What Was Left

He woke on the ground with no idea how he had arrived there. The sky above him was the color of something burned and forgotten. He did not know his name. He did not know the year. The absence of memory did not frighten him at first. It simply existed, the way the cold did.

The road ran in two directions and offered no answers. He chose one and walked. His body remembered what his mind could not. How to stand. How to move. How to keep going.

Everything else was gone. Whatever had ended the world had taken the noise with it. No engines. No birds. No voices. Just the long quiet and the sound of his boots on broken pavement.

He did not know what he was searching for. Only that stopping felt worse than walking.