The magic craps out partway to the End of the Time, unable to take them all the way there. They find themselves on a beach that smells of salt. Only of salt, nothing else. There are no organic things decaying. The sand has been leached of most possible nutrients, the seas can barely support life, most of the metals have long since oxidized.

A light hangs low and dim in the sky, dim and red, like a blood moon, but it's not the moon. It's the sun, hanging near-dead in the sky. If not for their transuits, the air would be cold.

They are alone here, on a distant beach, under a dying sun, close to the end of time but not quite close enough.