A dull ache throbbed behind my eyes. I blinked, trying to clear the haze, but the world refused to sharpen into focus. It was wrong. Displaced. My mat was gone, replaced by cold, uneven ground.
"Dad!... Miho," I mumbled, my voice rough, tasting of dust and confusion. My brother's name. Why was I on the floor? Why was our home... like this?
I pushed myself up, each limb a protest. My body felt alien, heavy with an exhaustion that wasn't sleep. The house was more than untidy. It was RUPTURED. Walls cracked like broken bones, debris scattered across the floor, a silent, violent storm having torn through its very heart.
Father. Miho. Their absence was a gaping hole, a cold dread far deeper than the dust coating my tongue. It began to settle, a leaden weight.
OVERWHELMED AND DISTRESSED. My mind, usually a quiet machine, was a frantic, buzzing hive. I staggered outside. The air was dead. DEAD QUIET. No birdsong. No distant hum of life. Not a single soul. I screamed, "Miho! Dad!" The sound ripped from my lungs, thin and desperate, and was swallowed whole by the vast emptiness. The dread clenched tighter. YESTERDAY, I WAS A NORMAL YOUNG MAN. TRYING TO SCRAPE BY. THIS MORNING, I WAS THE ONLY LIVING SOUL AROUND. Fear, wicked and venomous, poured through me. Anxiety, a cold, shivering current, replaced my blood. My little mind, so accustomed to small worries, couldn't comprehend. "Dad! Miho! Everyone!" My legs gave out. I fell to the ground, TOO BROKEN FOR TEARS.
Then, a flicker. Madness, hot and wild, ignited within me. I ran. My lungs burned, screaming, "STOP! ENOUGH!" but I didn't. I was a madman, possessed by the terrifying silence. I ran and ran and ran, the thumping of my feet the only sound in this dead world. I didn't stop until the city loomed, its once-vibrant heart now a silent, echoing graveyard. NOT A SINGLE SOUL. I screamed again, a raw, guttural cry, like a man tearing his last breath from a ruined chest.
Clink! Clatter! Scritch!
They came then. Six-legged creatures. Not wolves, not exactly. Smaller, leaner, with fangs like honed knives and claws like jagged metal. Their forms shifted in the periphery of my vision, shadows detaching from shadows. They approached, a terrifying, silent speed. I felt nothing. No fear. No urge to flee. I was too dead inside to even react. I just sat there, waiting.
GNAW! SCREEECH! CRACK!
Gnaw! Screeeech! Crack! They descended upon me, a symphony of tearing flesh and shattering bone. A searing, indescribable pain ripped through my body. Darkness bloomed at the edges of my vision, consuming everything. This was it. This was the brutal, unceremonious end. The last thing I felt was a brutal tearing, a primal violation. I died without making a single sound. The wolves must have thought they killed me. But the world had killed me first.