As the Recluse's story continues, he notices that the passage of day and night has increased in speed, eventually blurring into a never-ending twilight. As he watches, his surroundings decay and collapse to dust. The dead world slowly grinds to a halt and the sun goes out after several million millennia. Once the world ends, the man floats through space, seeing angelic, human, and demonic forms passing before his eyes. Later, he finds himself back in his own study on Earth, with everything apparently returned to normality, with one exception: Pepper is dead.