The air was thick with an unsettling stillness, the kind of silence that only existed after the chaos had subsided. Ethan spoke after a few minutes of staring at the now awoken man.
"For a minute there I thought you were dead," Ethan muttered, his voice tinged with a mix of confusion and astonishment.
"I'm not? That's bad. What's the point of living anyway?" came the dry, almost apathetic reply.
Ethan's brow furrowed in disbelief. The man's words had always carried an edge, but this—this was different. He was speaking as if life had already abandoned him, and the reality of the situation settled over Ethan like a cold shroud.
"Can't you just kill yourself? You're tired so just end it all and rest."
The man's lips twisted into something that could barely be called a smile, more of a cynical quirk that only deepened the mystery surrounding him. "I'm afraid not. I can't die. Or at least, I've not found any method to kill myself."
Ethan's thoughts swirled in confusion, trying to piece together what was happening. What was this? Some twisted joke? Some kind of riddle?
"What are you?" Ethan finally asked, his voice steady but laced with a growing urgency to understand.
"I don't know," came the simple response.
"What are you?" The man asked Ethan back
"Same answer as yours," Ethan replied.
"So where are we?"
The man shifted, his legs struggling to hold him upright as he glanced around. The broken landscape was all they had now. No more civilization, no more structures—just desolate ruins, an infinite stretch of empty sand, and a sky that seemed to mirror their ruin.
"I brought you to a place where you can be shielded from the sand and heal properly."
"Thanks for that but I should be on my way. I have to go find better ways to die."
"What happened here?" Ethan pressed again, this time with a hint of frustration in his tone.
The man chuckled dryly, as if the question was one that had been asked too many times. "What do you mean, what happened here? Everyone knows what happened."
"I've been... Away."
"Another dimension, huh?" The man asked, disbelief still thick in his voice.
"Let's address the elephant in the room first. What happened? Who caused this? Are there any survivors apart from you?"
"One," the man replied, his voice flat. "Hell broke loose. Two, one idiot like that messed with the timeline so the universe closed in on itself. Three, I don't think so. I'm only alive because I was... away and maybe because I can't die. When I got back, a sandstorm carried me and buried me like we had issues before."
Ethan shook his head in disbelief. "That explains why I found you there. Why not just go to where you came from then since you hate this place so much?"
The man's expression grew distant, his eyes momentarily unfocused. "I can't. My machine is screwed. The impact from the fall damaged it. I'm stuck here, and I can't die."
Ethan let out a frustrated sigh. "What are you really?"
The man looked at him with a hard stare. "Humans aren't supposed to know of the existence of anything other than humans, so I'm not supposed to tell you."
Ethan raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms. "I'm not human."
"Still not telling you."
"How do we stop this?" Ethan asked, the desperation creeping into his voice.
The man's shoulders slumped as he stared out at the destruction. "There's no stopping what has already happened."
Ethan's heart sank. "So there's nothing we can do."
"Precisely," the man said, his voice flat and final.
"You said some idiot messed with time and caused this. Can't we go back and fix it? Stop whatever caused this from ever happening." Ethan asked, his mind racing with the possibility of turning back the clock.
The man smirked, but there was no humor in it. "We can't because there's no time machine."
Ethan paused, confusion flooding his brain. "How did you know that it was a mess in time that caused this?"
"Umm..." The man hesitated, his eyes darting away.
Ethan's expression shifted to one of suspicion. "You're the idiot, aren't you?"
"Umm... There was just something I had to take care of."
"And what was so important that you had to destroy the world to get?"
"I needed money urgently, so I went to rob my dad. He was crazy rich back in the day. Knowing my dad, he didn't change any of the passwords from what it was 15 years later."
Ethan's jaw dropped. "You're really an idiot."
"So it turned out that the money I robbed from him was supposed to be used to pay for my mother's hospital bills. She was pregnant with me, and since there was no money because it was stolen, she died. And baby me died as well."
"If you died in the past, shouldn't you disappear from the present then?"
"Time works a bit differently than you think. Since my dad never paid for my mother's surgery, it meant I was never born. And since I was never born... then how did I rob my father?"
"That one little act you went back to do changed the timeline completely, causing a paradox."
"The timeline was trying so hard to fix itself that it tried to eliminate me."
"But you can't die so it made matters worse." Ethan said slowly, piecing it together.
"Precisely," the man answered grimly. "So it started closing in on itself and caused this destruction you see here."
"Does what happens here affect other dimensions?"
"Nope, time flows differently everywhere. What happens here doesn't affect the other dimensions' timelines."
Ethan exhaled in relief. "Phew, at least they're all safe."
"Who's safe?"
"That's not really your business," Ethan muttered under his breath before turning back to the task at hand. "So why didn't you go back to stop yourself from robbing your father?"
"The time machine was destroyed," the man snapped. "I'm sure I've mentioned that. You have a really terrible memory for someone so young. And here I was thinking that only old people have dementia."
"Shut up." Ethan said before continuing. "There has to be a way to fix this. Where did you get the time machine? Let's see if we can get another."
"From Eldoria."
"The elves' realm." Ethan's voice was cautious now.
"You say it like you don't like the place,"
Ethan's expression darkened as well. "It's just that I have history with elves. Or at least half an elf. Ugly history."
The man raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "What happened to the half-elf that you have history with? Did you kill him?"
"Her," Ethan corrected tersely. "And I sent her to prison. Killing indiscriminately isn't allowed anymore."
"That's sad," the man remarked dryly.
Ethan scowled but didn't respond. "So if we go to Eldoria, we can find another time machine right?"
The man shrugged, a hint of reluctance creeping into his expression. "It's a magical place. The possibilities are endless."
Ethan narrowed his eyes, frustration mounting. "So how do we get there?"
The man's lips tightened as he hesitated. "The last time I got there, an elf named Seraphina helped me through."
"Oh Seraphina. I thought I'd never hear from her again. So where is she?"
"Either she died here with the others or she escaped to Eldoria before the destruction started."
"So to be clear, in order to get to Eldoria we need to get to Seraphina and to get to Seraphina we need to get to Eldoria." Ethan slapped a hand on his face. "Just great."
The ground beneath their feet trembled suddenly, the entire structure vibrating with a deep, resonating sound. Without warning, the floor cracked open with an ear-splitting roar, sending dust and debris scattering into the air.
A gargantuan creature emerged from the earth-a massive, grotesque worm, its segmented body covered in slick, glistening scales. It was more than ten times their size, and its monstrous head swung back and forth, roaring at them in a bone-rattling screech.
"Nice. Just when I thought today couldn't get any worse..."
"...it did."