I sat in place, paralyzed, staring at the remnants of Laura. Just seconds ago, she stood behind me, alive and well. Now, all her encouragement and warmth became just but a mere memory, with her final moments not even fortunate enough to be witnessed. I didn't know how to react, more accurately, I couldn't. It was as if every nerve in my body had disconnected, leaving me in a state of immovable shock. My thoughts wanted to swirl in my head, to jumble up and burst, but I couldn't even process a single sentence in my mind, not with the horror before me.

My hands moved on their own, trembling, they scooped up a handful of the sand. Laura, her body, her will, her warmth—they were now all in my hands. Slowly, grain by grain, I stared at her slipping through my fingers.

I continued to sit there, not having moved an inch. Most of her had already fallen out of my hands, but my eyes refused to wander off, staring intently at the remaining grains left behind. Her white skin is blessed by the grace of doves, her black hair like a luscious flowing stream, her body as immaculate as the likeness of gods, and her vibrant smile around which the world revolves—they're all gone…

"It's up to you now. Please... protect them for me."

Alex's final message echoed in my head, the very first thought I conjured.

"I'm... sorry..." I whispered. I had betrayed my promise to him even after everything he sacrificed for us. He placed all his hopes and dreams on me but now his dreams had become nothing but sand. "Why?" I muttered. We had finished the task in time, but why did she still die? Did we make some sort of mistake? Were our efforts not enough? I thought back to everything we've done, remembering everyone's contributions and sacrifices. If it had been someone else, anyone but me, would she have survived?

"It shouldn't have been me."

The weight of the situation finally sank in. This feeling... it was crushing me. I felt as though my insides were being pulled downwards, and I had trouble breathing. I clenched the remaining sand in my fist, bringing it close to my chest.

The crushing sensation didn't just affect my insides, it had weighed down on my entire being. I couldn't fight it. I collapsed onto the floor, my head hit the ground first, echoing a thud. With the strength I could muster, I rolled onto my side, all the while my eyes wide open, rarely blinking, unable to fathom how I could move on with the events that happened in just this single day, if I will live through today that is. I'm not even sure if this is real, a dream, or I'm already dead and everything that happened is just some sort of torment, a punishment before being dropped down into purgatory.

A minute must have passed before I managed to move any part of my body. My mouth jittered and twitched, my teeth ground, and after all of those, tears finally cascaded from my eyes.

I didn't know when it started but at this moment, I could hear my voice yelling. I wasn't consciously doing it, it sort of came out on its own. I didn't stop it. My scream kept going, bouncing off every crumbling wall, filling the room with my frustrations... my weakness.

I slammed my fist on the ground, trying to contain my emotions, but it wasn't enough. Be it self-decency, respect for myself as an adult, or any form of control—I had lost it all. My arms flailed, hitting anything they could reach, my feet stomping on the ground, kicking, not caring for how much they were throbbing from the countless collisions, my body rolled around like some sort of infant, like a worm struggling for dear life, and my voice cracking from my repeated screams, all the while tears flowed out of my bloodshot eyes, all their moisture being sucked out of me—my tears just wouldn't stop.

I punched, I kicked, I rolled, I wept, but nothing... nothing could stop the pain swelling in my heart, not even the blood dripping out from my hands and feet from the repeated bashings. I was a mess. My clothes were now torn, my shoes had lost their soles, my pants ripped on the seams, but even then, I knew that I was the most broken one here.

I stood up, fury still boiling in me. I swept away everything on the desks—pencils, keyboards, computers—everything. I raised my bloody fist, ready to smash anything unlucky enough to be in its path when suddenly, I froze. In front of me was a computer, one that was right beside my desk. It was Raf's computer. I lowered my hand slowly, realizing what I had done. Just this realization was enough to calm me down, to get the gears in my head back into place, but even so, they still weren't spinning in the right direction.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I knelt on the floor, and my sobs still flowed. "What would they think if they saw me now?"

