The Last Cry of a Lost World
The city wept in silence behind the chaos.
Horns overlapped with muffled voices, the thick smell of smoke mingled with cheap fried food wafting from some decaying restaurant, and the damp night air seeped into clothing like an invisible curse.
Kaelen walked through it all as if nothing existed.
His shoulders slouched, his head down, his eyes lost in a directionless void.
He wasn’t alive. He merely... moved. Survived.
Before that, he was just another—another tired cog in an impersonal supermarket.
He did what had to be done, quiet, competent, invisible.
Coworkers ignored him or mocked him.
No bonds, no spark. Just aisles, shelves, and the constant feeling of taking up too much space in a world that never wanted him.
Life had never embraced him.
His parents were torn from him by a pandemic that turned cities into emotional graveyards.
Many didn’t die from the disease, but from pain. From loneliness.
Kaelen was one of those orphans of fate.
No siblings, no uncles—only cousins too distant to remember his name, if they ever knew it.
He grew up alone.
And learned, far too early, to live with the bare minimum.
Relationships? He tried.
He waited. He dreamed.
But what came was always the same: betrayal, abandonment, indifference.
People left him. Traded him for better promises.
Love, to him, was a mirage that hurt more the closer it seemed.
The only constant presence in his life was Nuvem, a small white kitten with blue eyes, too tiny for the world.
He found her curled up between trash bags and cracked concrete, hiding from the cold and from people. She trembled. A shadow—just like him.
Kaelen crouched, extending his hand slowly.
“How could a kitten this beautiful... have no one to take her in or care for her?”
He stood up with her in his arms.
That night, he had company for the first time in years.
He named her Nuvem.
And for the first time in a long time, he felt like something was waiting for him at home.
The next morning, he decided to buy cat food.
As he put on his coat, he looked out the window and saw a couple hugging on the sidewalk, exchanging muffled affection through the dirty glass.
He looked away quickly—as if love were an offense to his existence.
He left the house with heavy steps.
His mind spun with thoughts: what would it be like to be truly loved?
But halfway there, he remembered he had forgotten the money.
He sighed, muttered a curse at his own forgetfulness, and turned back, retracing the same steps along the cold sidewalk.
And then, he heard it.
A scream.
High-pitched. Feminine.
Kaelen stopped. His muscles tensed, not from courage—but from habit.
It was just another sound among so many. Just another rotten chapter of the city.
He kept walking.
But then came another scream.
Closer.
More real.
And then, a chilling whisper, right in his ear, as if the wind spoke with a human voice:
—Help...
Kaelen stopped again.
Looked to the side.
An alleyway.
Dark.
Too silent.
Too alive.
The whisper repeated, subtle like a breeze carrying a choice:
—Help...
Without thinking, he stepped in.
The sounds became clearer as he advanced through the darkness.
Screams. Sobs. Despair.
Then he saw: a man pinning a woman against the wall, a knife in hand.
She struggled, crying, her eyes locking with Kaelen’s—a plea for help deeper than any word.
And the whisper came again, now as a command:
—Now...
Kaelen moved.
Like a primal impulse.
No plan. No logic.
He charged at the attacker with clenched fists and blind adrenaline flooding every muscle.
He managed to knock the man down. The woman fled, stumbling.
But Kaelen didn’t have time for anything else.
As he reached for the knife on the ground, the criminal was quicker.
A sharp cut to the hand.
Then one... two... three stabs to the stomach.
Each deeper than the last.
The world blurred.
The ground came closer.
He fell.
Crawled.
Tried to scream, but only blood came out. His mouth and nose no longer belonged to him.
Everything darkened.
“Try to be a hero now, you piece of shit!” the man shouted before vanishing into the shadows.
Kaelen, lying in his own blood, saw the night descend over him like an eternal shroud.
But something...
Something was coming.
A white silhouette crossed the alley in silence.
Its steps made no sound.
Its presence was impossible to ignore.
The figure approached and knelt before him.
A white suit. A white mask. Long horns.
Eyes hidden behind the mask.
And then, the voice:
— “When you wake up... I hope you like this mask.”
After that, only nothing remained.
No pain.
No sound.
No time.
Only darkness.
