The hill was quiet.
Clouds loomed above like silent witnesses, casting long shadows over the scorched ground. Smoke curled faintly in the distance, a remnant of the city that once breathed with life. Now, it stood broken, the city bore the scars of conflict—shattered windows, scorched marks etched into buildings, and streets littered with silence.
Atop the hill, a man sat alone.
He held a gun loosely in one hand, its barrel pointed to the ground, fingers unmoving. His other hand rested across his knee. He stared upward, past the clouds, past the sky—as if something beyond it was calling him. His clothes were torn, dark with blood not all his own. His back was to them all.
Behind him, thousands had gathered.
A wide perimeter stretched across the damaged outskirts—police cruisers idling behind concrete barriers, armored military transports lined in formation, officers barking orders over the hum of tension. Rifles were raised. they locked onto the lone figure atop the hill. Cameras snapped, recording everything. Behind the barricades, a crowd of civilians gathered, phones held high in trembling hands. The air buzzed with a low, anxious murmur—their voices hushed, uncertain, their faces a mix of fear, awe, and disbelief.
"You are surrounded!" a voice boomed from a megaphone. "Lay down your weapon and put your hands where we can see them!"
No response.
No movement.
Only the wind, brushing across the ashen hill.
Then—her voice.
"Is this what you truly wanted?!"
A scream. Raw. Cracking.
It cut through the tension like a blade.
Everyone turned.
A girl—young, dust-covered, blood on her sleeves—stumbled forward through the line of soldiers. She collapsed just beyond the front ranks, her knees hitting the broken ground. Her chest heaved with sobs, her arms wrapped around herself like they were the only thing holding her together.
"Are you finally satisfied?!" she cried, eyes locked on the motionless man at the top of the hill. "With destroying everything? Destroying my life?" Her voice broke. "Why… why did you have to do this??"
No answer.
He didn't even flinch.
The wind shifted again. The clouds thinned slightly, sunlight flickering through like the last breath of a dying flame. And still, he sat—his gaze fixed upward, lost in the stillness.
A murmur rippled through the ranks. Fingers tightened on triggers.
Then: "Final warning! If you do not surrender, we will open fire!"
No reaction.
"This is your last chance!"
Silence.
The girl was on the verge of collapse now, sobbing uncontrollably, hands clenched into fists against the dirt. Her voice was hoarse, her face pale.
The commander gave the signal.
"Open Fire."
The world exploded into sound. Gunfire erupted—sharp, endless, brutal. Muzzle flashes lit the hill in strobe-like bursts. The girl screamed:
"I HATE YOU!"
Then—everything stopped, the sound vanished mid-echo.
The bullets froze in the air, glittering like glass caught in mid-fall. Time held its breath.
The world suddenly turned black.
And in the next breath, the sun above turned a deep, bleeding red—casting its light like a wound across the land. The clouds scattered, revealing the truth. Not just the hill. The city. Everything.
Ruins. Total and complete.
The city was a graveyard. Cars overturned and burning. Smoke coiled from craters in the streets. Limbs lay scattered. Bodies slumped over guardrails, collapsed in intersections, burned beyond recognition. Civilians, officers, soldiers—all of them. Dead.
Sirens wailed somewhere far away. Crows circled in the dark sky, cawing, feasting.
And the hill?
It wasn't earth beneath him.
He was sitting atop a mound of corpses.
Dozens, maybe more. Piled high, broken and twisted. Their faces frozen in agony. Blood dripped down the side of the hill, soaking into the ground like rain.
He finally moved. Slowly, deliberately, he turned his head to look back.
His eyes—ice cold, devoid of anything human—met the frozen world with a gaze that knew no remorse. Only acceptance.
And in that moment, everything vanished. The red sun dimmed, the sky collapsed inward. Darkness swallowed the world. And he fell, he didn't scream.
He simply drifted downward—into a vast, suffocating void. No sound. No light. No ground. Just infinite black stretching in every direction. His weapon was gone. His body, weightless. Thoughtless. Forgotten.
Then—sound. Faint, crackling.
Static, at first—broken and distant, like a radio just out of tune.
"…please… wake…"
The voice came through the noise, muffled as if underwater.
It echoed from nowhere. From everywhere.
He tried to speak but found no breath. Again, louder:
"Please... wake up..."
The darkness trembled. A light blinked far, far in the distance.
"Please wake up, Commander. We need your help."
'Commander?' the man thought.
Suddenly, a sharp light pierced the void.
It swelled rapidly—consuming the darkness—and in the next instant, the world flooded into view. The man's eyes opened to blinding white, the warm sting of sunlight pouring through a high, narrow window. He winced. For a moment, he couldn't tell where the dream ended and waking began.
