Oh, darling, death wasn't true death.
When you had just died, you would find that you hadn't lost consciousness. That would immediately put you at ease, because what you feared most was that death would be followed by nothingness. As long as you still had your consciousness, you could struggle, cry for help, and recall your mother's face. That made you feel better, as if dying wasn't so painful after all.
Then someone would usually come to take you away. Perhaps it was Black Death Emperor, or perhaps it was Anton Arcane of The Black. In any case, so long as you had formed a connection with any kind of power in your lifetime—even if it had been a childish, ignorant attempt to use willpower to ignite a flame—you might have created an almost imperceptible resonance with the Green Lantern energy. Then, after your death, you would belong to Black Death Emperor.
You would remain in Black Death Emperor's realm of death, receiving a grave of your own and becoming part of his power. Even though you were merely a Black Lantern Corps corpse that could only howl mindlessly, with your entire brain forcibly filled with loyalty to Black Death Emperor, those endless years would still be hard to endure.
Then, one day, some tremendous shockwave would come from the DC Multiverse and pass through the entire realm of death. You would discover that the DC Multiverse had rebooted. Due to a minor deviation in history, one of your ancestors had never met your great-grandmother. They had parted like Jack and Rose aboard the Titanic, and you and your eighteen generations of ancestors had ceased to exist. But what meaning could that have for a dead person?
It did. It did.
Your consciousness sank into darkness. Amid endless white light,