Though to many, it seemed a lifetime since the reapers had first appeared. Only a decade had actually passed. A decade since the dark tower known as Afterlife had first appeared. The Tower that housed the souls of the recent dead and the reapers that collected them. Transfixed as it was somewhere between this world and the next. Completely changing the concept of life and death on Earth.
Afterlife had neither descended from the heavens nor emerged from the crust of the Earth but rather simply happened into existence all at once. Its appearance in the heart of one of the greatest cities of men destroyed thousands of homes, shops, and schools. Killing hundreds of thousands more as it displaced several square miles.
The tower extended far into the sky. Though it was not the tallest building that many had seen. All who observed it knew it was anything but ordinary and far more than just another skyscraper in the skyline. It radiated ominously in the reflection of the moon and was hardly visible under the light of the sun. Guttural and jagged, its walls of black onyx alone in the nearby skyline as even birds avoided coming close. The adjacent ground was cracked and fallow the base of the tower extending up from within a scar of disturbed Earth and broken rock.
For miles around Afterlife, a shimmer in the air could be seen a faint hinting that something was there just beyond the ability of the eye to perceive something fixated on the tower. The answer visible the closer to the tower one looked as the incorporeal forms of people became more and more apparent until near the entrance they appeared as flesh and blood.
From anywhere within the city, the tower could be seen as nervous passerby drove onwards over lifted roads. Anxious families closed the blinds of their apartments and lofts to avoid seeing the otherworldly structure. It was something they all learned to live with. Afterlife would always be part of their lives. The knowledge of its purpose seemingly ingrained without cause into their minds and supported by the risen dead who had climbed its floors to live again. Everyone knew in short order what the tower was. A chance at a second life. Proof that something exists after death.