In a desolate village, where the smoke lingered in the air like a ghost from forgotten times, the remnants of a recent tragedy were visible in the smoldering ashes of homes. People moved slowly, wearing expressions of loss, their faces a canvas of grief, as they buried their loved ones—a bittersweet ritual in the face of tragedy. I wandered through the streets, searching for solace but finding only the weight of silence.

"Hey, what time is it?" I asked a man who was stacking dirt over the grave of his friend. His eyes lacked focus, lost in memories of happier days. “Time doesn’t matter to us yet,” he murmured, shrugging, as if even the concept of time had ceased to exist in this haunting moment.

Echoes of conversations surrounded me, but even in the midst of the chatter, people were seemingly talking without speaking—a shared language of sorrow, trying to grasp what little hope they could amidst the despair. I turned to a woman beside me, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “Do you remember Propekt?” I asked, knowing full well the memories we shared were tinged with bittersweet nostalgia. “How could I forget?” she replied, her voice a fragile whisper.

Then, a distant drumbeat began to resonate—a call to arms or perhaps a warning of more trouble ahead. "Here it comes," I thought, a sense of urgency stirring within me. Life felt like a game in which we were mere players; a fish swimming in a barrel, vulnerable under the looming threat of the gun hovering above us.

I imagined two small figures, like marionettes caught in a colossal soup bowl, struggling to gain control over an unseen anaconda coiling tighter around their fates. The absurdity of our situation gnawed at me as I assessed my own isolation.

Lying alone on my separate sky, I pondered my existence. The night wrapped around me, a velvet shroud, heavy with the weight of my thoughts. I didn’t want to die here in this void, alone. There was so much left unsaid, unexperienced, and the world outside continued to spin even as I stood still—a solitary soul yearning for connection in a tumultuous sea of despair.

As stars began to flicker into existence overhead, I remembered the warmth of laughter and the spark of joy shared with others—elements of life that felt so far away. But perhaps, just as the drumbeat signaled a shift, there was also hope somewhere in this chaos, waiting to be found. The night was not an end, but a promise of dawn to come.