Chapter Three: Silence in the Ruins
The world outside was no kinder than the hostel.
Everywhere Seth looked, decay ruled. Moss crept thick along cracked roads, weaving itself through the skeletons of buildings. Roots split the pavement like jagged scars, prying stone apart as though nature itself had declared war on the town.
Cars lay rusting in heaps, their paint long since peeled away, their frames twisted and sunken into the earth. Some had plowed into walls, others into each other, forming rusted graveyards of metal. It looked less like his city and more like the set of a cheap apocalypse movie—except this wasn't fiction.
The farther he walked, the stranger it became. The moss thinned into scattered trees, then into whole groves. Each tree stood taller than the last, growing denser until the horizon blurred into a green canopy that swallowed the sky. What should have been a modern mini town had given way to an encroaching forest, vast and endless.
And through it all, silence.
No footsteps. No chatter. Not even the hum of insects. The air was still, untouched by bird or bee, as if life itself had fled. Only the moss thrived, and even that hadn't crept into the room where Seth had woken. Why? The question gnawed at him, but answers were nowhere to be found.
He called out from time to time, voice cracking against the emptiness. Each shout echoed through deserted streets and returned to him as hollow, unanswered echoes. The more he tried, the heavier the silence became, until the thought pressed into his mind: What if I'm the last one left?
He refused to believe it. He couldn't. But the unanswered cries whispered otherwise.
Hours bled away. By the time the sun began to dip, painting the world in shades of orange and red, he had circled back to the ruins of the hostel. His only prize was a handful of berries scavenged near the forest's edge. He hadn't dared to go deeper. There were bird cries there, yes—but also roars that he felt belonged to nothing he wished to meet unprepared.
Back in his ruined room, Seth stood before the splintered bed. The frame sagged lifelessly, unfit for even a desperate night's rest. He sat cross-legged on the dusty floor instead, chewing his meager harvest in silence. The berries were tart, their juice staining his fingers, but they dulled the ache in his stomach.
When he finished, a new discomfort rose in his chest—the need to wash away the sweat and grime clinging to his skin. His eyes shifted toward the bathroom door.
The room was as decrepit as the rest—tiles cracked, mirror blackened, pipes eaten by rust. Stripping off his clothes, Seth muttered, "This is stupid…" but twisted the faucet anyway.
To his shock, water sputtered out—before the showerhead snapped loose, spraying in every direction. He scrambled, wrestled the pipe into a steady stream, and finally let the water run over him. Cold, metallic, but real. For a moment, it was almost normal. Almost.
Minutes later, he dried off as best he could, redressing in his only set of clothing: a white shirt under a black sweater, dark jeans, off-white sneakers. The same one he wore the day before. The fabric felt strangely untouched by the decay around it, as though the same rules of time didn't apply.
But when he returned to the bedroom, his relief soured. As the Water soon pooled across the floorboards, spreading fast. He knew the pressure would only weaken the structure further. This building wouldn't last long.
He couldn't stay here.
Seth gathered himself, heart heavy, and stepped once more into the desolate streets. His eyes fixed on the one refuge he'd found earlier in the day: an old RV van, weathered but intact, parked on the roadside. Unlike the houses and cars around it, its frame hadn't completely surrendered to time.
It wasn't much. But it was better than waiting for the ceiling to collapse on his head.
So as the sun vanished behind the forest and night bled into the ruins, Seth left behind the hostel—and the life he once knew—and walked toward the van, the silence of the abandoned world pressing in on every side.