Ash fell like snow.
The world was quiet - not by choice, but by consequence. Buildings stood broken, glass shattered, steel twisted like paper. The sky was not dark, yet no sun could be seen. Just a pale, grey stretch above the ruins.
He walked without urgency.
Dust clung to the folds of his coat as he stepped over rubble, the soft crunch of bone and gravel underfoot. In his arms - still, cradled with care - lay someone once important. Her form was limp. Her warmth had long since faded.
He looked down at her face.
No words. No tears.
Only a long exhale, the kind a man releases when breath becomes heavier than silence.
Then came the whisper - not spoken to anyone, not even to himself.
"Again."
He knelt slowly, brushing debris from a patch of stone ground. With care, he laid her body there, folding her hands across her chest. Not an offering. Not a farewell. Just the same act, repeated so many times he had forgotten how it felt the first time.
He pulled the book from his side. Leather-bound. Worn, but intact. It looked unremarkable, almost mundane - like something left behind in a quiet library.
But it was heavier than the world.
He opened to the next blank page. Several lines above were already marked:
World #154
World #155
World #156
World #157
He stared at them.
Then he wrote.
The ink formed slowly - as if resisting the thought behind it - and when it dried, he closed the book without a sound.
There was no audience. No wind. No voice from the sky. Only the whisper of his own footsteps as he turned away and continued walking through what remained of a world that once held promise.
Somewhere in his mind, something remained constant. A memory untouched. A truth that did not fade like the rest.
But he would not speak of it.
Not yet.
And so he walked - forward, alone, into the next beginning.