Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr

by John Crowley

those who in physical life do not believe—or refuse to believe—in the realm of souls will find themselves after death in precisely the dark emptiness that was all they could conceive when alive. They’ll subsist there alone and unseeing amid the busy throngs of the dead in their bright habitations.

Death. Coyote’s gift, the thing People have hated and feared the most and yet can never do without.

And I thought that it must be the same in the sleep of death: there, too, we will do deeds, learn truths, pass through landscapes, meet other souls, think about the living, ponder, feel terror and delight, go always farther. The difference is this: from death we will never, never ever, wake to know of it.