Death

He does not come to end the story, but to clear the field for the next chapter. He is the black knight on the white horse, the great equalizer who takes the king and the peasant with the same skeletal hand. "Nothing can grow until the dead wood is burned," he rasps. He represents the necessity of transformation, the end of a cycle, and the liberation of the soul from the rotting past. He is the sunset that promises a dawn.