He took one last drag from his cigarette. Held the smoke in his lungs for a while, then slowly exhaled—as if wanting to release not just the nicotine, but all the exhaustion inside him. His back hunched further, his shoulders slumped. As the ember at the end of the cigarette dimmed, Kael, too, seemed to diminish a little more.
He stood up slowly. His legs trembled slightly, but he was used to it by now. He began walking toward the trash bin with small steps. With each step, a faint cough came from his chest. His throat burned, his breathing grew harder. He tried to hide his coughs, but the night was like a witness that heard everything; he could no longer conceal it.
"My health is going too…" he thought to himself.
Fatigue had spread throughout his body. It was not just mental, but a physical collapse as well. The circles under his eyes had darkened, his skin had grown even paler. He didn't even want to look at himself in the mirror anymore.
Kael would sometimes wonder:
"Is someone who gives effort but receives nothing in return pathetic? Or is this whole wheel, this system itself, designed to crush?"
In every part of his life, his efforts were either met too late, or never at all. And over time, he stopped waiting. He had thought that not expecting would hurt less—but he had been wrong.
He threw the remaining stub into the bin. Maybe his fingers had warmed for a moment, but they were cold again now. He turned around and looked back in the direction he came. The bench was still there. As if it was the only thing that belonged to him in this city. The only harbor he could return to was a piece of moss-covered stone.
He looked around. The crowd from earlier was gone. The old men, the young ones, the mocking laughs, the whispers… All had scattered. The park was quiet now. On the dark-toned path, the intermittently placed white streetlights sent out a flickering glow to a universe that had forgotten its own existence. He was alone. Truly, completely alone.
He slowly walked back to his bench. Each step left an invisible weight behind him. His pace slowed, his breath shortened. He sat down. Bent his knees slightly, shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. The cold seeped in, but Kael had frozen long ago.
He slowly closed his eyes. At first, a short rest, a brief relaxation... But his mind whispered something else: "Just rest. Sleep." His body, on the other hand, spoke more clearly: "You can't walk anymore. You're tired. You're done."
Maybe he didn't want to sleep... but he also no longer had the strength to stay awake.
For a brief moment, he thought of getting up and going home.
Home… a four-walled cell. An empty refrigerator. A broken spoon in the drawer. A curtainless window. Kael's house was a place to hide from the outside world; not a place to live in.
But he couldn't get up.
He had no strength left. His legs were drained. Though his body tried to resist, fatigue finally triumphed. His eyelids grew heavy. He wanted to open his eyes again; he couldn't. Everything blurred. The noise ceased. The world slowly began to drift away from Kael. Even the sound of the wind now came from deeper, farther away.
He exhaled one last breath—was it a breath, or an inner farewell, it wasn't clear.
His mind emptied first, then collapsed inward.
And finally...
Everything shut down.
YOU HAVE ENTERED THE WHEEL OF TIME.
At first, there was only a sound. Muffled, broken, and undefined. It didn't resemble a human voice; nor that of nature, nor machine… It was indescribable. As if it were an echo whispered from the very back walls of time, far behind the universe. Kael heard it, yes—but he didn't understand it. He didn't know what it said, and the voice itself had immediately dissolved in his mind. The only thing left behind were three resounding words:
"The wheel of time…"
He couldn't remember the rest. It was as if the voice had drowned both within and outside. For a moment, he wondered—was this a dream? Or a fantasy he had created at the breaking point of his own mind? But Kael no longer wanted to care about anything. Hope had only brought him more pain. Expectations always ended in disappointment. He no longer wanted to know "what" this was; he just wanted it to be over.
When he opened his eyes, he saw nothing.
Only darkness.
Unbroken, absolute darkness. Even dreams had a backdrop—but this... was nothing. Like the void of a world that had never existed.
But after a while, that darkness began to stir. First came vague colors. Cold blues, purples tinged with gray, pale lights close to gold... All of them spread through Kael's mind like a wave. Then, within those colors, shapes began to form: Circular rings, glowing lines, and then...
