Ramses sat on the edge of a rusted fountain, his hands clenched tightly into fists. The sky above was a dull gray, thick with unspoken weight. For the first time in weeks, he hadn't trained. He hadn't read. He hadn't painted or played music. The rooftop garden was left unattended, and the notes in his journals stopped mid-sentence.
Everything inside him was frayed, unraveling thread by thread.
The silence, once empowering, now pressed down on him like an ocean. It filled his ears, seeped into his lungs, and dragged against his bones.
He had reached the edge—and he was slipping.
It began subtly.
A skipped workout here. A forgotten journal entry there. Meals eaten standing up, cold and flavorless. He tried to ignore the creeping emptiness. But it grew louder each day, whispering that his progress didn't matter. That his transformation was meaningless. That no matter how hard he pushed, the world remained frozen, indifferent to his efforts.
For the first time in a long time, Ramses felt pointless.
It didn't hit all at once. It was a slow collapse—a quiet disintegration of resolve.
And then came the night that broke him.
It was cold.
Not the kind of cold that made you shiver—but the kind that crawled into your chest and made everything feel hollow. Ramses wandered aimlessly through the streets, past stores and homes frozen in time. A family sat locked in laughter behind a living room window. A man in a business suit stood mid-stride with a phone to his ear. A little girl held a melting ice cream cone on a bench.
Frozen moments. Perfect snapshots of what once was.
"I don't belong here," Ramses muttered.
The wind didn't answer.
He walked until his legs gave out and collapsed onto a bench near the city library. There was no one around. There never was. But this time, it felt different. More final.
Like the world had forgotten he existed.
He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and finally let go.
The tears came hard.
They weren't silent or graceful. They were ugly, gasping sobs that tore out of him in waves. His shoulders shook as he cried into the open air. The bench beneath him felt like stone. The world around him blurred, not with motion, but with grief.
He cried for everything.
For the people he missed. For the years he wasted. For the dreams that felt too far away now.
He cried because he didn't know if this would ever end—or if this was it.
The silence. The solitude. Forever.
"What's the point?" he rasped. "Why am I even doing this? Who am I doing this for?"
His voice echoed down the street like a desperate question flung into the void.
No one answered.
That night, he didn't sleep.
He curled up in a bookstore he used to love, surrounded by pages he no longer had the strength to open. The darkness crept in, not from outside, but from within. The dreams were gone. The phantom voices silent.
And for the first time since the world froze… Ramses felt truly alone.
Not just physically, but spiritually.
Morning came.
Gray. Colorless. Quiet.
Ramses stood in front of a mirror in a department store. His reflection stared back: a leaner body, stronger posture, clearer eyes. But none of it mattered.
"Who are you without them?" he whispered to the mirror. "Who are you when there's no one to see you grow?"
He didn't have an answer.
His knees buckled, and he sat on the tile floor, arms wrapped around himself.
"I don't want to do this anymore," he whispered.
And for a long time… he didn't.
Three days passed in a haze.
No routines. No challenges. No progress.
Just silence.
He stopped eating. Stopped moving. Lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, wondering if he was losing his mind.
The rooftop garden wilted. His journals gathered dust. The city seemed grayer than ever.
And Ramses began to ask himself: What if this is how it ends? Not with a revelation. Not with triumph. But with quiet surrender.
On the fourth day, something shifted.
Not because of a grand epiphany. Not because the world changed.
But because Ramses heard something.
A sound.
Faint. Simple. Familiar.
The rustle of a page turning.
His eyes darted to the corner of the room. The journal—the one where he had been writing letters to the people in his dreams—lay open. Its pages had shifted from the breeze through the broken window. Nothing supernatural. Nothing magical.
But it was movement.
And something about it stirred him.
He crawled toward it, sat beside it, and read the last letter he had written—to his younger self.
"You're not broken. You're just early in your journey. And when the world forgets you, remember that you haven't forgotten yourself."
Tears welled up again—but this time, they didn't crush him. They cleansed him.
Because in that moment, Ramses realized something:
He didn't need to know how long the silence would last. He didn't need to know why he was still here.
He just needed to remember who he was.
He stood up slowly, legs weak, but steady.
The world outside was still frozen. But something inside him was no longer on pause.
He drank water. Ate. Showered.
And then, he climbed back to the rooftop.
The garden was in bad shape. Plants yellowed. Soil dry.
He knelt down and began to work.
One sprout at a time.
That night, Ramses sat with his journal and wrote:
"I broke. And maybe I'll break again. But the difference now is, I know I can come back. Even if the world stays still. Even if I never see another soul again. I am still here. And that is enough."
He looked out over the city.
Still silent.
But no longer suffocating.
The breaking point had come and passed.
And Ramses was still standing.