The silence here isn't natural.
It's thick. Coarse. It carries a metallic taste, like blood.
The kind of silence that slaps you when you try to listen to your own thoughts.
And my thoughts… weren't quiet enough to be heard.
I'm in a bunker—or what's left of one.
Four cracked walls, a concrete ceiling veined with dry fissures like dead arteries, and a broken light dangling from its cord like a hanged corpse.
This place doesn't know time. It doesn't recognize dates.
It's more like a cave at the end of the world.
On the worn-out table before me lies a tattered map of a dead city.
Ink stains and scratches mimic wounds.
I've marked it with red symbols—like a cipher for the end of everything.
Locations, signals, dates.
No one can understand them but me.
And no one should.
It's been three days since I last opened the door to this bunker.
I'm not afraid of what's out there.
I just… don't want to see how much it has changed.
The air outside is heavy, saturated with things you can't see.
Distorted humidity, artificial stillness—even the walls seem to listen as you walk.
The feeling of being watched isn't an illusion here. It's a rule.
But inside… there is only one voice.
Mine.
Sometimes I speak aloud to myself.
Not madness—resistance.
Resistance against the void, the silence, the absence.
There's a phrase I repeat often: "Everything can be analyzed… even the end."
I don't quite believe it anymore.
But I say it anyway, as if planting it deep in my memory.
On the shelf beside me, an old booklet.
Its cover torn, with a phrase scrawled in handwriting: "Those who understand, do not forgive."
I think I wrote it. But in a different hand… in a different life.
Last night, I dreamt of something like light.
It wasn't light. Just an illusion in white.
It approached—then vanished—leaving me awake.
I hate dreams.
Not because they lie… but because sometimes, they're more honest than reality.
...A sound?
I waited.
There was something behind the wall.
I raised the knife slowly.
Right hand.
The hand that never trembles.
I caught my breath like I was breathing for the first time.
And looked at the wall the way a survivor looks at his incoming corpse.
The sound repeated.
Faint—but real.
A soft rustle, like something crawling across a layer of dust and memories.
No knocking. No screaming. No words… just movement—with weight, with intent.
I took a step forward.
Every inch of the floor beneath my feet groaned.
This place remembers everyone who walked upon it… and everyone who died beneath it.
I wasn't alone here. Not anymore.
Maybe… I never was.
I reached out to the cold wall—its surface like dead skin.
Placed my ear against it.
…
A pulse.
A real, beating pulse.
A wall throbbing like a heart buried in the earth.
I pulled back slowly.
The knife in my hand was no longer a survival tool.
It had become a ticket—into something I couldn't understand.
Then it happened.
A thin crack—barely visible—opened in the wall.
No light came out.
Only… a scent.
The scent of ash mixed with ink and rust.
The smell of sorrow… buried alive.
A faint voice seeped from the crack:
"Did you forget us?"
It wasn't a question.
It was reproach.
Or a curse.
I froze.
Everything inside me stopped—
Except for one thing: memory.
That night.
That betrayal.
That name.
"You… impossible."
But the voice continued:
"We are the ones left behind the final line."