The onyx emperor walked in their lonesome. Nothing surrounded them, but dunes of sand. Sand. Sand everywhere one's eyes could see. A few spires rise from the sands at times, but much of their empire now lay resting below the sands.

How sad was the emperor to rule an empire of sand. None lives here in this desolate land. An expansive waste of fine sandy desert. The onyx emperor must walk the span of their conquest, for there was no one else to take this important vigil.

The onyx emperor looked towards the sun that seemed to never set. Their red eyes looked back to a time when the sands didn't swallow the land as surely as the waves of the sea. Their black scales longed to once again touch something solid, untainted by the blow of the sand. Their unkempt smoky fur longed for the moisture that had long since migrated from this land.

This was their empire now. Gone were the rolling green fields and the rivers of white water. Only a seemingly endless sea of sand stretched from shore to shore. The marble spires that once were the pride of their conquest lay at rest beneath the depths of the sand. The winds offer them no consolation, carving the mountains and replacing them with impermanent dunes.

They walked, and dunes of sand swept past.

They walked, and clouds of sand blew against their eyes.

The emperor desired to cry, to weep, but no tears could flow from their ducts. Their body was as dry as it could. They could swear that the blood that once flowed within their veins had long been replaced with sand. The sands had leached every mote of moisture from their being. By all accounts, they should have been dead. Only its mysterious immortality had left it functioning despite its desiccated frame.

Their march across their conquest took them months. Their exposed flesh had been left raw by the unkind wind. Their dry eyes had crystallized to unfeeling ruby. Their leaden horns weighed upon their head like a crown forged from their guilt. Such was the misery that now chained them to this world, that the sight of the palace, the monument to all their sins, brought them the much needed respite.

Its walls had long since been ground away by the sands of the ages, and all that was left was the foundations and their throne room. The throne that now stood upon the chamber wasn't the same throne they sat upon during their reign. It was a pale copy, a poor imitation of the grandeur of their former throne, a piece of sandstone sculpted to match the form of the original that had been forged from bronze.

The onyx emperor took their seat upon the stony throne. It was their arrival upon their throne that the sun had decided to set below the horizon. The sky had darkened to harken the night, and the twinkling stars one by one emerged from the aether. The kind moon shone its borrowed light, but its sweet moonlight did little to the suffering emperor. The stars sneered at the emperor upon their seat. Disdain, contempt, hatred: they beamed them down to the emperor below.

The onyx emperor turned their gaze away from the starry heaven and instead stared upon their hands. They buried their face into their palms and cried and wept. No tears flowed from their ducts, but canyons had been carved into their cheek scales by long distant cryings. It doesn't matter how much tears they would shed or how much they were willing to shed. Their conquest was in shambles and buried beneath the sands. The palace built upon the foundations of visions and vice stood as immortal as the frame they inhabited.

The emperor stood from their throne and fell prone upon the granite floor. All the features that indicated that the great slab of rock had been part of something grander had been rubbed away the innumerable ages. Only its unusual rectangular shape hinted its architectural past.

The emperor cursed their circumstances, and cursed the stars especially. They offered them greatness, they offered them fame, they offered them immortal eminence to outlast the ages. The conquest they did was an atrocity upon the promise they offered. They had angered the very stars themselves for what they had done, and turned their would-be-blessings into a curse to punish them for all of eternity. Only the graceful moon, whose offering the emperor had neglected, had pitied the fool.

Everything had turned to sand. All the conquests that had refused them and eventually the conquests that had submitted had turned to sand. The families and friends and acquaintances that they had formed had been buried beneath the sand. They knew nothing of the fate of those that had fled their conquest, but they guessed that even on other lands, they had probably turned to sand.

The emperor pulled themself to a green pot. It was among many pots they had shaped from the rare spot of clay they found. The pot held a pile of strangely white sand. In every one of its treks across their conquest, they would pick up any of the strange grains of sand that it would find. It was a strange sand that shimmered in the starlight. The emperor had many pots filled to the brim of this sand, but many of them had broken and spread their contents back to the desert.

The onyx emperor reached into its pockets and produced three grains of sand. It then dropped the grains into the pot.

The emperor found peace in its hobby. The endless and futile gathering of sand brought it some form of purpose. It knew that everything was turning to sand. The mountains had crumbled to gravel. The cities had turned to rolling dunes of sand. Its people had turned to pillars of salt. Its own name: sand.

Everything that it ever knew was sand. Everything it will come to know will become sand.

And sometimes, it wondered: when it's time for it to become sand...

What kind of sand will it become?