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Before I die

Ag_1
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Synopsis

Chapter 1 - Day 1:The silence

I want to die…

What is death, really? Is it an end, a release, or just another form of suffering?  

 

Perhaps death is even more agonizing than life. Yet, even so—  

She still longed for it.  

 

Silence was the last companion she had left.

Laughter, tears, words-all fragments of memories adrift in the wind nobody heard. The world had narrowed down to one solitary girl against the limitless ruins and the expanse of nothingness. True loss wasn't death; it was to exist in a world where no one was left to remember.

Once proud skyscrapers now stood like forgotten shadows, their skeletal frames reaching toward a sky that had long since stopped noticing. Shattered glass and crumbled brick lay strewn across desolate streets. Trash and brittle leaves danced with the wind, carrying whispers of memories that faded with every gust.

Storefronts were sealed tombs of the past, their doors hanging lifelessly ajar. Traffic lights blinked sluggishly, their red glow reflected on an empty road devoid of cars, footsteps, or purpose. Even time seemed to be stretched endlessly and into nothing.

A wind carrying the smell of dust and rust cut sharp and metallic. Every step she made was swallowed by an insisting silence; metal scraping or shifting debris magnified to ghostly echoes. Pale sunlight from the outside pierced through gaping holes in ruined buildings, slicing the grey, dim sky into fragments.

In the middle of that destroyed city, that girl was still standing and searching. She stretched her eyes far, as if she was looking for something that she had lost or was waiting for something that would never return.

She walked slowly through the remnants of the city, each step sinking deeper into the oppressive quiet. Her footprints left faint marks in the dust, each one a fragile testament to her presence. Her eyes flicked from the bleak sky to the skeletal remains of buildings, their steel frames stripped bare by time.

She moved through clouds of dust that rose with every breath, indifferent to the stinging of her lungs. There was no destination-only the aimless compulsion to move forward.

The worn earth path she walked on would show her the remnants of unrecognizable bodies: just scraps of cloth, softly stirred by the wind, as through dry leaves, carrying within that sound the echoes of what used to be alive-human. Nowadays they are twisted forms, mere silhouettes of life-ill worth remembering.

She went ahead, her face expressionless, her eyes saying a weird desire to only stop it all or to find something, anything, to remind her she was still human.

She did not even look at the bodies as she passed.

Step by step and nowhere to go, not a sound in the air but for the shallow breaths and soft crunch of debris beneath her feet.

Her breathing turned ragged, each gulp a labor. Her body shuddered with exhaustion, yet her eyes searched out something long lost. She clamped a hand over her mouth, teeth sunk into her lip, as if trying to silence a scream that only she could hear.

She reeled into an alley.

What once had been a vibrant, busy alley was now little more than a graveyard of memories, with worn and shattered walls. The dust danced on the breeze while the last rays of the sun bled in through the cracks, tainting everything with dying, mute shades.

In the walls of the alley were carved weird patterns-questions from ancient times with no answers. They held her gaze, drawing her into a trance. For a moment, her expression changed, as if she glimpsed something beyond the ruins.

The sun had sunk even lower and was sending long shadows stretching out, deepening the hue of the sky to a somber color.

She shook herself out of the daze and ran forward, past rows of lifeless bodies. Her eyes flickered with fear and confusion, darting away from the grotesque forms twisted in their final moments of terror.

They weren't just corpses but specters, reminding her of some horror she dared not turn to face. The heart raced, yet refused to turn back.

She kept on walking, her eyes ahead, her footsteps steady.

At last, she saw a house.

Once a haven, now a shattered husk. Only the doorframe stood, dancing lightly in the breeze.

She ran toward it, her heart racing, her hands shaking. She clawed through the rubble, splinters and shards biting into her skin, blood smearing across the wreckage. Desperation drove her-searching for something she couldn't name.

Pain didn't stop her. Nothing would.

Till she saw them.

Two bodies, locked in an eternal embrace.

Tears fell silently, unnoticed. Not from pain, but from the crushing weight of loss, the realization that she was indeed alone.

The world had taken all.

The silence closed in and her strength gave out, the emptiness swallowed her whole.

She fell into the dust, the ruins around her growing dim into darkness.