For Eternity - Personalized Framed Print

He’d spent centuries surrounded by people and still been utterly alone.

Not because mortals died, but because they lived so small.

Whole lives poured into petty gossip, tiny grudges, shallow little wants. Hearts that beat, but never burned.

Once, he’d tried making others immortal. It was worse.

They dragged their smallness with them into eternity—more time for the same timid fears, the same narrow dreams, the same desperate clinging to safety. So he chose solitude.

Better the clean, sharp ache of being alone than the slow suffocation of being endlessly, exquisitely misunderstood.

And then he met her.

She should have screamed. They all did.

Some crossed themselves. Some spat prayers. Most just ran.

But she… she stepped closer.

She looked at him, really saw him.

Saw the sorrow in the hollows of his eyes, the tired set of his shoulders, the careful distance he kept from the world. Not like a monster. Not like a mistake. Like someone who had been alone for far too long.

It hit him like a cathedral window shattering—sudden, bright, impossible to ignore.

The fortress he’d built around himself—centuries of distance and discipline—splintered under the simple, unbearable kindness in her gaze. For the first time in ages, he realized he didn’t want to go back to the cold.

He couldn’t.

And she saw, in him, the fire of a billion stars. The rise and ruin of cities. Forgotten temples. Libraries no living scholar would ever touch. The weight of centuries carried in silence.

He was proof of a universe that was not small and grey and finished.

He was proof there was more. So much more.

She couldn’t imagine turning away and pretending she hadn’t seen it. Couldn’t imagine going back to tea and small talk and the dull, safe life she was supposed to want.

So she reached out and laid her hand against his chest—bone, not flesh, and still somehow warm.

In that touch, he felt the bright, reckless blaze of her: a mortal who refused to shrink, who burned with curiosity instead of fear.

In that touch, she felt the depth of him: the endless night, yes, but also the stars hidden inside it.

She chose him—the dark, the mysteries, the endless unknown.

And for the first time in centuries, forever didn’t feel like a punishment.

It felt like a promise.