He was born into a broken family and had long since stopped hoping for warmth or comfort. His father had abandoned them years ago, leaving only his mother to shield him from the cold reality of their lives. But even she, frail and overworked, could not fight forever. 

When sickness finally claimed her, Nicolas was left with nothing but her last whispered apology.

Desperate and alone, he had reached out to the only person he had left—his father. But the man who now lived a comfortable middle-class life with a new family had no room for the boy he had left behind. Rejected and shattered, Nicolas wandered the streets with a handful of coins clutched tightly in his hand, his last link to survival.

The city was alive with indifference. People passed by him, their faces empty of empathy, too busy with their own struggles to notice the starving boy in their midst. He stumbled upon a food cart, its smoky scent drawing him closer. The sight of what was being sold turned his stomach: skewered and grilled rats, their charred bodies glistening in the firelight.

"How much?" Nicolas managed to ask, his voice barely audible over the din of the crowd.

Before the seller could answer, a man nearby doubled over, vomiting violently. Nicolas watched as the man wiped his mouth and, with trembling hands, forced himself to finish the meal he had purchased. Food was food, no matter how disgusting, and hunger left no room for pride.

The vendor's voice cut through the thoughts in Nicolas's mind. "Ten times what you've got," he sneered, eyeing the boy's meager handful of coins.

In that moment, reality seemed to crush Nicolas. Not even the most revolting scraps were within his reach. His chest tightened, his vision blurred, and a dry gasp escaped his lips.

In that moment, Nicolas realized something profoundly disturbing: the world didn't care if he lived or died.

"Can I just buy a portion?" Nicolas asked, his voice shaking. "I haven't eaten all day. Please, just a small amount."

The seller scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief. "Everyone's hungry, kid. Don't go thinking you're special. Nobody gets too full anymore-everyone is dying out here. And let me tell you something: charity? It's dead, just like everything else. Nothing in this world is free."

The harsh words hit Nicolas like a blow, another brutal reminder of how unforgiving the world had become. His stomach twisted in knots, not just from hunger but from despair. He clutched the coins tighter, as if they could shield him from the truth, but the reality was undeniable: he didn't even have enough to afford a piece of roasted rat.

As he walked away from the food cart, memories came flooding back. He thought of his mother and the life they had shared—poor, yes, but never like this. Back then, there were always root crops to harvest, small meals to share. They ate three times a day, even if it was nothing more than boiled yams or cassava. Hunger had been a visitor then, not a constant companion.

It's then, that he felt like the world was punishing him for surviving.

Nicolas then found himself at the cemetery, standing before the grave of his mother that bears no marker. Dry cracked soil mirrored his hollows; he fell to his knees with a thin frame he was unable to hold sobs racking at his body.

"Why did you leave me?" he shouted, his voice cracked and raw with pain. "Why didn't we both die together, Mama? It's just so awful without you. I cannot do this anymore."

He buried his face in his hands, and his tears washed into the dirt. "I hate this world," he mumbled between his sobs. "Hate how cruel it's being. Hate how governments sit in their palaces with our bellies on the pavement. They don't care about us. They never did."

He spent a long time crying there, his wails echoing into the still of the night. It was the first time he ever let himself break. As the silence settled around him, however, another emotion began to grow deep within his chest: not just despair but anger.

"I can't do this anymore"

He stayed for hours by his mother's grave, the bruised knees on his hard ground, the weakness in his body. Nothing felt emptier than on that day, and it was as if those whispers to her grave were the final goodbye. As the sun plunged below the horizon, Nicolas stood up, brushing the dirt off his clothes.

"We'll see each other soon, Mama," he whispered, his voice cracking.

City lights flickered dimly while wandering back into the streets again. His destination is certain, and the loud buzz of the city into noise and cacophony could not matter anymore to his mind. His wayward steps took him to the broken walls of an abandoned three-storey building, crumbles in walls as if a reminder to his senses of the degenerating decay around the city. The building was scheduled for redevelopment, but for the moment, it stood there like a hollow shell of what it had once been. Much like how Nicolas felt inside.

