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It was strange talking to someone from the future. It was even stranger thinking about the future.

I had never had the opportunity to do so until the year that the universe was destroyed, and I was still living in the arid country of Rant Boristen on the planet Thrai. I was at peace. I was happy. I had a wife and five sons and a whole flock of sheep. My family and I were happy, yet I felt like I was living a life that had only happened in a book.

I felt like I was in the story that I had been reading the moment the universe was destroyed.

I thought I had read the story before, somewhere, when I was a very young boy: a story about an ordinary man and an extraordinary adventure. I breathed in the air, and felt a breeze brush past my face. I touched the ground, and felt the cool dirt beneath my feet. I closed my eyes, and felt the sharp sunlight beat down on my skin. I knew how this story would end: my family would be destroyed by the shadows which would swallow the earth and drag me down with them.

But that wasn't the end of my story.

It happened on the second day after I died. I could feel everyone around me – the wife, the girls, the five boys and the hens. There was something new in the air, something that I could not recognize.

I gasped.

"Wonderful!" my wife exclaimed. "The past is coming back!"

Suddenly, I smelled it: the smell of the past.

What had happened to the house? There was a burning smell that filled the air, and I could feel the heat washing over my face. I walked outside and could feel the smell working its way into the city.

I went to the house. There were wood palaces across the grass, glowing from the heat. I looked inside one of the palaces, and saw a family, screaming in terror. Children were crying, and one of them was covered in blood, crying. They were begging for mercy, asking to be spared.

There were cities, lifeless, empty and burnt. Rooftops were missing, leaving the streets in darkness. Fires had destroyed homes, and people were running through the streets, terrified. There were no signs of life; no people.

Mansions in the country had been torn to the ground, and many lives had been lost. What had happened to the Earth? I ran out of the palace, across the gardens and over to the walls of our country, across the city of from Disire.

I cried, for there was nothing that could be done.

Then, I saw something. It emerged from the shadows. It was coming towards me. It was tall, thin and covered in shadows. There were no features. It was working its way towards me while I hid behind a wall. Its arms were outstretched, and it had eaten the Earth. Its touch was cold and icy, and I could feel the darkness enter me.

And I screamed.

I cried, and cried again. There was nothing that could be done. The shadow had engulfed me. The shadow was the story. I was the character.

Then, the end of the universe came.