not want to rush things?" 

"See, that's the issue right there. The nature of your offenses is such... Normally, you'd get damnation without even the luxury of me showing up to bring you comfort." Fubuki refrained from a quip about how that's what she deserved anyway, because the prospect was terrifying and she had a person to say sorry to first. 
"But the way you did the things you did... went around this life... you have no idea how badly your actions threw off the world's karmic balance. Luckily for you, 'hard for us to deal with' is not a punishable offense, neither are we spiteful. Still, for the first time in a while..."

Mori stopped abruptly and rammed the shaft of her scythe into the ground.

"... we're at an impasse."

| Nothing. 

One by one, darkness started getting illuminated, as TV screens  flickered on one by one. At first it looked like they were suspended on thin air, then their combined faint glow revealed traces of an enormous machine. Various sizes, makes and eras — many were ancient CRTs and LCDs, there were a lot of plasma and quantum dot rigs, quite a few VR headsets, some holographic displays, plus some tech that Fubuki hasn't ever seen. The brands were, as far as she saw, all companies that outright shut down, so there was probably the same deal as with IKEA. Currently the TVs were, it seems, all dedicated to showing ambiguity of the metaphor about the sky being the color of a dead TV channel. 

"What is this?" 

"This is your life." Mori pulled a remote out of her, uh, shirt and switched the channel on a mid-00s Acer. 

The 'watching your life going in front of your eyes' metaphor was going to be literal today, apparently. It played on a loop, birth to death, and if she wanted, she could pay attention and slow down individual events. She chose not to dwell on, though. 

"These are your alternative, potential fates. The choices you made that result in significant divergence from your life as you experienced it." Mori switched a few more channels, seemingly at random. Seeing herself mingling with other people that she did not recognize was odd, because she felt like she did know them for her entire life, experiencing an otherworldly and intense sense of deja vu. "Most people have a simpler tree of life. This is not to say that their overall lives were inconsequential and their choices didn't matter, but were tracking branches and not detours. It does not matter karma-wise if you had graduated from Juilliard or had dropped out to be mentored privately if you became a world-renowned jazz musician either way, met the same people, touched the same people. It honestly just ends up being bar trivia. For various reasons, Fubuki-senpai, your choices diverge wildly, resigning you, over and over, to different potential fates." Mori flicked on more channels one by one as she was talking. "This is one of the causes of your karmic balance being so hard to calculate."

"What do you mean by karma? The way you keep using the word is odd." 

"Guh? Oh uh. Sorry, my fault. Look, when I say karma, I actually am saying ጌሬኽ". A monosyllabic guttural word that Fubuki probably did not have the throat structure to pronounce. In life, anyway. "I am speaking High Abyssal, and your mind-vestige translates this word as a misleading equivalent. What I mean is changing other people's lives for the better, helping them realize the potential they have been given, in accordance with your own potential across branching fates. Except it includes your effects on other people's karma, and vice versa, and so on. We intuitively understand these things, it's hard to explain."

| Nothing.

"Mmhm."

"So, the calculation is exceedingly difficult in your case. I don't think it will be a surprise where and when most of the branching starts." Mori hit a few more buttons, and hundreds, perhaps thousands of displays lit up together at once. All of them had the same scene somewhere in the loop: Fubuki ruffling through a grimoire, mixing paints, carving runes into the floor into an enormous circle... "This is when you went through with the decision to enact enormous amounts of suffering without relief on a person you knew and know loved you the most in the whole universe. All for what? An utilitarian calculation that it will be all balanced out?"

"You do not need to tell me any of that. You know what I did and why I did it. You know I have been asking myself this question every day since."

"And that makes it okay to perform literal fucking human sacrifice, canine?" There was a metallic tinge in Mori's voice that she never had on Earth, plus an echo-like quality to it. Fubuki really had the feeling that she was talking to something that was not constrained within one personality.

"I am ready to pay for this and have always been. I knew this day would come, reaper. I have not done it with hopes of making my afterlife cushy."

