[ WP ] A man has cheated Death and achieved true immortality and gloats at Death about his victory only to realize after multiple aeons that immortality was a mistake and mortality is a long lost dream and now he treats Death as a former enemy he can not reconcile with .

I had assumed, all those echoes ago, that death would have been a woman. They create life, it only seemed poetically fitting that the ultimate entity responsible for taking it away would be as well. But no, death came in a form entirely lacking in beauty, grace, or even the tiniest shred of dignity. 
 
 Death was a little grey man. You know the man. You've seen him every day of your life. When you are born, you scream, because you are seeing the man for the first time. In those first months of life, you cry, and you wail, and you flail about hoping someone else will see the man. But like the best told lies, eventually you come to accept him. Before you are old enough to even utter a word, he has blended into the background, forgotten. When the human brain receives the same information over and over and over again, it ceases to record it. Look in the mirror for long enough and your vision will distort as your mind goes on autopilot. The same principal applies to death. In fact, his presence is how your brain learns to do so in the first place. 
 
 He is with all of us. There is no use in looking for him, I doubt you would know what to do if you did. I did n't. 
 
 I was not young when I found him, or noticed him I suppose is a better way of putting it. I was an old man, tired from my days, and the troubles they had brought. I watched as my son died. Sickness took him. It is an unnatural thing to outlive your offspring. I was alone with him. Or so I thought. 
 
 That man walked up and took my son. Without a sound. Without a whisper. Without a sign at all. He took my son. 
 
 And I saw him do it. Only through his own will would I be able to see him. Only by making his presence known. But it was not for my death that he did so, it was for another. For this, I know myself to be unique. 
 
 He stepped away from my now cold son, and he looked me right in the eyes. His were cold, shriveled, tired. They spoke of endless time, seeing all the sadness the world knew, and a knowledge of something greater that had destroyed him, and left him the small dusty grey figure before me. Naked, alone, barely skin and bone. 
 
 I ripped him limb from limb, thinking only of my son, only of the rage I felt at my loss. Never did death's eyes stray from mine. Never did his face betray any emotion. 
 
 `` Give him back!'' I roared, screaming at a man the world ignored. 
 
 Death said nothing, and did nothing, a pile of creaking, groaning flesh and bone on the floor. He blinked. 
 
 `` I've beaten you! Give him back! I've bested you! I've won now give him back!'' 
 
 At this, and only this, did death give any response. 
 
 `` Only now is victory yours.'' And with that, death faded into nothing. I watched him crumble in upon himself. 
 
 Death never came for me. Years passed. Decades, centuries, and death never came. I had beaten him, of course death would not come. His sole words perplexed me for centuries, but they eventually faded from my mind. 
 
 I grew tired of living with time. The novelty fades. I had been tired of living since my second century, and countless had passed. Life as I knew it had moved on without me. Days ceased to be, then months and years. Blinks of the eye could span a millennium. Entropy took hold, worlds crumbled. There was no fire or chariots, simply icy blackness. 
 
 I saw things, at the end. Things I should not care to think of ever. But I also learned things. I learned truths and secrets. 
 
 And then all began anew. The cycle resumed, and I moved with it. But not as I had before. Truth changes you, absolute truth changes absolutely. I was no longer the man, the being I once was. And so I wandered creation, again and again and again, each time watching as entropy took hold. I had slain death all those years ago, and yet I knew him to be but an agent of entropy, a spark in a great inferno. He bore witness to worlds ending just as I did. 
 
 Then, one particular day, I watched as a young mans world ended. I touched his hand, and felt the entropy that I had come to know so well take hold of him. He was gone. I looked up, and stared into the eyes of the mans father. 
 
 `` Give him back!'' He roared. 
 
 Moments later, I found rest. I finally came to know Death. 
 
 I could not help but smile before I faded to dust. 
 

