The afterlife was a cold, dark place.
Contrary to mortal belief, the afterlife wasn’t meant to reward those who had lived a good life, nor was it a place to punish those who had not. It was merely another realm; a kingdom made of spirits who had passed on. A place from which lost souls might catch glimpses of those left behind as they came to terms with who they once were in their preparations for eternal rest. The goddess Izanami knew this truth well, but as she sat within the halls of the forsaken, all she was capable of noticing was the chill, a dreary cold that harbored an endless sense of foreboding loneliness.
She missed her dear husband, Izanagi. No doubt the god of creation was still somewhere in the divine realm, lamenting her passing as much as she was. But, even though they were both gods, she knew neither of them could violate the laws of death. Izanami had already partaken in the food of the afterlife, and her soul was forever bound to this place. Not even the power of her beloved could bring her back if this realm did not wish it.
She sat, and, as those with all the time in the universe often do, she thought. She thought of the life she once held, of how she and her husband had shaped and given life to the mortal world. Over countless happy centuries, they had created endless wonders and had birthed equally wonderful gods to rule over and protect their creations. It had been the last of those divine children—a god of fire—that brought about her demise. The newborn deity had been born aflame, and the goddess had been incinerated from the inside out the moment she brought her newest child into the world. It had not been the child’s fault, of course—their son could do little to control his fire at such a young age. Nonetheless, she prayed that Izanagi wouldn’t direct any anger over her death towards their child.
As she sat and brooded, the sound of footsteps broke the eternal silence of the spirit realm. Despite herself, Izanami felt a glimmer of hope. She stood, turning towards the sound.
The newcomer’s eyes were squinted, straining to pierce through the darkness of the spirit realm, but Izanami could see him clearly. It was Izanagi, come to visit her in the realm of the dead. She called out his name, happy to see her beloved one last time.
The god of creation stopped and looked at her. “Izanami, my love,” he said, “I’ve come to bring you from this wretched place.”
Izanami sighed. “Not even you have that power, dear.” Her voice was remorseful, her heart and spirit wishing she could return to the land of the living with her beloved even as her brain knew that she could not. Despite all their power, not even gods could cross that line.
Her husband stood still, contemplating. He took a step forward. “Then allow me to see your face one last time,” he said, “so that I might remember it for the eternity to come.”
Izanami backed away from his approach, and the remains of her heart raced with panic. Death was not kind on the appearance, particularly not to one who had perished in flames the way she had. If her husband saw her now, he would see not the visage of the beautiful maiden she’d once been, but rather a burned and rotting corpse; a twisted mockery of what she’d once been. “I cannot grant you that, my love,” she said. She couldn’t bear for this hideous appearance to be her beloved’s last memory of her. “You may ask anything else of me, but not that.”
Izanagi laughed. “You are being foolish,” he said. He took another step forward as his voice roared through the halls of the dead, drawing the attention of each and every one of the realm’s silent souls. “What could prevent you from wanting me to see your beautiful face?”
“You cannot!” She continued to back away. “It’s better for us both that you not look upon me in this world.” The goddess turned and walked back towards the halls of the dead, towards the eternal gates through which her husband could not follow. Despite herself, she paused and looked back. “Goodbye, my love.”
Izanagi’s fists clenched, his eyes burning with fire. He stepped forward and grabbed her shoulder before she could cross the threshold, and his spare hand reached for the comb that held his hair together. The wooden comb ignited like a torch as divine power coursed through it, bringing light to the underworld for the first time in millennia. The light washed over her, revealing every inch of her charred, maggot-ridden flesh.
Izanagi screamed. “Demon!” The great god turned and ran. “You… you are not my wife, monster!”
For the first time since she’d arrived in the afterlife, Izanami felt real emotion. The dull fire of anger coursed and raged through her body. For all his words, for all his gestures of love, did Izanagi think so little of her that he would abandon her because of her appearance? Was her formerly fair form all he cared about?
A bloodcurdling yell roared from the goddess’s throat. Wisps of green soulfire danced across her rotten flesh, and her spirit tore free from its grotesque prison as what was left of her corpse disintegrated. The surrounding spirits stirred, awakened by the sound of a voice that promised purpose. A voice that promised vengeance against the living who’d left the forsaken here to rot. The spirits’ strength bolstered her own, and she felt power welling within her, a divine might that matched the strength she had once possessed as a living deity. Her spirit raced after her unfaithful husband. She would make sure he answered for this betrayal.
The souls of the dead followed her, the walls and tunnels of the underworld shifting and reshaping themselves at the goddess’s will. Izanagi looked back at her once more and drew his paintbrush. He painted a line of dots behind him, and pillars of bamboo erupted from the ink, forming a makeshift barrier.
The bamboo wall meant little to Izanami, and she barrelled straight towards it. A spectral hand reached out, and the hardy stalks withered at her touch, crumbling into ash as pale flames consumed them. She roared, and millions of lost souls roared with her.
