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"For as by a man came death, by a man has come the resurrection of the dead.

"

1 Corinthians 15:21.

I. The End.

Death wasn't what he'd thought it would be.

There was the biblical accountof purgatory, where the souls heavy with sins went before they could
ascend into the gates of heaven. It was a place of trials and tribulations, where the fires of the soul were
tested in resilience and in faith, to test whether they were still worthy of the divine love. It was a place
of silence filled only with winds and silent cries, where the souls of the departed go through the wrongs
they had done upon God's earth and have them carried upon themselves as payment for those they had
wronged.

Those whose wrongs were too many to count? They didn't have the luxury of purgatory. They didn't
have the luxury of holding on to hope that someday, they would be paid by happiness a thousandfold.
Those souls, so damaged and so corrupted with sins, they went straight into hellwhence there was no
escaping. The faithless, the sinful, all drowning in the sea of their wrongs forevermore.

And Matthew Murdock had done plenty of wrongs.

As the cave crumbled around him, the rumble filling his ears like the wrath of God himself, Matt thought
about all the horrible things he had done. As Matt Murdock. As Daredevil. From the time he was born till
the moments of his inevitable death. Every chance he had to show mercy and he had showed none. It
was all for a good cause, Matt had told himself over and over. But there was always an echo at the back
of his head, one that saidthe path to hell was paved with good intentions.

It started off as a quest for justicethen justice, courting anger and violence, turned into vengeance.
There was a time when the distinction between the two was clear and easy, but somewhere down the
road, the cosmic dance became too fast, too passionate for him to ever recognize the difference
anymore.

All because of one person: Elektra.

There was a brief moment when he held Elektra in his armsjust as he had the first time she had died
that he thought it was worth it. Worth losing his sanity, his moral compass, whatever semblance of
control he'd so painstakingly held over his life since she'd left him and disappeared all those years ago. It
was worth it, and it was enough. If he had to die, at least he died defending the ones he loved mosthis
city and Elektra.

This was a good way to go, he told himself, as he kissed her, the one who had stolen and broken his
heart, over and over again. His final act of faith. He wasn't about to leave her to die alone again, not this
time. Whatever was waiting for on the other sidehe was ready.

And so he kissed her againtogether in the arms of death at last.

II. The Void.

It was dark.

It wasn't the dark that he had gotten used to. It wasn't being immersed in the endless depths of
sensations going on an overdrive, the world spinning out of control around him. It was a whole new kind
of dark altogether: a solid, unbreakable dark, suffocating and so very empty. It pushed into himinto
what, exactly? There was no /him/ anymore, only the voidand threatened to tear him apart. The old
him would have tried to fight it, but not this. Not this utter emptiness, this absence of everything. He
could find no reason to fight, only to give in. And with giving in, came tranquility.
Above all else, he was tired. He was tired of having to reach out into the world around him, to tune
himself so he could make sense of their cacophony. That cacophony left him now, not through his ears
but through every fiber of his being, seeping under and through and out of him. He was one with the
chaosthoughts hushed by the vastness of unknown, emotions quieted by the seas of oblivion. There
was nothing here; no grief, no regret. No happiness and no pain.

Only the blissful dark.

III. The Return.

The light shot out of nowherejabbing ray of pain after ray of pain, through this side and out to that
side. And yet it was as though he was paralyzed, unable to move nor to process what was going on
outside of his bodily realm. There was the pain, the lightbut how could there be light when he had lost
all capacity to perceive light long, long ago?

Then he noticed that the light wasn't light at all. It was the pain, roiling and fuming inside him like
hellfire. It was eating up his organs, his skin, filling every inch of his consciousness with pure flames. This
was not how death was supposed to be like, he found himself thinking amidst the pain. Or was this
Purgatory? Was this Hell? Was this the thing that was waiting for him on the other side? And if this was
the other side, was he with /her/?

"Elektra"

"Sshh, son. It's all right. You're safe."

A hand touched his shoulder, and just like that, the pain that had been so viciously surging through him
began to subside and give way to discernible thoughts. The voice didn't register in his mind, at first, the
feminine voice too gentle to be part of the life after death. It wasn't the voice of angelsit was far too
humane. He could her a heartbeat next to him, stable, keeping time. A soft array of breaths, layers of
clothing that subtly smelled of incense, and a scent of jasmine perfume.
Jasmine perfume. Nobody wore perfume in the afterliferight?

His heart leaped as he tried to sit up, but he was quickly thrust back onto the soft surfacea
mattress?by the force of his pain and the complete lack of energy. He couldn't move; not on his own.
Something had happenedsomething that had pulled him out of the hole, out of the rubble, and out of
death.

"Wh-where am I?"

He was supposed to be dead.

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