All that lives must die, passing through steel to eternity
The Old Axolotl“All that lives must die, passing through steel to eternity” is a recurring expression that sets universal mortality beside the possibility of endurance beyond it. Its defining image is a passage through steel: death is not presented as the final word, but as a threshold on the way to eternity.
Form and Meaning
The sentence moves from a broad declaration about all living things to a more particular image of transformation. “Must die” gives the opening its force of inevitability; “passing through steel” then makes the route beyond death material and mechanical rather than abstract. The final word, “eternity,” leaves that passage oriented toward a state beyond ordinary life, without explaining how it is reached.
Recurrence
The expression appears twice in the supplied text, first at E00147 and again at E01421, in identical wording. Its return makes the line a repeated formulation rather than a single passing remark. The evidence does not establish who speaks it or what specific event prompts either appearance, so its significance rests on the recurrence and on the stark conjunction it preserves: living things die, yet the phrase imagines a way through steel toward eternity.
