Death did not find Seven Kharaos as it had so many others, alone and afraid. Instead the bastard wore a triumphant grin frozen to his face by the pain and the frigid cold. It was the smirk of a man who had cheated destiny; a man who had died a hero -- and the world itself, shuddering at its very core, resounding with the mechanical thrum of Fate could neither imagine nor abide such a fairy tale outcome.
      No, Death did not find Seven Kharaos as it had so many others -- all others, in fact -- for the first time since mortality reached its inevitable conclusion and found It waiting at the end, the Reaper had come as a harbinger of life.
     Nor did the fallen find death in the way one expects or hopes. Not in the sense of wishing to die comfortably in bed, slain by the scythe-like hands of time, nor in glory -- a martyr for some ultimately insignificant cause, eroded by the immutable winds of change. Such things had never held meaning to him.
     Seven Kharaos had simply not expected the red-rimmed eyes of Death to so much resemble his own.



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