Soldier stepped into the silent, abandoned city.The heavy pack pressed against his back, but it was nothing compared to the weight of the mission he carried inside him.


He felt strange.


He knew all too well that he shouldn't be here. This city hadn’t belonged to humans for a long time. And yet, here he was. He took a deep breath and walked on with renewed determination.Coarse sand crunched loudly under his boots, echoing off the crumbling walls and fading somewhere in the distance, toward the square that had once been full of life. Now it stood empty. Deserted.


The city smelled of dust and decay. The air was heavy and unnervingly still. The doors of the houses that still stood were either wide open or firmly boarded up, depending on how much their former residents had believed they would return. Some buildings had charred frames. Others leaned in a tense, trembling balance, as if unsure whether to finally collapse or remain standing a little longer, as a memento of a time long gone.


Debris littered the streets. Broken bricks. Fragments of shattered furniture. Empty tin cans with peeling labels. Nature had already begun its slow erasure, as it always did, creeping in, climbing over fences and walls, thorny shoots of local shrubs prying apart even the strongest brick and concrete that once held the city together.


Everything here had been abandoned for years. And yet, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t alone.


He picked up the pace.


Not out of fear. He wasn’t afraid of ghosts, the ones that lingered only as whispers of memories. But he hated the strange, suffocating silence. It was worse than the noise of the battlefield he once knew. At least there, he could see the enemy. Here? Here there was only emptiness—clinging to his skin like the cold sweat on his face.


He looked around again. In the first-floor window of a nearby house, a tattered curtain swayed. Half-torn—maybe by wind, or perhaps by someone brushing past in a rush, long ago. It no longer served a purpose. And yet, it still hung there, swaying, a reminder that once, someone had lived up there. A family, perhaps. Or maybe just an old man. Or woman. He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to. There were too many places like that in this city.


He had to focus.


With brisk steps, he headed toward the meeting point. He wasn’t sure he would find anyone there. He wasn’t even sure anyone had truly survived, as they claimed. But they believed people were still out here somewhere, and it wasn’t his place to question it. So he obeyed. Still, he didn’t believe it. He wasn’t used to hoping. Hope was a luxury people like him couldn’t afford. He followed orders, and the orders told him to be at a certain place, at a certain time. Nothing more.


And maybe, just maybe, someone would be there after all.


And if everything went right, that person might help him complete the mission that had brought him here.