Planets.
Massive planets, rotating slowly, their moons orbiting them, writhing on their own axes. One among them... felt familiar. It reminded him of Earth. And that planet began to draw closer. First its crust, then its continents, then its seas and mountains took shape. Clouds formed in the atmosphere, oceans came to life. Every step was like a scene of creation.
Kael's heart pounded. Though his eyes were open, he didn't quite know what he was looking at. Was this a dream, or some kind of display? But what he felt was real. The pressure on his chest, the vibration in his veins, the cold sweat on the back of his neck... All were present within this moment.
And then he realized:
He was falling.
As if dropped from the sky, from thousands of kilometers high, into emptiness. The fall was silent but felt deafening. He wanted to scream. The cries tearing from his throat ripped his voice apart, yet he couldn't even hear himself.
"I'm going to die… I'm going to die!" he shouted inside.
He didn't know how long he had been falling. The concept of time had unraveled. Seconds felt like hours, minutes seemed nonexistent.
There was a thought repeating in his head:
"This can't be real. This is a dream. It has to be a dream."
But his senses told another story. The reality of this fall was more vivid than anything he had ever lived.
He covered his eyes with his hands. He wanted to pray.
"Whoever you are... save me. This fall has to end."
And at that moment, everything suddenly slowed down.
Slowly… not like brakes screeching, but as if time itself was growing heavier. The images blurred, the intensity of the fall diminished. The void beneath his feet was beginning to solidify. The scent of earth filled his nostrils. The howling wind suddenly ceased. His feet finally touched a surface.
Kael, still holding his head in his hands, realized he had fallen to his knees.
He was breathing.
He was really... breathing.
His eyelids trembled.
He slowly, cautiously opened one eye.
The first thing he saw: a foreign sky. Clusters of light in purples and grays, unlike any star he had known... A sky that seemed endless, yet carried a kind of unease rather than peace. Trees… yes, there were trees around him.
Trees…
Unrealistically healthy and upright. Not a single decay on their trunks, not a hint of yellow on their leaves. The leaves were a vibrant shade of green, so vivid and bright that Kael had to squint for a moment. Then he realized—light. Yes, it was bright here. But there was no sun in the sky. Yet the place was bathed in a dim but clear light, like the first hours of dawn.
Where he stood was a vast green area. A grassy field roughly the size of two large villas; flower clusters in the center, blooming in various colors, and occasional fluttering butterflies made it resemble the open courtyards of a university. But something in this naturalness felt… too much. Everything was too orderly. Too clean. Too quiet.
A single word echoed in Kael's mind:
"Where... is this?"
But the first words from his lips weren't that. In a cautious, low but strained voice, he called out:
"Is... anyone here?"
His voice echoed. But the echo didn't seem to follow the laws of nature—it returned with a delay, as if fed back by a system. He scanned his surroundings. The trees stood firmly in place. A gentle breeze continued, rustling the leaves and rippling the grass.
He took a step.
Then another.
As his feet pressed the grass, a strange sensation stirred within him. The ground was real. The grass beneath his weight truly bent. He inhaled. The oxygen stung his nose. It was clean. Pure. Untouched by the pollution of forgotten cities.
"Heyy!" he called out louder this time. "Can anyone hear me?!"
No response.
Only the whistle of wind and the pounding of his own heartbeat rang in his ears.
He turned around, then again. Checked his left and right. Slowly, he began circling the area. He didn't exactly feel alone—on the contrary... he felt watched. He couldn't shake off the strange, suffocating sense that something unseen was observing him. He began squinting. In this silence, it wasn't eyes he needed—but instinct.
And then… in that very moment…
He moved forward, carefully between the trees. With each step, the sound of the grass crunching echoed in his ears. The wind had slowed now, even the rustling of the leaves had nearly gone silent. As if nature itself had gone quiet, waiting for him to discover something.
And when he approached the shadow he saw in the distance through the trees, step by step, he realized—
There was a building in front of him.