Gabriel was nineteen, but he felt older than the world itself. The streets of his neighborhood were unforgiving, cracked with poverty, littered with broken dreams and empty promises. He walked alone under the dim, flickering streetlights, the shadows of the alleyways pressing in on him like cold hands. Most nights, he felt like the city itself was conspiring against him.

Once, he had a golden energy, a spark inside him that made him feel alive, unstoppable. People said he had a gift—confidence, charm, a spark that could light up any room. But that was before. Before he picked up the habits that had slowly eaten him alive. The addiction had stolen his light, leaving only a hollow shell of the boy he once was.

In his tiny room at home, he sat on the edge of his bed staring into the darkness, imagining himself in a hole—deep, endless, and cold. No one would hear him if he screamed. No one would come. Nobody ever looked that far down. And in that imaginary hole, he felt the pull of something darker, whispering to him that maybe the escape was final.

Hanging. Cutting. Jumping off the old bridge by the river at night. His mind ran over every option with terrifying clarity. He could almost picture it: the rope tightening around his neck, the blood running across his skin, the quiet splash into the black water below. But the addiction was stronger than the fear; it anchored him, even as he longed for freedom.

He remembered the times when his life had been easier—or at least brighter. His mother and sister worked tirelessly, trying to hold everything together. His father had sunk into a depression so deep that he barely spoke, barely moved. Gabriel had learned early that life didn’t wait for you to breathe. The small joys of childhood—the laughter, the games, the dreams—had been crushed under the weight of poverty and struggle. The addiction became a way to numb the pain, a temporary escape from a world that demanded too much and gave too little.

Even so, Gabriel hated what he had become. Every puff, every hit, every escape reminded him of how far he had fallen. He remembered how strong he had once been, how unstoppable he had felt when the golden energy inside him had pulsed like sunlight. But now, that light was just a memory, a ghost haunting him in the silence.

At night, he dreamed of his friends and family as they used to be—his mother laughing as she cleaned the kitchen, his father smiling on rare good days, his sister teasing him with a grin he couldn’t remember seeing in months. And then, reality would crash back, dragging him into the alleyways of his mind where shadows whispered, where the urge to end it all was a constant companion.

The city around him was cruel, full of warnings. “Don’t fall,” people would say, and Gabriel tried. He tried to stay out of trouble, to avoid fights, to stay clean—but it was a battle he could barely fight. Every corner he turned seemed to have temptation waiting. Every friend he met was either lost or lost someone else. His nights were long, his thoughts darker. And yet, somewhere deep inside, a small spark refused to die.

It was in one of these nights, under the flickering glow of his streetlight, that his phone buzzed. A call. From a girl he knew online—his friend, someone he had spoken to for months but never met in person. She lived not far away, she had said. And then something strange happened: the phone line flickered, and a different voice came through, soft, almost otherworldly. Gabriel froze. He felt something he hadn’t felt in years—a warmth, a connection, a pull toward life itself.

The girl’s voice on the other end said something fleeting, a word that didn’t make sense, and then the line went dead. Gabriel’s heart raced. He turned to his online friend in a flurry of panic and confusion. “Wait… who just called me from your phone?”

And for the first time in months, maybe years, Gabriel felt a flicker of hope.