Climbing the rickety staircase, he managed to get to the roof. The night air caressed his skin with an icy touch, bearing scents of rust and dust. He stood on the edge of the rooftop, surveying the city below. Its people scurried through their lives like ants, as inconsequential as his felt. Wrapping his fists into a tighter fist, he tried again to find the courage he needed to make him go on.

"This is the only way," he whispered to himself. "I'm going to die anyway. Why not make it quick?"

He stepped closer to the edge, his toes hanging over the crumbling concrete. But as he stared into the abyss below, doubt crept into his mind. His breath hitched, and his legs trembled.

Can I really do this? he thought.

The tears hit again, this time smearing his sight. For a 14-year-old boy, there was surely no life yet, so life had certainly pushed this young man to the final breaking point. His circumstances squashed him to the ground. There was little room inside for hope anymore.

Just as he stepped back, the ground opened before him. The corner of the building, long and withered from the ravages of time, was eroded by the man's weight. It had to give way. Nicolas' senses were slowed as if his time was running through fast motion.

His mind went blank.

This is it. This is really the end. I'm really going to die.

As the wind whipped past him, he tried to smile, his cracked lips pulling into a faint curve. Tears streaked his face as gravity pulled him closer to the ground.

Then came the sound—a sickening thud, the unmistakable sound of someone—falling.

Nicolas was made to feel a shift of his body as if he was moving. His thoughts swirled with disarray, and it felt odd, as if someone was carrying him. There was a bright light that streamed through his eyelids closed tightly shut, and slowly when he opened them, he found himself beneath a clear blue sky.

 Am I in heaven?.

He tried to sit up, but a sharp pain shot through his back, making him wince. "Oh. we can still feel pain in the afterlife?" he mumbled half-jokingly through his grogginess.

As his senses came back, he realized that the clouds were not what surrounded him. Angels weren't either. He was just lying in the back of a truck. Piles of soft pillows and mattresses cushioned his fall. Like a cold splash of water in his face, reality set in—he hadn't died. He didn't hit the ground. Instead, he fell onto the passing truck.

"I. am alive," he whispered, in disbelief.

The truck rumbled down the dirt path, its humming engine breaking the eerie silence that had settled in his mind. Nicolas slowly sat up, wincing at the dull ache that he felt in his back. As he looked around, he widened his eyes at the view before him.

Fields lay on the either side of the path, infinite rows of bent corn stalks in gentle breeze. The golden, gleaming stalks beamed in the sunlight - their brightness against the monotony and dullness of what Nicolas knew as the world made it seem impossible. Within his city, every inch of land housed buildings, houses, and ruins. Fields like these hardly existed as myths.

His mind rewound back to his childhood, to the small pots of root crops his mother had lovingly tended. That was the closest he had ever come to farming. But this. this was something else entirely.

The truck continued down the road and with every passing second, Nicolas's amazement grew. He spotted something up ahead that nearly made him stop breathing.

Cows. Live, genuine cows. They were lazily grazing in a gorgeous green meadow, those enormous bodies lumbering quietly as they cropped the long grass. To one side, goats strayed by threes and fours, a soft bleating lost on the breeze.

Nicolas fell to his knees as his legs gave under him, looking in bewildered disbelief.

"This. that can't be real, it can't be. It cannot be," he breathed. "This is not possible, not possible at all."

In his fourteen years, he had never seen a cow or a goat—not because he hadn't gone looking for them, but because they were practically extinct. The world he came from had long since run out of livestock. Meat was a luxury he had only heard about in stories. Beef, goat, chicken—these were delicacies that existed in a time before the scarcity began.

Yet here they were, alive and thriving. Nicolas's mind was having trouble taking it all in. Was this still the same world? Or had he somehow fallen into a completely different one?