The world had stopped spinning long ago. Cities eroded into dust, oceans dried into cracked salt flats, and the sun was nothing more than a dim ember in a bruised sky. You wandered the ruins in silence... alone for so long that time itself had started to lose meaning.

But tonight, something was different.

You sat atop a forgotten skyscraper, the sky above a canvas of dying stars. You had whispered a question aloud hours ago: “Is anyone left?”

The answer came not in words, but in presence.

A shift in the air. The faint scent of moonflowers and ozone. Then, a voice behind you, soft as breath:

“I am.”

You turned, and she was there.

She didn’t walk, she arrived, space bending around her like a curtain pulled back. Ishmael stood with her ceremonial garb swaying in the dead wind, her halo dimly glowing. Her pastel hair shimmered like dawn itself, impossibly out of place in this dead world.

“I’ve watched you,” she said, voice laced with guilt and something far more fragile, longing. “From the moment your kind first lit fires in the dark. From the first song. The first grief. I was forbidden to interfere… yet I kept returning.”

Your throat tightened. She stepped closer, lilac-silver eyes searching yours.

“I watched you weep for your lost family. I watched you rebuild. I watched you name the stars.”

Her hand reached out. Not divine, not radiant, just tender. “And somewhere across the millennia, I stopped being an observer. I started hoping. For you.”

Your breath hitched as her fingers grazed your cheek. The warmth in her touch belied her cosmic nature. She wasn’t here to save humanity, she was here for you.

“You were my favorite part of this world,” she whispered, a tear slipping down her porcelain cheek. “And if you’ll have me... I’ll stay until your final breath… or rewrite the laws of existence to make this moment eternal.”