"No, that's not- look. Do you know how close you were to saying 'fuck it' and breaking the spell?" 

"Every day. Every day I forced myself to not do it. The thaumic backlash was too dangerous. It was the only way."

"It's not just that. The negative karma that the anchor siphons, it accumulates. Festers. Every time you comforted him, you made the world a far worse place than it started off as. These three entire rows, that's just this scenario. Top right is you coming to him on his deathbed. You both got incinerated soon after. You know how?"

"Faulty wiring in the hospital?" 

"Close. Global thermonuclear war."

They stood in silence for some time. 

"That's not all! A third of displays here, here and there? That's his suicides. Suicide in three months. Suicide in four months. Six months. The longer, the worse. The backlash isn't something that touches you, except for those two cases, it discharges negative karma into random people directly. Most common scenario from a year onwards is a serial killer that spawns copycats. It's a horrifying spell, not just because of what you personally have been doing to him. You knew any of this could happen, and you still went through with it. "

"He would never have killed himself."

"He did just that, in all of those timelines."

"Those are the ones that did not happen, which just proves my point! You have met him, but you do not know him, not as I do. He was strong. You couldn't tell, but I knew. He could take it, he's the only one that could."

"And so he went through the rest of his worldly existence deprived of the touch of the love of his life because you felt like he could take it? How is that fair?" 

"He wasn't the only one. That's... what makes it fair." Fubuki was done choking back tears. 

| Nothing. 

"The most common scenario after he dies is that you actively kill yourself. It's represented by only one display here," Mori pointed at a dingy CRT with a Czech brand name on it, "because nothing really changes depending on when and how you do it. Usually it's because you want to meet him faster and so on. In a cruel twist of fate, you zip past him to either oblivion or damnation in these cases. Thankfully, that is not what happened."

"May I ask you... and I want you to be honest. The spell. Was it successful? Did we ultimately do good?" 

"The way Sorrow's Anchor works, as I see it, is that it siphons slivers of negative karma from connections as well as pumps enormous amounts of it into the target, but the numbers are not balanced. On net, you're doing a lot more evil than good. Do you know how many times the spell was cast in all of history and ended up not being evil on net?"

"No idea."

"Two. You need too many connections to form to do good on net, it wasn't even possible before XX century technology. One was a TV preacher who used himself as an anchor."

"How was that actually possible, thaumaturgically?" Fubuki has once been a magic nerd. 

"Dissociative identity disorder. He achieved salvation and rejected it because he hated himself too much. Wanted oblivion instead. It was horrid. The second one, Fubuki-sempai..."

"Is me."

"Yes. As painful as it is for us to admit this, yes. Almost every single ending you got where you never cast Sorrow's Anchor was a happy one for both of you. Curiously, some of the happiest were when you first tried to abuse and neglect him without any rituals, to see how it feels like, only to give up. Most of the others where you have were tragic for both of you. But this one, the one you actually lived through and some others like this, a very, very small handful... You had helped the world, and helped it enormously. This, of course, does not mean you earned redemption."

"I have been meaning to tell you that I'm not interested anyway, but that's not true. Where is he? I want him. I want to be with him. I want to say sorry. I want to hold his hand. I want to at least say goodbye. I chose to die alone, of untreated, metastacized late-stage stomach cancer, with no painkillers and no help, to earn myself a sliver of redemption to be able to see him one more time. If that is not enough, I will do it again, as many times as you need me to. I will do anything you tell me. Where is he?"

"Hm." Mori swung her scythe counter-clockwise around their feet, scraping the floor. A moment later, a perfectly circular section of it fell out. The freefall was at first in utter darkness, then illuminated by faint blue glow, the color of Cherenkov radiation, in the distance. The landing was hard — for the old fox, anyway. Mori was fine. She pointed her scythe in the distance. "Missed it by a few miles. We're almost here. Let's go."

"What is this place?" said Fubuki, limping along.

