When Oizys stepped through the next door, she felt a warm breath brush her face, as if the world were exhaling slowly around her.

Before her stretched a pale desert, without wind, without horizon.

And above, hanging in a rust-colored sky, a giant clock spun backwards. Its hands would sometimes race, then freeze abruptly. With each jolt, waves of sand rose beneath her feet, threatening to swallow her if she stayed still.

But it wasn’t the sand that worried her first.

It was the hourglass.

A massive, cracked hourglass stood in the center of the desert, its glass fractured, groaning under pressure with every grain that fell. The sand poured too fast, sucked into a black pit in the ground, as if time itself were escaping—panicked, out of control.

At her feet: a simple stone table.

On it: a blank sheet of paper and a black quill.

Just one task.

Simple: write a word. The word that represented what she wished she’d said before it was too late.

She approached, wary.

The sand already crunched under her boots.

Each step seemed to slow her thoughts.

The desert wasn’t meant to be explored—it was there to delay her, to test her resolve not to wait.

She reached for the quill.

> — Easy, she thought. I just need to write.

But her fingers trembled.

She could hear the ticking of the suspended clock, a dry, jolting pulse echoing in her chest.

The hourglass groaned.

The sand cracked beneath her.

And suddenly, the memory burst forth.

They were in a kitchen, on an autumn morning.

She was leaning against the wall, a bowl in her hands.

He was standing, his voice a little too loud. A relative. A brother? A father? A lost friend? His figure was blurry, but the pain—so real.

He said:

> — You always have time for everything but me.

She had shrugged. Sarcastic.

> — We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?

— Tomorrow, tomorrow... You always say tomorrow.

She had meant to answer, but said nothing.

And the next day, there had been no "next day."

A phone call. An absence. An accident.

And that phrase, carved into her skull like a blade:

“You always say tomorrow.”

She snapped back to the desert.

The sand was up to her knees.

The table trembled. The quill rolled, ready to fall.

Only seconds remained. She had to write.

But what?

What word?

Sorry?

Stay?

Too late?

She hesitated. Took the quill.

And let fall one word—only one. The only one that still meant something:

> — Now.

The sand froze instantly.

The hourglass shattered, scattering a rain of frozen crystals into the air.

The giant clock above her stopped turning. Its hands aligned to a single time: the present moment.

The desert slowly evaporated.

Oizys collapsed to her knees, gasping.

She hadn’t run. She hadn’t fled.

But she had understood.

There isn’t always another time.

Not always a “later.”

Procrastination wasn’t just a harmless flaw.

It was a kind of forgetting—a way of denying the urgency to love, to speak, to act.

And that word, now, still pulsed in her blood.

When she rose, a broken watch lay on the stone.

She picked it up. Held it to her heart.

And the next door opened.

Not to offer her more time...

But to remind her that the present is all we ever truly have.