The being appeared everywhere all at once; it descended upon the world. First, it came as a long, sighing breath that smelled of entropy and decay; a sickly sweet odor, like fruit left to rot on the vine and mold forming in a hot, humid room. Then they saw it. A gaping maw in the sky with jagged edges that tore at their reality like teeth. It vomited forth from the void in that eye of oblivion, a grasping mass of hands and eyes that refused to take a single form, as if an unseeable artist tried to sculpt with melting wax. It met the eyes of all who gazed upon it with a disappointed sadness so deep it squeezed the heart with an incomprehensible terror. The being whispered with the faces and voices of every person who had ever been, was, and would be.
"All things must now unravel."
And so they did.
The absolutes that held their world together fell apart around them, laws that once governed what was and was not became ephemeral like warm breath in the cold air. People's skin painlessly slipped away as flesh unwound into ribbons that rose into the darkening sky, like strings on invisible balloons as bones turn to dust in the wind. Buildings drooped like wilting flowers without the life giving light of the sun. Once mighty mountains became rising streams of stone that ate away the ground beneath them. Oceans turned to ink as they too swallowed all that touched them. The all consuming nothingness brought unfathomable sorrow to this withering world and it wept. Innumerable tears from uncountable eyes rose to blanket the sky in an unrelenting void.
A child, too innocent or ignorant to be afraid, approached the being as it descended to the dying earth.
"Are you God?" she asked.
The many faces of all who used to be looked down upon her with pity and affection.
"No, little wisp. I'm the merciful finality to tales who long yearned for their conclusion. I am the hand that turns the last page of every book so it may be returned to it's shelf."
The child simply nodded, as if this was what she had expected all along.
All around her the world continued to unravel. Light turned to mist, trees became shimmering mirages swept away by rivers that left their beds like velveteen snakes. As their bodies disappeared only people's memory remained, standing out as the last specks of light in this quickly darkening world, the final thing to remain. When even the memory of her people had faded, nothing was left but the child and the being. The child took one of its many hands; soft, warm, and impossibly vast, before whispering.
"Did you come because we were bad...?"
The being began to weep once more.
"I came because you did your best."
And with that, the cosmic wound in the sky closed, sealing away all recollection behind it. As if there had never been a world at all.
"All things must now unravel."
And so they did.
The absolutes that held their world together fell apart around them, laws that once governed what was and was not became ephemeral like warm breath in the cold air. People's skin painlessly slipped away as flesh unwound into ribbons that rose into the darkening sky, like strings on invisible balloons as bones turn to dust in the wind. Buildings drooped like wilting flowers without the life giving light of the sun. Once mighty mountains became rising streams of stone that ate away the ground beneath them. Oceans turned to ink as they too swallowed all that touched them. The all consuming nothingness brought unfathomable sorrow to this withering world and it wept. Innumerable tears from uncountable eyes rose to blanket the sky in an unrelenting void.
A child, too innocent or ignorant to be afraid, approached the being as it descended to the dying earth.
"Are you God?" she asked.
The many faces of all who used to be looked down upon her with pity and affection.
"No, little wisp. I'm the merciful finality to tales who long yearned for their conclusion. I am the hand that turns the last page of every book so it may be returned to it's shelf."
The child simply nodded, as if this was what she had expected all along.
All around her the world continued to unravel. Light turned to mist, trees became shimmering mirages swept away by rivers that left their beds like velveteen snakes. As their bodies disappeared only people's memory remained, standing out as the last specks of light in this quickly darkening world, the final thing to remain. When even the memory of her people had faded, nothing was left but the child and the being. The child took one of its many hands; soft, warm, and impossibly vast, before whispering.
"Did you come because we were bad...?"
The being began to weep once more.
"I came because you did your best."
And with that, the cosmic wound in the sky closed, sealing away all recollection behind it. As if there had never been a world at all.