Days passed.

  Nero wandered the ruins of Manila, his footsteps the only sound in a city that had once been alive with noise. The silence was suffocating.

  He found a house—not completely destroyed, just cracked walls and a few shattered windows. It wasn't much, but it was shelter.

  His new home.

  At first, it felt strange stepping inside. Someone had lived here once. A family. Their belongings were still scattered around—clothes, photographs, children's toys. It felt wrong to take the house as his own, but he had no choice.

  Even after everything, he still needed a place to sleep.

  Nights were the worst.

  The city was quiet, too quiet. No distant cars, no murmurs of life—just the occasional wind whistling through the broken buildings. He would lay on a mattress he dragged in from another room, staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep that never truly came.

  Every morning, he forced himself out.

  Because there was something he still had to do.

  He buried the dead.

  It became a routine. Every time he found a body, he would stop whatever he was doing and dig a grave. It didn't matter if it was a stranger, if it took hours, if his body screamed in protest.

  It was the only thing he could do for them.

  The only thing that made him feel human.

  And despite everything, despite the endless emptiness, he still held onto one thing.

  Hope.

  Hope that he wasn't truly alone.

  That somewhere in this dead world, there was someone else still breathing.

  That he would find them.

  Before the loneliness consumed him.

  Three months passed.

  The city remained a graveyard.

  Nero still walked its streets, still searched, still hoped. But hope was a cruel thing—it clung to him like a parasite, whispering that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't the last.

  But he never found anyone.

  Not a single soul.

  Food was easy to find. The malls, the supermarkets—they were all untouched, their shelves still stocked. He took what he needed, carrying bags of canned goods and bottled water back to his house. Electricity was long gone, but water still flowed, for now.

  Survival wasn't the problem.

  Loneliness was.

  It gnawed at him, day and night.

  He spoke to himself now. At first, it was just murmurs under his breath—casual words, thoughts he needed to hear out loud. But as time went on, the silence became unbearable.

  He started having full conversations with the air.

  "You'd think someone would be alive," he muttered while peeling open a can of fruit. "Even just one person. I mean, how the hell am I the only one left?"

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  He let out a dry laugh, but no one laughed with him.

  No one ever did.

  One night, the loneliness became too much.

  He sat on the roof of his stolen house, staring at the ruins below. The moon hung above like an indifferent god, casting pale light over the devastation.

  His hands trembled as he gripped the edge.

  "What's the point?" he whispered.

  His heartbeat pounded in his ears.

  What was he even trying to do? Survive for what? There was no future, no goal. Just existence.

  A never-ending cycle of waking up, scavenging food, burying the dead, and pretending tomorrow would be different.

  But tomorrow was always the same.

  His vision blurred. He wiped at his face, realizing too late that he was crying.

  Then, something snapped inside him.

  He screamed.

  A raw, desperate sound—one that tore through his throat, filling the emptiness around him.

  It echoed through the city.

  Bouncing off the ruins.

  Fading into nothing.

  No answer.

  No response.

  Just silence.

  He buried his face in his hands, laughing bitterly between his sobs.

  "I really am alone."

  And for the first time since the world ended, Nero realized something terrifying.

  The loneliness was worse than death.

  Nero sat on the rooftop, staring at the ruined city stretched before him.

  Manila was dead.

  And if he stayed here any longer, he feared he would become just like it—a corpse, not in body, but in spirit.

  The loneliness was suffocating, wrapping around his throat like invisible hands.

  But deep inside, a small voice whispered: "Maybe it's not like this everywhere."

  Maybe another city still had survivors. Maybe someone else was out there, searching just like he was.

  The thought sent a shiver down his spine.

  For months, he had clung to the ruins of Manila, hoping to find another heartbeat among the dead. But there was no one left.

  It was time to leave.

  The next morning, Nero packed his things.

  He stuffed a backpack with canned goods, bottled water, a flashlight, and a knife he had found in a shattered kitchen. He didn't know where he would go—he had no map, no direction—but staying here meant rotting.

  And he refused to let this city bury him too.

  As he stepped out of his stolen home for the last time, he took one final look around.

  The streets he had walked a hundred times. The bodies he had buried with his own hands. The orphanage he had called home.

  This city had given him life.

  And then, it had taken everything away.

  He turned away, gripping the straps of his backpack.

  "Goodbye, Manila."

  Then, he walked.

  And for the first time in months, he felt something flicker inside him.

  A spark.

  Hope.

  Because out there, beyond the ruins, beyond the endless silence—

  Someone had to be alive.

  And he was going to find them.

  Nero walked through the ruined streets, his breath steady but his mind restless.

  The idea of leaving Manila was terrifying, but the alternative—staying here until the loneliness swallowed him whole—was far worse.

  But walking alone across endless ruins? That was suicide.

  He needed a vehicle.

  He searched tirelessly, moving from one abandoned street to the next, peering inside cars wrecked by the impact. Most were crushed beyond repair. Others had shattered windshields and twisted metal, their owners still trapped inside—decayed, skeletal, forever frozen in their last moments.

  He tried not to look at their faces.

  An old truck? Dead battery.

  A sedan? Engine completely wrecked.

  A motorcycle? Flat tires, rust already creeping in.

  Damn it.

  The sun began to sink below the ruined skyline, painting the world in hues of deep orange and purple.

  Nero clenched his fists. He had spent hours searching, and he still had nothing.

  He needed to keep moving.

  With a deep sigh, he pulled out his flashlight and switched it on, the beam cutting through the growing darkness. Shadows stretched across the ruined buildings as he continued his search.

  The silence of the city at night was different.

  Darker.

  It made him feel like something was watching.

  His footsteps echoed on the cracked pavement as he passed by the husks of once-thriving businesses—now just broken windows and looted shelves. He couldn't help but mutter under his breath, a habit he had developed over the months to keep himself from going insane.

  "If phones still worked, I could at least check a damn map…" he grumbled, kicking a small piece of debris aside. "Or message someone. Anyone."

  But there was no signal. No Wi-Fi. No internet.

  The world had gone dark, and no one was coming to turn the lights back on.

  He exhaled sharply and was about to turn back when something caught his eye.

  A flicker.

  A distant glow.

  A moving light.

  Nero's heart stopped.

  At first, he thought he was imagining it. His loneliness had played tricks on him before—whispers that weren't there, figures in the shadows that never existed.

  But this?

  This was real.

  Headlights. A car.

  Someone was alive.

  And they were heading straight toward him.

  His mind raced. Should he run? Hide? Chase after it?

  His body moved before he could decide—he stumbled forward, waving his arms, shouting, his voice breaking from months of silence.

  "HEY! STOP! I'M HERE!"

  The vehicle kept coming, its engine roaring against the dead quiet of the city.

  Nero's breath hitched.

  Was this it? The moment everything changed?