I am Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, Wizard for Hire, Warden of Demonreach, Winter Knight, Keeper of the Outer Gates, and father of two.

God, I wish there was someone around who could beat the hell out of me.

I wish there was someone around at all. Anybody.

I can't even count the time that has passed since the Empty Night. The supposed final battle where I saved life, the universe, and everything…again. Spoiler Alert; you're welcome.

This is my prize. I am the last one standing... alone.

Michael is gone, Thomas is gone, Molly is gone—so much for immortality. Mab and the fae, angels, demons and mortals, all gone.

They were all dead before I realized I killed them.

A wizard gets more powerful as they age, unconsciously feeding off the entropy of their surroundings. Slowly stealing energy from electrical signals, and molecular vibration. Normally, we only live long enough to mess up a local radio broadcast. I have been alive so long. When I was very young, a necromancer hit me with his death curse, the most powerful spell a sorcerer can cast. He said "DIE ALONE". Well, I'm alone now, the universe collapsing into me.

One point of light remains in the night sky, illuminating a crumbing world. All of the other stars have gone out, not in a catastrophic climactic battle, but in an inexorable fight against time. It seems like soon the night will be empty after all.

I named the last star, Ringo. Har har. Forgive me for not laughing more, but I've lived under billions of stars, and I've made this joke before.

Nothing is left. My eyes trace the skyline of Planet …, I guess I haven't named this one yet. I'll call it Dirt. Planet Dirt, fitting. My eyes trace the skyline of planet Dirt, from the Sears Tower to the Aon Center. I've gotten pretty damn good at building Chicago from scratch, but there's no life to it. I shudder… remembering.

Karin Murphy, my Valkyrie. The first time she died was glorious. Horrible, but glorious. Killed in the throes of combat. The second time she died was kind of normal, even though she was a Valkyrie. A gradual weakening, an endless sleep. Immortals, as it turns out, is a relative term. The Universe was just starting to empty when I tried to recreate her, I focused all my will to bear remembering every curve of her body. Atoms coalesced out of the air to take her shape. Planets turned to dust as I constructed on her eyes, blue and piercing. I think I made her taller than she was.

One day she blinked to life, staggered, looked around and said "I love you Harry." These were the first words I had heard in millennia I fell to the ground and wept. "Karin, is that really you?" After being alone for so long the prospect of someone to hold, someone to talk to.

Her gaze did not change as she moved towards me lithely. "I love you Harry."

My heart plummeted. I wanted her, but I had to be sure. "Karin?"

"I love you Harry." The eyes I spent so long on now seemed like dolls eyes.

This wasn't Karin. I made sure the creature lived a good life, as much as it was life. But I never touched it, and I never tried to make life again. I've always been better at destroying things.

The memory constricts my throat and a frantic desperation wells up inside me. I flick my hand at the ground and mutter Fuego.

A supernova of energy erupts from my hand and vaporizes the planet beneath me. In my younger days I would have needed to focus all of my will through a blasting rod to burn down one measly building. Now, I can casually destroy galaxies. All this useless power. I drift through an endless black void. My eyes close. I do not feel the cold, though it is close. I am ready to finally die alone.

"Checking out so soon Harry"

Instinct buried by eons flares up as I whirl around, much too quickly. I spin so fast that whoever spoke becomes a continuous motion blur. I push my will back in the other direction, overcompensating and end up performing a maneuver I can only describe as the zero gravity equivalent of stepping on a rake. It takes me a couple more tries to stabilize myself, but whoever it surprised me doesn't seem to be moving.

I focus and stop rotating. The figure gradually comes into focus. I'm in shock.

"Uriel."

The angel of death looks at me unmoving. "Dresden."

I blink and stare back at him, my jaw hanging towards what would be the floor.

He looks me up and down before commenting. "I remember you being more talkative."

I blink and shut my mouth. A million thoughts race through my head. What the hell is going on? I should have a comeback for this. Has he been around this whole time? I used to have comebacks. Pull it together, Harry. This is the protector of life, of free will, and I am currently the biggest threat to life in the universe.

Uriel opens his hand and points it towards me.

"Well Dresden. It's time."

Something finally clicks together in my brain. I have no real idea how powerful Uriel is but I have one strategy that hasn't failed me yet.

I start laughing. "Now?" I keep laughing, "Really? You think you can take me down, now?"

Part of me, in the back of my brain, hopes he can, but archangel or no, I'm not going to go down easy. I assume my best fighting stance and focus my will into my hands. Space and time bend around my fingers.

Uriel blinks. "I'm not here to fight you Dresden. He wants to see you."

This startles me. "Who wants to see me?" My guard is down for a fraction of a second, but that's all it takes for Uriel's hand to be inside my chest. I seize as electricity flows through my body and everything goes white.

I come to, lying on what feels like a sofa. I can hear a fire cracking close by, the smoke fills my nostrils. My head throbs. I squint my eyes and see the outline of Uriel across the room standing next to an armchair. Groaning, I sit up.

"That was a dirty trick." I rub my temples, feigning slowness, mentally preparing to strike first in round two. There would be no round three.

A strong, eerily familiar voice laughed in response. "Well, he learned from the best."

