Last Minute of the World

The sky had never looked like that before.
It wasn’t just the color—a bleeding red smeared across the heavens like an old wound reopened—but the way it hung heavy, as if the air itself was tired of holding up existence. The clocks had stopped ticking. The satellites had fallen. And the world… waited.

In a small room with shattered windows and a flickering bulb, Zayan sat beside his sister, Ayla. The radio—one of the last working pieces of tech—spoke in static and fragments:
“…global systems… failing… final hour… may God have mer—”

Then silence.

Ayla, no older than nine, whispered, “Is it true, bhai? Is the world really ending?”

Zayan couldn’t lie, not now. He looked outside. Buildings had lost their form. Earthquakes had shattered roads. Storms screamed from every direction. But in this last minute—just sixty seconds left on humanity’s clock—it was suddenly quiet. Unnaturally so.

He nodded. “Yes, Ayla. This is the last minute.”

---

-00:59
In New York, a preacher knelt on the roof of a ruined church. With both arms raised, he didn’t pray for salvation—he thanked God for the time they had. “Even in destruction,” he whispered, “we knew love.”

-00:47
In Tokyo, a scientist scribbled one last formula, trying to send a message to any universe that might listen:
"Don’t make the same mistakes."
Her breath fogged the glass as she looked at the black hole forming above Earth.

-00:39
In Syria, a mother kissed her baby, wrapped in old cloth. She hummed a lullaby, as though the child could sleep through the end of creation.

-00:32
A soldier in Ukraine put down his weapon, lit a cigarette, and stared into the horizon. “No more fighting,” he said to the wind. “Let the stars judge us now.”

---

Back in Karachi, Zayan took Ayla’s hand and walked to the rooftop. The city was a skeleton of its former self—hollow cars, broken lights, and echoes of a million dreams now lost. But above them, the sky had begun to shimmer. Not with light, but with truth.

In the final moment, all illusions fall.

Time didn’t just slow—it unraveled.

Zayan saw it. Memories flashed in reverse: Ayla’s birth, their parents’ laughter, the first snowfall they’d seen on TV, his old cricket bat, the taste of Eid sweets. It was all returning, folding into itself.

Ayla looked up. “What happens after this?”

Zayan didn’t know. Heaven? Rebirth? Nothing?

So he said what he felt: “Maybe... everything. Or maybe, just peace.”

---

-00:10
The Earth pulsed like a heartbeat. Trees shed their leaves in unison. Animals stood still. Oceans calmed. And then, across the globe—something miraculous happened.

People held hands.

All hatred forgotten, all wars meaningless, all greed melted away. In the face of nothing, humanity remembered it was one.

---

In that unity, the final second approached.

-00:01

Ayla whispered, “Bhai... I’m not afraid anymore.”

Zayan smiled, a tear rolling down his cheek. “Neither am I.”

And then—

Zero.

---

But instead of darkness, there was light. Not the blinding kind, but warm, golden, eternal.

Zayan opened his eyes.

He wasn’t on the rooftop. He was in a field of stars, standing among millions. The old world was gone. But something had been saved—the soul.

Ayla stood beside him, glowing. “Are we… in heaven?”

A voice—not a sound, but a knowing—responded:

“This is not the end. It is the beginning without time.”

---

Reflection:

Some say the world will end in fire, others in ice. But maybe, just maybe, the world will end with understanding.
Not everyone gets to say goodbye. But in the last minute, the world was finally one—connected, forgiven, and free.

And that, perhaps, is the true miracle of endings.

Reflection:

Some say the world will end in fire, others in ice. But maybe, just maybe, the world will end with understanding.
Not everyone gets to say goodbye. But in the last minute, the world was finally one—connected, forgiven, and free.

And that, perhaps, is the true miracle of endings.