Echoes Beneath a Silent Soul
A shape here, a cry there - they slipped through Victor's mind like glass shards catching light. Some wore smiles he almost recognized. Others bled in silence across his thoughts. Moments collided: shouts, fire, hands reaching. Each glimpse felt like something lost long ago, now knocking at the edge of memory.
Yet the following moment caught his breath. That single instance stayed fixed. Stillness took hold without warning.
Everything near him began to change.
A hush settled in, the taste of rust clinging to every breath. Among scattered wreckage, crooked columns poked through earth like old skeletons left behind. Light struggled down, smothered under layers of soot-colored sky. Silence grew where sun once burned.
In the middle of everything -
A boy.
No older than fifteen.
He stood alone.
Surrounded.
