The platform had collapsed. Forty-seven years of existence vanished into the world's indifference, and now that same world lay dead before him.
There were no birds crossing the sky, nor the warm orange of the sun promising a new dawn. Only toxic clouds, motionless, time frozen in an eternal instant. He had emerged from hell only to fall into a limbo, where the certainty of finding something beyond the end dissolved into the oppressive haze surrounding him.
The air, dense and barely breathable, became a slow and silent killer. His lips parted in a soundless scream, but his throat was sealed, and everything around him seemed to fade into the distance of his memories.
He staggered backward and fell onto the metallic floor, whose cold pierced into his body like needles, slowly undoing whatever warmth remained.
There was no one there.
Only the pressure in his chest, an unbearable weight, threatening to implode his heart. Loneliness loomed over him like a shadow, cutting him off from any possibility of humanity. In that absolute silence, where even the sound of his own voice had vanished, madness began to seep through the cracks of his consciousness. His mind, trapped in a labyrinth of dark thoughts, wondered whether he had truly escaped, or if this was the punishment for having tried.
At times, the wind carried with it the laments of souls who, even in death, desperately longed for peace. For a moment, he was not alone in his agony.
So he screamed. He screamed, and no one answered.
Desperation took hold of his body, the only real thing in the vastness of the void. His breathing turned into a whirlwind, sweat slid down his forehead, and the frantic pounding of his heart echoed in his ears like drums of war.
In that instant, life became torture. And death, salvation. Humanity was nothing more than a distorted memory. Death, in its tragic simplicity, stood as the only hope. The only possible peace in a world that had ceased to exist.
He walked among rusted debris, shattered glass, and dead fauna, clinging to the idea that he was still trapped within a nightmare. Until something floating in the gray foam at the edge of the sea stopped him.
The body did not move. It floated with an unnatural stillness. The skin was pale, almost plastic, without any trace of decay or odor. The limbs, misshapen, did not match human symmetry. One arm ended in a fused mass of useless fingers. The face had no features, only smooth folds, as if the water itself had decided to erase any identity.
He looked away. He doubled over, vomiting acid and the last remnants of hope.