Dean, Sam, and Adam walk along a path together. It's twilight, and they are hoping to reach the next town soon where they will be able to get rooms and rest. As they round a bend in the path though, they see a river. It was too deep to wade across and to dangerous to swim.
The brothers, however, are learned in manual labor and they walk until they find a tree tall enough to span the river. They use shovels to dig out the dirt and roots in front of it and push from the back until it falls, creating a bridge on which they can cross the river safely.
When they are halfway across though, a figure appears before them. He is tall and pale and old, and the brothers draw weapons but don't shoot, not yet. The figure was Death. He was angry that he had been cheated out of three new victims, for travelers usually drowned in the river. But Death was cunning. He pretended to congratulate the three brothers upon their hard work and said that each had earned a prize for having been clever enough to evade him.
"I am death, and you have beaten me," Said he. "Many die in this river, but you were smart enough to find a way to cross it. I have heard of you, Winchesters, and I will grant you each any one thing."
Dean, the oldest and most combative brother, asked for a gun that can kill anything. Death created a colt and thirteen bullets, and gave them to Dean.
Sam, the second and most arrogant brother, wanted to humiliate death farther. He asked for the power to recall people from Death. Death created an amulet for Sam and told him it had the power to bring people back.
And then Death asked Adam what he wanted. Adam was the humblest and also the wisest of the brothers, and he did not trust Death. So he asked for something that would enable him to go forth from that place without being followed by Death. And death, most unwillingly, handed over his own Runes of invisibility.
Then Death stood aside and allowed the three brothers to continue on their way, and they did so, talking with wonder of the adventure they had had, and admiring Death's gifts.
The brothers reached the town they were traveling to and went to the hunters bar there.
Dean drank and played pool with fellow hunters, where he boasted loudly of the powerful gun he had snatched from Death himself, and of how it made him invincible.
That very night, once he had returned to his motel room, another hunter snuck up on the oldest brother as he lay in his bed. The hunter took the gun and, for good measure, shot him. And so Death took the first brother for his own.
Meanwhile, Sam wandered to a nearby park, where he sat on a bench alone. Here he took out the amulet that had the power to recall the dead, and turned it three times in his hand. To his amazement and his delight, Jessica appeared before him. Yet she was sad and cold, separated from him as by a veil. Though she had returned to the mortal world, she did not truly belong there and suffered. Finally, Sam, driven mad with hopeless longing, killed himself so as truly to join her. And so Death took the second brother for his own.
But though Death searched for Adam for many years, he was never able to find him. It was only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brothers tattoos of the Runes wore off. He passed the knowledge of the Runes on to his son and summoned death. He greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life.