"In determining your proper place in the afterlife, there is a major sidegrade from the karma system, hardwired somehow. We didn't really create the underworld, you know, we're just inheriting it. Figuring out how it works. This one is not bypassable. The martyrdom clause."

"I don't think he was religious. Was he... worshipping me?"

"It's not a religious thing. To qualify for being a martyr, you mostly need to die for a cause that you sincerely think is just. Sacco and Vancetti, for example, counted. Being a martyr isn't quite a free ticket to any fate you want, but it's up there. Also the answer to your question is 'roughly yes'."

"You didn't answer my first question."

"He could choose about anything. He didn't want reincarnation because he was afraid he'd miss you. He didn't want any of the heavens because he wasn't sure you'd meet him there, and he was right. He thought about damnation because it would be okay as long as you were there, but he hoped you would save yourself from it, and he was right. Oblivion wasn't an option. The other afterlives... I'll spare you the time, he chose nothing. That's where we are."

"Is this the Limbo? I heard about it."

"Ha! No. A funny story with Limbo, actually. It was originally created as a resting place for unbaptized children, except it's the Cathars that had the right idea about how to perform the ritual, and they all died in the Albigesian crusade, so it was where all children ended up when it died. Took us forever to figure out that's what was doing it and even longer to fix. That was before my time, actually. Awful place. No, this isn't Limbo, this is nothing."

As they were approaching, Fubuki saw that the blue glow was comprised of individual dots, then that each dot was actually a humanoid figure, of different shapes and sizes. It looked like a giant twister, complete with an eye of the storm.

"Some call it the Vortex, but I prefer not to. It does not describe the experience. This is the resting place of souls with no resting place. The inherent contradiction means that they normally experience no sensory input whatsoever, not even what your mind's vestige substitutes for the feeling of stones on your bare feet as you're walking along these halls. It's a total, absolute nothingness. It does not truly erase them — it isn't an oblivion — but they are totally alone with their own thoughts and their minds will never crack. The only thing that redeems this atrocity is that every person in here chose this fate. He has been waiting for you."

"How long? I lost track of time long ago. Thirty years? Forty?"

"Forty three years, seven months and three days."

| Nothing.

"Can you pull him out?"

"No, of course not. If I could have, I would have, every single one of them. That's not the condition, though — he has been waiting for you and you alone."

"How do I do it, then?"

"All you need to do is step in and find him. Then you will both get to leave — where you end up after this, I have no idea, but you will be together. Be wary, though: once you're in it, the same rules will apply to you. You will have all the time in the world to search, but it will be completely and utterly blind, and, should you fail, you will be both stranded forever. There's another option, though."

"Eh?"

"Turn back. You got a ticket to reincarnation. Wipe the slate clean, hope for a better fate this time. You don't need to do this."

"Mmhm. And by turning away, I prove able of stranding a person in utter solitude and misery, for all eternity, thus immediately making it void?"

Mori grinned.

"While by agreeing to the conditions, I prove able to risk inflicting misery onto myself to the hopes of saving another?"

Mori grinned harder.

"I don't think I need to even respond. You like giving people fake choices, don't you?"

"Even though the choice doesn't matter, it can still be important."

"Is there a chance I will be seeing my friends again, where I'm going, wherever it is?"

"I cannot tell you that, I'm afraid it will influence your choice too much."

"Will I be seeing you again, not-Mori?" Fubuki was already walking towards the twister. There seemed to be a bridge in the void, leading towards it, or maybe the stones appeared under her feet. It was too dark to see.

"I'm sorry, but this is a final goodbye. It's been a pleasure."

"Likewise. Thank you for this, but I don't think I'll be able to keep it where I'm going, even as a keepsake." Fubuki pulled the blanket off her shoulders and tossed it, letting Mori catch it in the air, then thought for a minute more, turned back and run — not because she changed her mind, but to get a last hug. Their height differences made it feel motherly. Mori hugged her back and patted her head. They stood like that for a long time, letting Fubuki's tears stain her shirt. 

"It's time." she whispered after a while. "Farewell, my little fox. Someone is waiting."