Izanagi sprinted up the tunnel. He didn’t dare look back, his gaze focused on the distant glow of moonlight that promised refuge at the corridor’s end. His brush slipped from his grasp and clattered along the ground, gently rolling down the slope back towards the realm of the dead. If the great god noticed, however, he showed no indication of it as he scrambled towards the exit, never once displaying even a moment of hesitation.
An icy weight sat in his stomach as a frozen chill caressed his skin. His mind struggled to recognize the foreign emotion. It couldn’t be. Was he, the god who was known as the “almighty father of creation,” afraid?
“You dare abandon me?” Izanami’s voice echoed down the hall, and Izanagi wasn’t sure if the echo was just due to the tunnel’s shape or due to the millions of other souls that spoke along with her.
Every inch of stone around Izanagi hummed, whispering promises of eternity and despair. He swore that the tunnel itself was reaching for him, that the walls and ceiling were closing in as if this forsaken realm wanted him trapped as much as his late wife did.
He realized that he wasn’t afraid. He was terrified.
Izanagi felt something soft beneath his feet and heard the rustling of grass. Moonlight washed over him as he emerged from the tunnel, and gratitude washed through him in equal measure.
Another scream rang out behind him.
He couldn’t let her roam free. Every fiber of Izanagi’s being knew that whatever his wife had become now was wrong. The monster chasing him could never be allowed to set foot in the world of the living. He reached for his brush only to find it missing, and his head darted back and forth, scanning for anything else he could use, anything that might at least slow down the thing that had once been his wife.
Izanagi’s gaze settled on a giant boulder. He ignored the protests of his weary body and called his divine power to him, muscles straining as he hefted the massive chunk of stone over his head. With a roar, he hurled the rock towards the tunnel, and the floating isle of the gods shook as the boulder crashed into the maw of the mountain.
The god placed a palm on the newly-formed barrier and spoke an ancient chant. Light surged from his hand, and glowing runes burned into the stone’s surface. A shimmering curtain of energy draped over the mountain, providing a spiritual barrier to match the physical one.
“Izanagi!” The ground shook as Izanami screamed from the opposite side. “If you leave me now, I swear I will destroy a thousand of your creations each day.”
The safety of the barrier brought back Izanagi’s confidence and defiance. “Then I shall give life to fifteen-hundred each day!”
As he walked away, her piercing shrieks raged after him.
Izanami lost track of how many years had passed. That was fine, though. She didn’t need to keep track. Time was a concept of the living, something that was unnecessary for one whose fate was to fester in an eternal hell.
At least she didn’t suffer alone. Millions of souls endured alongside her: the souls of the ones who’d never been allowed to pass on, souls that Izanagi had deemed too insufficient to join the ranks of his immortal Celestials. Souls that had suffered for an eternity before her and would suffer another eternity alongside her.
She could feel every last drop of those souls’ anger, sadness, pain, and desperation. They heard the laughter of Izanagi’s chosen above them, hated the Celestials who had been allowed to escape this place while they remained trapped, and she hated with them. They sensed the joy of the loved ones they had left behind, felt rage towards the living who had forgotten them, and she raged with them. They despaired at their eternal suffering and isolation, and she despaired with them.
This was not the world she had helped Izanagi create. The souls of the forgotten cried for help, prayed for hope, and the goddess who’d once been called the mother of creation knew that she had found a new family. They needed her, and she would free them. All of them.
The goddess looked up at the tunnel that led out of the underworld. She could sense her ex-husband’s power, still powering the divine barrier that kept her from smashing the boulder that blocked their escape to dust. The barrier was not the same as when Izanagi had first made it, though. It had grown old. He had grown old.
She smiled. Already she could see the cracks. They weren’t big enough for her to slip through, but lesser souls? Yes, that would do.
Izanami floated away from the tunnel, traversing a maze of corridors that a living being could never hope to navigate. She approached the bank of a river that was utterly devoid of color. Tiny spirits, the recently-deceased souls of the weak and unremarkable, rode the river’s silent current like fish as it ferried them deeper into the afterlife. Most of the pitiful human souls surrendered to the flow without resistance, accepting their eternal punishment with an indifference that the goddess found revolting. One soul, however, was different. It swam against the current with all its strength, trying to force its way upstream even as the river pulled it backward with a force it could never hope to overcome.
She kneeled and reached a hand into the water, catching the defiant soul and scooping it out of the river. It wriggled in her grasp, still determined to make its own fate.
“Patience, little one,” Izanami said. Pale flames flickered around her hand as she filled the tiny soul with divine power. It grew as her magic coursed through it, and she placed it on the ground as it grew too big for her to hold. The soul shifted and warped until it settled into the shape of a young boy.
“I… I shouldn’t be here,” the boy said. “What is this? Who am I?”
Izanami patted the child on the head. “You are Yami,” she said, “and you will be the one to set us all free.”
Author’s Note: This is the second of the three Okami prequel shorts I wrote on FanFiction back in 2014. Chronologically, it’s the first of the three shorts, followed by The First Eclipse and then Blood Moon. It’s inspired heavily by the Shinto myths of Izanagi and Izanami, specifically the tale of Izanami’s death.