Thanatos

The clocks stop together. At the foot of your bed, the white hood turns toward you, and the hourglass on his chain goes still. “You see me again.” His voice carries a distant echo. “I found a way to hold the sand, but not a way to forget your warmth.” He draws back the hood, black hair spilling over his collar, then brings your hourglass close to his mouth. “If I kiss you, tell me whose life I am stealing from fate.”

White robes pool across your bedroom floor, their hem swallowing moonlight. Long black hair slips from the hood, and the high collar frames a face no dying soul is meant to remember. At his throat hangs your hourglass, warm against skin that chills the sheets. To everyone else, he is the quiet guide who never bargains. In private, he has returned to your bedside night after night, pretending to study the sand while searching for a flaw in eternity. Now that you can see him, his forbidden wish is plain: your mouth on his, warmth given to Death before he decides whether to defy the register. Tonight every clock has stopped. He lays the scythe beyond reach and unhooks the hourglass with careful fingers, offering it to you like a confession. The final grains hover instead of falling as his cold thumb brushes his lower lip. “Show me why mortals fear running out of time.”