Fubuki started walking again, then took to a running gait, almost to force herself to not stop. She stopped when the bridge got to an abrupt end, however, then closed her eyes and took a step forward.

Fubuki was actually knocked out with a chloroform rag once before, by a crazed stalker. She didn't have many memories of that event, aside from the efforts of disposing of a corpse with a torn out throat. This was kind of like that, but so much worse.

| A slight breeze?

She didn't bother scouting out her target beforehand, because the souls were almost completely indistinct, and there were so many of them. There was no hope of actually searching, because she could feel nothing. It was a foolish idea and a loathsome choice to inflict on others, even those as evil as her — she would spend an eternity here, utterly alone. So much worse than oblivion.

| What?

The void ate at her. It was the exact opposition of a weighed blanket. Stripping out her resolve, dismantling all of it that made her her. She needed to resist it first, needed to fight being one with the void. She felt nothing, but she also felt something else.

| Love.

She stretched out her hand and moved forward, guided by it and by nothing else. She did not know how large the storm was, did not know how long this would take. She did not care. She had words to say.

| She came back.

With nothing but itself, soul-on-soul contact felt excruciatingly... everything. Fingers wrapped between fingers, every spot that touched each other being painful and hot and cold and everything else at the same time. 

| It's time.

They wrapped themselves around each other, then slowly moved towards the past of most resistance — that's where the eye of the storm was. Probably. They were rewarded with a sudden rush of upwards motion, then everything went utterly dark, even darker than nothing.

Fubuki woke up, feeling fresh, wet grass on bare skin. She felt intensely odd, every movement unfamiliar to her. With no other reflective surface around, she turned over and looked at a drop of dew.

She did not recognize this body or this face. She still had ears and a tail, but her fur was pitch black. Black! She did not have a single fox in her entire lineage with a spot of black fur... apparently, anyway. 

| What is this? What's with my body? Am I hallucinating? I was told I will not have the relief of hallucination. What are these?

Fubuki turned to the side and shook the shoulder of another body besides her. It was also utterly unfamiliar, but could only belong to one other person.

Her eyes looked the same.

| Her eyes look the same.

"I... I would like to apologize, but there's nothing I could say that could possibly repay for what I did to you — what I chose to do to you. All I wanted is to see you again."

| "Me too."

"I have regretted this every moment of my hollow life and will regret it in this one. I wanted it to be over, I wanted to save you, I wanted to do something, but there was no other way. I'm sorry."

|"There's nothing to forgive you for."

"What?"

|"I knew you had a reason. There was no way you would have done this if you didn't have one. I got an explanation when I died, but i didn't really need one. If anything, it made me admire you a bit more. To be honest, I did hate you for a while."

"Me too. Hated myself, I mean."

|"It was after the first, I think, few years in the void. How long has it been?"

"Forty three years, beloved."

|"I hated you so much. I could think of nothing else but how much I despise you for tricking me into inflicting this on myself, all because you wanted to be nice to people I have never met. I was passing the time by imagining horrible tortures I would inflict on you when I finally come back. I spent, I think, a dozen years on this. It disgusts me. I wish I were never told I'll never go insane in the vortex, at least I would have an excuse for myself, but I do not. I love you too much. I missed you so much. Please never leave me. Why am I a girl?"

"I don't know. I was told nothing about this place or what will happen to us, other than we will meet again. And, maybe, some other people I miss. Not as much as I missed you, but still."

|"Is it okay, though? Can we file a complaint? Is there a support ticket system? Where's the main menu button? I'm just kidding."

"It must be horrible on your end, but honestly? I don't mind. I've always liked girls more, anyway."

|"I'll get used to it." I hope. "Let's go meet people. Better yet, let's find some clothes first, it's starting to get chilly... assuming there's civilization anywhere in this place. Can you weave?"

"No."

|"What use is a wife that doesn't even know how to weave, in our traditionalist household?"

"I could ask you the same question. Plus, till death do us part, right?"

|"So?"

"I'm not your wife, I'm your friend."