In the heavens above, not a single star twinkled and shone upon the world with their silver radiance.
Only darkness permeated the clear, night sky. There were no clouds to obscure the stars, for there was nothing to obscure in the first place.
Nothing any longer.
Even the beautiful moon was gone. Where it once was, only scattered debris and shattered asteroids were left behind.
Viaelle stood above a dying man, whom he had slain with a shard of glass. Hearing the man's heaving breaths and the bubbling of blood in their throat, he felt relief.
Finally.
He was going to be the last human alive. The last man standing.
The only one who would live past the end of the world.
"But… what kind of life would that be? A world that has already ended is not a world fit for the living." said Viaelle, speaking to the ghastly image of a man drowning in their own blood.
"Mons— ter—"
That man still had enough fight in them to curse Viaelle.
In response, the murderer smiled. Melancholy flashed in the depths of his eyes, hidden by the overwhelming relief of his weakened stance.
"Well, I won."
Now, it was time for the last step.
As the man before him lost the light in their eyes, Viaelle shut his own eyes, calling upon the depths of his soul. His longing. His love for life. All of his desires.
Suddenly his skin grew ethereal, dissolving into a state that was no longer physical, yet not exactly spiritual. It became liquid light, flowing freely yet staying true to its form.
The photonic duality born also by living souls.
Feeling the stability of this dangerous form of existence, Viaelle confirmed his conjectures. He was indeed the last living being alive.
The only one who still stood in the land of the living.
'My soul is stable. Good. Now…'
His hand shot forward into the empty air, grasping that which should've been intangible.
A howl of defiant indignation shook his core, unheard by the world yet harrowingly dissonant for those who have passed on.
Millions of howls cried out in reply, all screaming from a singularity.
Viaelle dragged the soul of the dead man away from eternal repose. Instead, his magic surged, flowing out of his body and commanding the dying world around him.
There was no need to utter anything.
No need to cast his spells.
This piece of sorcery was magic more ancient than ancient. True ancient magic which called upon mother nature itself.
Stuffing the final soul into a crystalline gourd, Viaelle assessed the screams of the dead and damned.
"Let's hope this is enough…"
Taking one last look at the crumbling edge of reality, he took a moment to admire the weathered obsidian building blocks of the church tower before him. Strange markings adorned it as impossibly clean carvings and austere idols. No religion he had studied bore those symbols in their doctrine.
At least… no human religion had such things.
Viaelle never did figure out who or what had built the obsidian city he stood in. However, he did know that those beings were transcendent masons.
Planets and stars had been snuffed out and consumed by the devouring entropic forces of the abyss. Still, this obsidian city stood for another few hundred years ever since its surroundings were consumed.
A dark city suspended in the void.
Viaelle sighed.
"A dead city is no city for me,"
After finalising his convictions, his eyes, which he could no longer call his own after several replacements and conjurations, flashed with hope. His ghastly, ethereal body surged with a defiant intent.
His magic responded in kind.
"…Seven billion souls."
Then, he took out an ancient artefact from his pocket. Something that had been literally lost in the rivers of time.
"…A Time-Turner of the beautiful and ancient past."
Two of the three ingredients had now been revealed. The world around Viaelle continued to crumble without rest. The obsidian city, despite its aeons of survival in the timeless void, would also find its own end in the embrace of oblivion.
But Viaelle would not be there to see it.
"…Finally, the ultimate sacrifice."
The last human alive offered his own soul up to the empty heavens. Feeling the vulnerability of their murderer, the billions of souls in the crystal gourd shrieked in absolute fury.
—Death!
Unimaginable hatred, that which was allowed to ferment and bloom, crashed against the unchanging make of the gourd.
Viaelle looked at his body, slowly crumbling into a heap of ash. That mortal coil had gone through unnaturally large amounts of abuse. In fact, the owner himself could no longer recognise himself.
Nine arms, one biological leg, one long piece of wood to serve as his other, and three pairs of mismatched eyes. His skin… if it could be called skin, was as thin as silk. Black blood flowed through his mess of a circulatory system.
He was a monster.
Viaelle's soul shook in a moment of clarity. That dying man was not wrong.
However, he was going to abandon all that was unsightly.
Finally.
After an endless wandering between life and death, creation and destruction, Viaelle was going to live a new life.
A second chance.
One where he would have ample time to prevent this inevitable end.
'I just hope I get sent far enough into the past.'
Preferably, a few years before the planar wars. A time when technology and magic finally found coherence, and when humanity first took a step beyond their own universe.
There, he would have everything he would need and more.
Viaelle looked away from his dead body and looked at the souls who screamed for bloody revenge.
Suddenly, his body ballooned. His mouth opened up and devoured the crystalline gourd, eerily similar to when a Venus flytrap consumed its prey.
Suddenly, the howling stopped. Silenced in the depths of his soul.
Then…
The last traces of magical power around him surged. The final spell was cast.
Seven billion vengeful souls were burned for the sake of this ancient magic, transporting their hateful slayer to paradise. They resisted.
However, the more they resisted, the more power they brought to the ritual. Their burning wills allowed them to persist longer in the damning flames of sacrifice.
Seeing this, Viaelle had a bad feeling.
"Oh no,"