The story begins in a future insane asylum (dystopic) with the main character: A man from the early 21st century, recovered from stasis, but then considered maladjusted. He thinks that it is, instead, the world that is crazy. From his perspective (and ours) the future world runs along orderly lines without free will or choice. A deterministic dance of machines, some of which happen to be fleshy.
He is broken out of the asylum by a fringe radical group of terrorists, who need his cultural and linguistic knowledge of the past. To his annoyance they also are just as regimented and logical as the rest of society, just their goal is different - to destroy the way things are. They simply think in the same terms as everyone else in the future.
What they have uncovered are physical records that they have tentatively translated as being related to some great force of destruction. They know the records were written during the early 21st century (now forgotten), the same time that the man in question was put into stasis.
The story then splits between the main character in the dystopian future and the writer of the records, who is in the not-to-distant future.
The writer was an amateur historian who was exploring the cave systems near some ruins of [ancient civilization of choice], and discovered records of an ancient and desperate battle between the forces of humanity and an ancient spiritual entity that wished, ostensibly, to destroy the world. As he delved deeper, he realized that the entity would have destroyed all of time and space, it was just that the writers did not know how to describe that possibility. The ancient battle was won by the forces of order, and the entity imprisoned by ancient magic for a thousand thousand days. Unfortunately some quick math revealed that the entity was on the verge of freeing itself, and laying waste to reality.
Hijinks ensued, and the historian was eventually able to combine ancient spells with the modern technological know-how of the governments in question. The historian did not trust the government services, believing himself to be a loose end. Believing that the government's plan to hide the entity with secrecy was misguided, he wrote the documents for future generations and hid them away.
In the present day, the main character does let the terrorists know that the entity exists and where it was sealed before reading the documents more thoroughly and understanding that the entity won't just topple a civilization, it will destroy all space and time. Having read that part, he is unsure of how to proceed - will he be able to explain to the terrorists that they might be unleashing something overly powerful? Would they care or believe him?
The main character reaches the tomb with the terrorists, and, with the help of the historian's notes and spells, is able to penetrate the tomb and decipher much of the original markings. The the main character finds that the ancient writings say that the entity was sealed, not destroyed, because they wanted the end of the world to be some time later. As the terrorists prepare to destroy the isotope energy sources that now power the sealing spell, they come under attack by security drones from the main society. The drones, to the terrorists' surprise, do not use their highly lethal weaponry, but instead try to disarm and subdue the terrorists with improvised non-lethal means.
The main character realizes that the entity is for the death and rebirth of the world, and that by freeing it, reality will be reset and history can unfold anew. Without it the static world that has persisted for the last million years will continue, and there may not be another combination of events that frees it.
But by then it is too late. The drones have subdued the terrorists, and advance towards him. Realizing that he will return to the asylum if he his captured, the main character uses the weapon he was given to shoot himself through the head. The last thing he sees are the drones racing to stop him, and he wonders why they are doing that.
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