There were no other sources of light. The rest of the room was shrouded in shadow. He sat up slowly, rubbing his temples. The dream clung to him like smoke—faces, fire, her scream. Always the same, yet never quite how it happened.
A long sigh escaped him.
He was lying on the floor, with nothing but a folded rag beneath his head. No bed. No mattress. Just the cold, but the man doesn't seem bothered with the condition. As he shifted, a thin metallic chime accompanied the movement—an ankle monitor clasped tight around his leg, its red light blinking softly.
The only sound in the room came from a small, oscillating fan, its tired blades whining gently as it turned side to side. Through the half-light, shapes began to emerge—stacks of books, piles of loose paper, cardboard scraps scattered across the floor. Glue bottles, scissors, box cutters. All signs of work—meticulous, solitary work. On a nearby table, several sculptures made entirely of cardboard stood half-finished, frozen mid-gesture like forgotten memories.
Still groggy, the man reached blindly into the dark beside him and found his phone.
A battered old Nokia 3310. The screen lit up faintly, 10:30 AM. 08,02,2032 .
He stared at it for a second longer than he needed to, then placed it back on the floor and reached for a glass of water. He took a sip—but paused halfway.
Something was wrong.
1st Person POV
Odd. It was quiet. Too quiet.
At this hour, there's always something. Music, usually, blaring from the rental units two doors down. Ever since that Incident, the neighborhood had gone half-dead—people packed up and left like the place was cursed. Maybe it was.
But time passed. A new factory went up nearby, and slowly, people trickled back. Workers mostly. Or maybe they'd just forgotten.
Moreover, those two...… even when they weren't talking, at least their phone sounds can always be heard. Games, Youtube videos, Always something.
But now? Nothing. Not even the distant hum of life.
3rd Person POV
His gaze narrowed. A weight settled in his gut, heavy and familiar.
He set the glass of water back down and rose to his feet with quiet precision—the kind of movement born from habit, not thought. He slipped the scissors into the pocket of his shorts, and in his hand, he held a box cutter, thumb resting lightly near the blade's edge.
He moved toward the door and froze, his nose twitched.
Something in the air had shifted—thick, metallic, unmistakable. He turned off the fan. And then it hit him fully.
The smell of blood. But not fresh, not sharp.
This was older, heavier. A smell buried in memory—something he hadn't smelled in a long time and wished he never would again.
The scent of death.
His fingers found the door handle. He opened it slowly—silent, careful. The hallway lay still, shadows stretched across peeling wallpaper, and the heat of the morning sun made the air feel thick and unmoving. But it wasn't just the blood now.
It was the smell of a corpse.
The stench drifted from the front, he could tell—but he didn't rush. Instead, he turned his head left, eyes scanning the empty laundry room. Quiet. Still. He crept forward, each step slow and deliberate. To his left, the kitchen: untouched. Dust coated the cabinets, but everything was where it should be. No sign of movement. No sign of anyone hiding.
He glanced toward the far right, near the washing machine. The bathroom..
Keeping his back to the wall, he inched closer—eyes sharp, senses flaring, the box cutter still firm in his hand. He pushed the door open gently, cautiously. Peeked in.
Nothing.
The silence felt heavier now. The details weren't adding up.
He paused, eyes narrowing.
No footprints.
He crouched slightly, eyes scanning the floor. Still "clean". Untouched. The layer of dust confirmed it—he hadn't swept this part of the house in weeks, deliberately so. Nearly a month, in fact. A quiet trap. No matter how careful or skilled someone was, walking through here without leaving a trace was impossible. Whatever happened here—it wasn't a break-in either.
The thought sank deep. 'The target isn't me…'
A quiet tension settled in his chest. He turned and walked back toward the front of his room, eyes shifting now toward the middle room. He stepped forward silently. Every movement was calculated. Quiet. He moved like someone who knew what came next but hoped to be wrong.
He passed through the cluttered side room, where forgotten things had gathered like dust. Old car parts, a rusted bike, worn-out furniture slumped along the wall. A box overflowed with mismatched shoes, coated in grime. Clothes hung limply from a bent metal rod, swaying slightly in the draft like something recently disturbed.
The man glanced toward the living room—the old ceiling fan hung motionless, a wooden cupboard stood against the wall, and the tiled concrete stairs led quietly to the second floor. A long wooden chair rested beneath the wall, just below an old, dust-covered chandelier. Beyond them, two bedroom doors stood closed and untouched, still locked after all this time. He never found a reason to open them.
And then he saw it—just past the edge of the living room, not eight steps away, near the door. A figure stood unnaturally still by a pillar—facing the wall, unmoving. his back to him. Rigid. Awkward
Like a doll propped upright. Something in the way the body leaned slightly… something in how the arms hung limp and lifeless at the sides—it was all wrong.
The figure didn't speak. Didn't breathe.