The Roman Emperor Hadrian outlawed the teaching of Torah after the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE. Rabbi Akiva refused to stop. He gathered students in public and taught, knowing the cost. He was arrested, imprisoned, and eventually executed — his flesh raked with iron combs, according to Berakhot 61b, while he recited the Shema aloud until his soul left on the word echad, One.
Gaster's Exempla (No. 245, 1924) preserves a quieter coda. After Akiva died in prison, it was Elijah the Prophet — the eternal wanderer of Jewish tradition, who appears at every circumcision and every seder — who came to the jail. Elijah found Rabbi Yehoshua HaGarsi, Akiva's devoted disciple, and brought him to the cell.
Together they carried Akiva's body out. Elijah led the way to a hidden cavern. Inside the cavern, waiting as if prepared by unseen hands, were a bed, a table, and a candle. They laid him down. The candle burned.
The scene is small and utterly Jewish. No triumphalism. No chariots of fire. Just the greatest teacher of the second century laid to rest by the oldest prophet of the Bible, in a quiet room lit by a single flame — the same flame, the mystics say, that still lights every page of Torah he taught.