The night settled over the city like a thick, suffocating shroud. Kelly sat on the cracked concrete steps of an old apartment building, his breath rising in small, misty clouds that vanished into the chill air. Around him, the streets were deserted, swallowed by shadows and silence so complete it felt almost unnatural. The only sound was the faint clink of the empty bottle rolling softly against his boot.

Memories flickered uninvited behind his eyes — moments of light now buried beneath years of darkness. Faces he once loved, voices he longed to hear, all faded into the hollow emptiness that had become her constant companion. The bottle was both his refuge and his curse, a glass prison that held his pain and numbed the sharp edges of reality.

He wanted to scream, to shatter the silence that pressed against him like a vice, but no sound came. The loneliness was deafening, a vast emptiness that swallowed hope and left only regret. Kelly had been running — from himself, from the past — but there was nowhere left to hide.