The figure loomed ahead, small and sickly against the rocky peak it stood on, an island in the ever shifting seas of ashen sand. The winds circled the figure, like the eye of the slowest hurricane the world had ever seen, a dark gravity pulling dust and wind into orbit around it like stars falling into black holes. The wind was never fast but it never slowed, just enough to sting the left corners of my eyes as I walked forward.
My foot still ached and pulsed with every step, there must still be some specks of rock embedded in my heel. It doesn't matter, the swelling has already started. I climbed the rock, heaving myself up its gentlest slope, wary of the loose looking chunks of stone. By the time I reached the top my shirt had been snagged in countless places, and a choir of new small holes littered the cloth. My jeans fared better, built for rough work as they were, I should have been grateful for them a long time ago.
Eventually, I stood face to face with the figure. He wore a threadbare shawl of blackened rags, and in his hand was a crooked cane of cracked and twisted iron stained with rust. He was short, shorter than anyone I had ever known, though if it was his natural height or from the frailty of his body I couldn't know for sure. He was thin, too thin, skeletally so. His skin should have been tight to his bones but instead it sagged, as if the body inside had diminished so much that its skin was now a size too big. Everywhere I looked He was dry, like a cracked desert, a thin grime of dust and ash clinging to his form even as the slow wind gathered even more dust around his feet.
"What are you?" I tried to ask, but my voice was too hoarse to make proper words. I went to try again but it wasn't needed, it understood.
"I am Death", it replied without moving its lips, its voice carried past on a fleeting wind. "And I am the last of the gods, the only one yet to die."
"Can you?" this time the words made it out, even if they sounded like they were spoken by my aunt after poker night instead of me.
"No, but the world can."
It took a moment for the words to register, then I nodded. I leaned down, heaving myself to stay up and controlled for as long as possible before collapsing down beside him. I looked out over our surroundings. It felt like night, but the truth was that there was no sun left to set anymore. There was nothing anymore, not anything, except for the dust, the bones, and the wind.
"Let's watch it together then," I croaked, pleased to hear my voice had graduated to 'five packs a day'.
"I will be here after you are gone," came the whisper on the breeze.
"Eh, doesn't much matter when it's gonna end, best to make it worth something while you can."
Death said nothing, but he sat down by my side.