My eyes snapped open. An uncomfortable train of thought worked its way through my brain. Uriel had said 'he wants to see you' and I was just realizing that 'he' could only be capital-H 'He'. I was waking up on His sofa. It really was a sofa; a familiar sofa. I jumped to my feet. The fireplace, the bookshelves, the alcove kitchen, this whole room was familiar. It was an exact replica of my old apparent back in Chicago. And sitting in the armchair at the end of the couch was a ghostly page copy of…. me.

He gave me a wry look and said, "Hello handsome."

This was one surprise too many. I was too sore and tired to be confused anymore, so I just replied, "Right back at you," and sat back on the couch.

We looked at each other for a moment. The ghost me broke eye contact first.

"My friend," He turned to face Uriel, holding out his hand. "I cannot sustain you any longer."

Uriel seems unconcerned. "Of course," Uriel held out his arm in kind. Their handshake had all the quality of a salute. "It has been an honor."

Something in my doppelg?nger relaxed and Uriel vanished.

I looked back at myself. Now, I was getting nervous. I get chatty when I'm nervous. "What the hell is going on here?"

He responds, "Ahh, you still get chatty when you're nervous? Well, we've never liked beating around the bush. It's End Times. Soon, I'll be gone and there will just be you. Then you'll be gone, and there will be nothing."

Hearing it out loud finally bore down on me. For my whole life I've been able to wrangle my way out of tight spots, but this wasn't a tight spot. This was the loosest spot there ever was. I can handle being stuck between a rock and a hard place, but this is just stuck in… nothing.

My voice cracked, "But, then what's it all for?" I look up at my ghostly self.

I looked back at me. "You know," he said. "I've been around for a long, long time, and I've given that question a lot of thought. I finally have an answer I'm comfortable with." He paused, looking at me. "Can you guess what it is?"

My mind drew a blank. "I have no fucking clue."

He burst out laughing; side-splitting laughter that shook the whole room.

"What's so funny?" I ask.

"Oh, don't worry about it." He said, translucent tears running down his face. "You'll get it later."

I start to interject but he cuts me off. "I want to apologize. I know you've been lonely for a long, long time. I would have kept you company, but I've been working on something, and it's time that you have it."

He waves his hand towards the middle of the room and I see a brown paper bag that wasn't there a moment ago. I stare at the bag, and then at him.

He shrugs, "Sorry, I didn't have time to wrap it."

I start to say "What is it?", but he interrupts me. "Stars and stones! Just open it!" Most of the room vanishes. The bookcases and fireplace are gone.

I reach towards the bag and hear him muttering. "I guess everyone was kind of right about me all along."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I shoot back. Reaching into the bag, my hand closes around something cylindrical and heavy. Really heavy. Titanically heavy.

"We. Are. Kind. Of. Thick." He looks at me and adds, "Sometimes." The floor vanishes. A couch and an armchair and their occupants float in an endless sea of darkness.

I put all of the strength into pulling the object out of the bag. The sight of it leaves me breathless. It's the most magical device I've ever seen; more magic than I knew existed anywhere. It's a simple cylinder, about a foot and a half long, but it pulses with magic from infinite points of dim light. I look closer. Each point of light is a rune, and there are runes carved in those runes, and that's just the outside. It's layered. Each layer is impossibly thin and just as intricate as the outside. It's not moving, but it feels incredibly alive. I have never made anything that could be considered alive, but this felt like a universe.

My hand started shaking as I realized what I was holding. I look up at my ghost. "You made this?"

His nod conveyed the tremendous effort involved and I realized that my ghost, who apparently was Uriel's boss, was too weak to get out of his armchair. His gaze suddenly became serious.

"You've spent your whole life on the front lines, fighting to protect life. Look around you. This is what that fighting gets you. Now you have a choice. Option 1—you do nothing and everything ends. Option 2—you keep fighting. It will be for the same cause, but it will be a fight you are not familiar with. Your friends will suffer and die, and there will be nothing you can do, but you must keep making the hard choices. All the while, you must also figure out how to make that." He nodded towards the object in my hand. "What's more if you don't do everything perfectly, everything ends."

I am so tired. Another life of fighting. I could just let it end. Let the grindstone of life finally stop turning.

I question him, "Is it really a choice?"

He responds. "I didn't think so."

Heh. He really is me. "How do I start?"

He smiled back at me. "Just do what you do best."

And then he was gone, as was the couch I was sitting on. The sudden disappearance of gravity made me almost drop the immaculate device in my hands.

Now I really am alone, but there's a difference. Now there is hope. I start focusing my will. Life can start again, with all its pain and suffering and tragedy and joy and beauty and love. I pull deep from my core, into depths of power accumulated over eons that I've never touched.

The cylindrical object in my hand in a blasting rod. The most powerful blasting rod ever constructed. I have no clue how I made it, but I guess I'll figure it out.

I pull all of my power into the coming spell. I trigger my death curse, now there's no going back. I've never been able to make life before, but real life is complicated. Too complicated to assemble like a piece of furniture. I just have to cause some chaos and see what happens.

My whole body is shaking. The power of the whole universe is pulsing through me. I hold the blasting rod high. It feels more dramatic that way. In Genesis 1:3; God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. But I am not God. I am Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, and I know how to make an entrance.

Fuego.