I turned to look back at Laura. Even with the sand being just her remains, I still wanted to be by her side. But when I looked back, she wasn't there, more accurately, she was everywhere.

"Laura..." I muttered.

I crawled, glancing over each individual grain of sand. From my outburst, I didn't notice that I had swept away the sands around me, swirling them, destroying the unity of their original forms, and scattered them everywhere. I couldn't tell which was which anymore.

No matter which sand pile I grabbed, there was no telling which one she was. "Laura... where are you..." I sobbed further.

A chill went down my spine as the sound of the creature rang out again. I glanced around me, frantic, finding that it wasn't actually the creature, but everything around me instead. When we had finished the project, I thought that the crumbling would stop, and it actually did, but only momentarily. The walls continued their degradation into sand, parts of it that hadn't turned yet hung on from literally nothing, floating in space as if defying gravity. The more things turned to sand, the more darkness surrounded the office. Nothing was left untouched—the plants by the corner, the ceiling fans, the stationeries that I threw around—they were all turning into sand. But with all the chaos around me, I couldn't help but bring my gaze back to Laura, to whichever she was in this sea of sand. Nothing mattered to me now except for her and my friends.

Even with the clock having passed its countdown to our demise, its sound still played in my head, like a never-ending chain.

"Why?" I wept, my tears falling onto the sand, turning the bits they splashed on into a crimson liquid.

My mind echoed with so many questions that I couldn't even count. Why is this happening? Why did she die? Why did everyone die? Why am I the only one left? Why did we have to go through so much pain? Why has nothing gone right despite everyone's sacrifices? Why…

"Everyone... I'm sorry. I... I failed you all," I whispered amidst my overwhelming grief.

While I cried and did nothing, I felt an odd sensation creeping up my battered feet. It was as if it was slowly growing numb bit by bit. I tried to move my toes but it seemed as if they were frozen in place. I glanced down. My feet weren't there. From where my feet were, a pile of sand had replaced it. I was now turning into sand as well.

Slowly, I watched myself crumble into a million pieces, the transformation now climbing up my legs. I didn't scream, nor did I cry. Weird enough, I looked at my disintegration with a strange sense of relief, knowing that I was not the exception, that my suffering would finally cease, and that I would join my friends soon.

"It doesn't hurt," I sniffled, recalling the haunting memories of my friends when they were turning into sand. "Thank goodness, they didn't suffer."

Sand began to rain from the ceiling, prompting me to brush out the ones that got in my hair and then look up at where they came from.

"What?" I muttered. The ceiling was crumbling as well and I had thought that beyond it was darkness just like the walls but instead, there was something else.

I peered through the hole forming from above, carefully observing the circular flat structure floating in the distance. It was quite large, massive enough to double, or maybe even triple, the diameter of the entire building. It's situated maybe 100 feet above our office. A portion of the floor next to me crumbled as well, sucking down the sand around it. Slowly, I peeked through the hole. Again, there was darkness all around but this time, maybe around twice as far as the one above, there was another brown circular plane.

"What are those?"

My question was answered when the crumbling began to speed up, stripping the office of its walls and ceiling. The only things that remained were some of the station walls, electronics, some stationeries, and half of the floor. Mine and Laura's computer as well as the office lamps were the only sources of light in the room. Without them, I would have been completely surrounded by darkness, a pitch-black void of any stars, just a complete expanse of nothing.

"Wait... there's something there," I unconsciously spoke my mind out, crawling towards the edge of the remaining floor. My legs were still turning to sand but for some reason, the rate became slower.

Around a few dozen feet away in the darkness, there was some sort of reflection, like it was bouncing back the light coming from the office. It's quite difficult to see but once I noticed it, I couldn't unsee it. There was some kind of see-through wall separating me from the dark void. I looked around and my assumption was correct. This wall... it was all around me. I inspected it for another minute and found out that it connected to the circumference of both the brown platforms.

"Brown platforms, see-through walls, and sand..." I thought out loud, connecting the dots in my head. "Could this be... a sandglass?"