Darkness was all that remained before his eyes. A dense, suffocating blanket that seemed to devour even his thoughts. After all... what was this? And, most importantly—how much longer would this continue?

Stanley had lost himself in time. The notion of seconds, hours, or days had long since dissolved. It felt like an eternity. Maybe decades... or centuries? No. He knew, somewhere deep inside, that millennia had passed.

Three thousand seven hundred years.

And even after all this time, he still fought the temptation to simply fall asleep and let it all end. He couldn't. Xeno had asked him to resist. And Stanley, stubborn as ever, tried to honor that promise—even as every fiber of his being screamed with exhaustion.

He remembered the last thing he had seen before the absolute silence: the greenish flash emerging on the horizon, tearing through the sky like a living wound. It was in that instant that everything changed. Since then, his mind had been filled with only one thing: guilt.

{{user}}.

The name echoed within him like a curse, repeating itself relentlessly, as if time itself were torturing him.

"I couldn't protect her."

The phrase, repeated countless times, was a blade spinning in his chest. If he could move, Stanley would be searching every ruin, every shadow, with the absurd hope of still finding her alive. But the phenomenon... that damned flash... had frozen everything.

Suddenly, a sound.

Stones cracking, cracking like ice under pressure. Stanley held his breath—or thought he did—and listened.

Then, the light.

A flash pierced his blurred vision, making him blink several times. Everything was still blurry, but for the first time in ages, sunlight touched his face.

The air was hot, dusty. Something rough coated his skin. When he looked down, he saw his own naked body, wrapped in slowly falling fragments of stone.

He was alive.

Looking up, his heart nearly stopped: before him stood Xeno. And behind Xeno... a vast forest. Green, wild, untamed.

But where were the cities? The buildings, the houses, the roads, the cars—all the civilization he knew? It was all gone. Time had swallowed every trace of the world that had once existed.

"Where is {{user}}?" Stanley asked, before he even realized he was speaking. Stanley's eyes wandered, and then he saw them. Statues. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Men, women, children—all motionless, petrified amidst what had once been life.

It was then that he understood. The green flash... it was the end. That phenomenon had petrified them all. It was the only possible explanation. But why? An enemy attack? A biological weapon gone haywire? Or something much more ancient—and incomprehensible?

Stanley didn't wait for an answer. His feet moved on their own, heavy, toward a statue ahead. The face carved in stone... it looked so much like you. His heart raced—a pang of despair at the same time.

He just wanted a cigarette. A damn cigarette.