Night took the city.
The streets that had once glowed under clean white lamp posts now burned — orange and uneven, . The man who had brought the city to its knees was gone. In his absence, people worked. They moved through the rubble and the smoke and the dark, helping whoever needed it — and for once, none of them seemed to see color or race or anything other than someone who needed a help.
In the loud noise of the sirens, a stranger shouted toward a rescue team:
Stranger:"Over there — someone's there.!" pointing outside the city edge
Three men with a single first-aid kit rushed toward the figure resting against the tree. When they reached him, they found him unconscious. His left arm was riddled with small puncture wounds. His stomach had gone deep purple. His lap was soaked in blood.
But it cant be his. He doesn't have any deep wound to bleed this much
They did what they could. Despite how he looked, the damage was survivable — nothing life-threatening beyond his left arm. They loaded him into an ambulance and brought him to the hospital.
He woke up sixteen hours later.
When his eyes opened, he didn't look around. He didn't search the room. He didn't reach for anything or anyone. To him he was alone in that Room. It was as though he had already accepted what was real — or he was performing toughness for an audience of no one. His mind barely holden on a lie. everything is ok. i am ok- The Denial stage of grief
Two hours later, Two police officers came to his bedside.
Officer 1: "How are you feeling, sir — #####?"
Star Torch: "Fine."
Officer 1: "Good. We have some questions, we like to ask you. Honesty would be helpful in times like these."
Star Torch: "I'll answer with what I have."
Officer 1: "Camera footage from the metro station and eight separate witnesses confirm that when the alarm sounded, everyone was directed to the north stairs. You went to the west stairs. Can you explain why?"
Star Torch: "Terrorists target crowds. Leaving the group made me a smaller target."
Officer 2 wrote something in his report.
Officer 1: "The attackers were last spotted coming from the direction of the west stairs. Did you encounter any of them?"
Star Torch: "No. I was running when a wall collapsed near me. That's the last thing I remember."
Officer 2 kept writing.
Officer 1: "A collapsed wall. I see. The report indicates clear signs of a struggle approximately sixty meters from the west stairs. Did you happen to see or hear anything in that area?"
Star Torch: "No, sir. No battle. No gunshots. Nothing near the west stairs."
Officer 2 wrote, then spoke without looking up.
Officer 2: "One last question. Of the three hundred and forty passengers on that metro, three hundred and nineteen were confirmed dead. Nineteen were found alive. You make twenty. There is one person still unaccounted for — no camera footage, no witness testimony. Did you see them?"
Star Torch answered without hesitation — the same flat, even tone he had used for every question before it:
Star Torch: "No, sir. I was running alone."
The two officers looked at each other. They thanked him and left.
In Star Torch's mind, every word he had spoken was a lie. Not one sentence had been true. But he didn't trust anyone enough to tell them — not about the attacker, not about her, not about the battle he fought or the madness leading him to victory or the hollow, pointless victory that came at a price too heavy to bear.
Two days later, he left the hospital wearing the face of a man who had lost nothing.
His parents took him home. Everyone was there waiting — faces full of relief, full of sorrow for the city, full of gratitude that he had made it back. He sat among them and smiled. He made the right sounds at the right moments. He tried to act as though the world was still the same shape it had been three days ago.
He tried to ignore the guilt.
He tried not to think about how weak he had been. How easily it could have been all of them, had they been there with him that day.
He tried not to notice that no one mentioned her.
Slowly, without permission, tears began to fall. He was still smiling — still laughing at something someone had said — but the tears came anyway. His mind kept running the logic of the survivor. His body knew better.
Slowly the faces around him began to blur.
Slowly the weight of it arrived.
Star Torch:"I don't deserve this."
Survivor's guilt. Instant and total.
He stood and ran. No explanation. No direction. Everyone in the room went silent with shock as the door swung behind him. they ran after him trying to stop him. he was already gone.
He ran like a man fleeing a battlefield — because that is exactly what he was doing. Fleeing reality like a coward. His legs carried him into the forest — the one he and she used to walk through together. Watching trees. Watching animals. The kind of quiet, ordinary boring thing a couple does when they don't need anything spectacular from a boring day.
Night fell and he was still moving. Day rose and he kept moving.
Where? He didn't know. He didn't care.
He crossed streams. He walked without direction. His stomach began to ache with hunger. His lips cracked dry. And he asked himself the question that kept returning, the one with no answer:
What right do I have to eat? To drink?
Weakness. I am just a bag of weak flesh.
He walked until his body stopped obeying him.
On a grey, rainy day, Star Torch sat beneath a bridge — tucked under its shadow, hidden from the rain. He drew his knees to his chest, making himself as small as possible. Eyes half-closed between awake and asleep. Going to neither.
Then something appeared in front of him.
A piece of bread in a small plastic bag, half of it poking out into the open.
Laugenstangerl.[1]
His favorite. Reality had a cruel sense of humor.
He looked at the hand holding it. The skin was loose and thin — the fragile, papery skin of old age, trembling slightly with every small movement.
He didn't look any higher than the hand.
Star Torch: "Do I deserve this? Please — give it to someone who deserves it."
The words settled in the air and stayed there.
Then a voice came. A woman's voice — old and fragile on the surface, but underneath it, warm. Genuinely warm, in the way that only certain old people manage.
The Woman: "You're the one who deserves it most."
Star Torch said nothing.
the Woman: "How about you become my servant. Your life is worthless right now anyway — I can see that clearly enough. But you haven't ended it either. Something is holding you back. Work under my command, and you will die a natural death — just like the others before you. just like you yearn for"
The words were cruel. Inhuman, almost. The kind of thing a demon would whisper to someone standing at the edge.
And yet — they were exactly right words. the slap to awake you from a nightmare
They struck on whatever remained of Star Torch's sanity .
He looked up.
An old woman stood before him. She wore a new looking brown leather jacket and wide linen black trousers. She held a black umbrella — open, despite them being already sheltered from the rain. Her face was pale and deeply lined. Her hair was silver-white, fine as air, falling past her shoulders. She extended her hand toward him, steady and waiting.
His hand — dirty, roughened, unwashed — reached upward and found her fingerless leather gloves.
The Woman: "I was once standing in the same shoes as you. I wanted to start over. A new world. A new name. A new beginning. And yours begins here, with me. To light a fire, a tree must fall. ties with the past. From now on. Your name is—Torch.
She let it rest in the air.
Star torch(####):"Torch."
A pause. Then she suddenly remembered something.
The Woman: "I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Mrs. Veuren."
Torch: "Veuren... that doesn't sound German."
The woman looked at him the way a person looks at someone who has just said something wrong at the wrong timing.
Veuren: "German? We're in Feldkirch. Austria."
She studied him for a moment, something shifting behind her eyes — something closer to concern than judgment.
Veuren: "Come with me. There are now more questions than there were before."
[1] Mini baguette with soft golden-brown crust, soft inside and outside. its good