Kyle's footsteps echoed as he stumbled into the dark, vast tomb. The cold hit him first. It burned through his clothes, scraped his skin. He couldn't even feel the broken pieces of his world anymore. It had all gone to hell. His town, the people, everything. It had been a few weeks since he saw another soul, and now, here he was.
The tomb was silent. No movement, no light, just cold stone. Kyle kept walking, unable to stop himself, a pull so strong he couldn't explain it. He didn't know why he was there. He never should've gone this far.
The walls were ancient, covered in carvings, but they didn't make sense. They were… wrong. Some of them twisted and distorted, shapes impossible to make out, like something had been erased and rewritten. Kyle didn't understand it, but he couldn't stop himself from tracing the symbols with his fingers as he walked.
He stopped when he saw it. The giant statue. It was impossible, a grotesque dragon figure, its eyes empty, its mouth open in a silent scream. There was something about it. Something inside him told him this was it. The end.
Suddenly, a voice rattled through his head. He staggered back, his breath catching.
"You're here."
Kyle froze. It wasn't possible. He wasn't hearing things, was he? He turned around, his heart pounding. There, standing in the shadows, was the figure. A man. No, not a man. Not anymore. His eyes were wide, the skin around them cracked like broken porcelain. His face was gaunt, almost skeletal, and his lips curled into a slow smile.
"Who are you?" Kyle's voice shook.
The figure didn't respond, only raised a bony hand and pointed at the statue. "The Dragon God of Time," the voice inside Kyle's mind said. It was louder now, and Kyle could feel his pulse in his ears.
"Time was never kind. It watched, waited, but never acted. And now, it has no more."
The air around him thickened, the silence pressing in on all sides. Kyle's stomach twisted. He was the last man. The last to die.
"You're the last one. The last to be taken. You should've known."
Kyle felt his legs buckle beneath him, the floor cold against his skin. This was it. There was nothing left. He was the last. The others, they were gone. The man—no—the thing that stood before him, was nothing but a husk, a reminder of something that used to exist.
"The Dragon God could have saved you," the voice said, the man's lips unmoving. "Could have saved everything. But it didn't. It chose to watch. To wait."
Kyle's throat went dry. "Why? Why did it wait? Why did it—"
The voice cut him off, the echo surrounding him, suffocating him. "Because it was tired. It wanted to end, but you... you were its final test."
The figure's eyes turned black. Kyle's breath left him in a sharp rush. The last man. And now, the last breath.
"Now it's too late. You've failed."
Kyle's heart hammered in his chest. He wanted to scream. But no sound came. The ground beneath him split open, and before he could move, the air turned to ash. The last man left to die. And the last chance lost forever.
The tomb closed in, and Kyle was gone.
But deep within the heart of the tomb, where no one could see, a single crack in the statue's eye began to leak a steady stream of liquid.
Not blood.
Time.