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Kronos had no idea how much time had passed since he tasted the cool sweetness of water. The scorching days and frigid nights of the desert seemed to blur together. Time was no longer measured by the sun. Instead, it was the number of times he had died on his journey across the sands.
As he trudged slowly across the drifts, Kronos saw things appearing in the waves of heat. He saw tents sitting beside a pool of clear water, a magnificent horse standing under a group of fig trees or the smoldering remains of the caravan that had left him in this hell to die repeatedly.
Kronos suddenly paused as an unusual sound caught his attention. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw his footprints stretching out behind him in a long line. However, it was the dark line hanging low along the horizon that gave him pause. Kronos growled as he turned to look for some sort of shelter from the savage sandstorm that was fast approaching. Seeing nothing, he once again faced the wrath of the desert. Kronos screamed his fury into the wind and stinging sand as it overtook him, swallowing him whole.
When he gasped back to life, the sand still held Kronos in a dark embrace. It took many days of digging, suffocating, and dying before he found his way out. When he finally stood under the desert sun and felt the heat beating down on him, he looked behind him once more. The desert had swallowed his footprints just as it had tried to swallow him.
However, time was always on his side, and he would not be so easily erased from its pages.