Nunca nos é dito
C.S. Lewis deixou vago. Provavelmente deliberadamente. A última batalha é um livro de mudanças, e nem todas são esclarecidas para o leitor. Na verdade, o último parágrafo diz:
No início da história, quando a divisão dos animais ocorre, Lewis diz que não sabe o que aconteceu com os que saíram. Mesmo assim, como autor, seu destino é sua prerrogativa.And as [Aslan] spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
The Last Battle - Chapter 16: Farewell to Shadow-Lands
And all the creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to their right, his left, and disappeared into his huge black shadow, which (as you have heard) streamed away to the left of the doorway. The children never saw them again. I don't know what became of them.
The Last Battle - Chapter 14: Night Falls on Narnia
Então, claramente, Lewis queria que muito deste livro, especialmente o final, ficasse aberto e aberto.
Em um artigo intitulado "O maior de todos os gigantes: o tempo personificado em As Crônicas de Nárnia de CS Lewis " , a autora Anna Bugajska percorre todas as informações que Lewis nos deu sobre o Old Father Time (e os gigantes em geral) e mostrou uma comparação com Cronos da Mitologia Grega. Em um ponto no papel, ela faz referência ao evento sobre o qual você está perguntando e diz:
Vale a pena notar que o Old Father Time (como era conhecido anteriormente) não entrou no país de Aslan, mas permaneceu em Shadow-Narnia. Bugajska diz,There can be no doubt that “the hugest of all giants” is homologous with "an enormous man” from The Silver Chair. However, when he makes his appearance in The Last Battle, he is entirely altered. He is no longer a man, but a giant, evoking all their negative traits, and inheriting their all-devouring aspect. Geographically, it is the River Shribble that is mentioned, rather than the City Ruinous, which is telling about the change the benign Time underwent. We see him at the end of Narnia as a dehumanized monster: he has only a “shape of a man”, but in reality he is a destructive giant.
Aslan immediately points out to the characters – and to the reader – this alteration in the nature of Time. “While he lay dreaming,” he says, “his name was Time. Now that he is awake he will have a new one.” (LB: 185) The new name is not revealed, though. This mysterious renaming is similar to the equally mysterious transformation of Aslan himself at the end of the book. Aslan, appearing up till then as a lion, changes his form, but we are left to speculation as to what the form may be.
Bugajska. The Hugest of All Giants: Time Personified in C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia
The end of immortal dream consequently punctures the bubble of Narnian existence. Like Khronos from the Orphic version of the myth (Chronus and Aeon: Greek protogenos god of time), Time is a self-created creator, but brings his own destruction and the destruction of the world.
Bugajska. The Hugest of All Giants: Time Personified in C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia
O tempo acordou e se tornou o fim do mundo. Talvez ele seja agora Morte ou Fim ou algum nome semelhante. Lewis nunca nos diz.
(todos enfatizam o meu)