He wakes alone in a ruined city, surrounded by crumbling buildings, broken streets, and a sky that feels heavy with unfinished history. He has no memory of who he is or how the world came to this, only the certainty that something is wrong. As he moves through the devastation, he begins to hear voices-unfamiliar, overlapping, and impossible to understand. They don't guide him. They don't threaten him. They simply exist, watching from just beyond reach.The city offers no clear answers. Destruction appears uneven and deliberate, as if shaped by intention rather than chance. A shadowed figure drifts at the edge of his perception, always distant, always connected, though the nature of that connection remains unclear. Each step forward brings flashes of recognition without context, and the unsettling sense that time itself may not be behaving as expected.With a noir-inflected tone and a slow-burn sense of dread, this science-fiction novella explores isolation, perception, and the fragile line between observation and experience. Nothing is explained outright. Every answer suggests another question. As reality begins to feel less stable than the ruins themselves, the story invites the reader to decide what is being witnessed-and what may be shaping the view.Not all awakenings lead forward. Some lead somewhere else entirely.