Six days.

  For six straight days, Samye did not taste a single drop of water.

  At first, hunger was louder than thirst. His stomach twisted in on itself, aching, burning, demanding answers he didn’t have. By the third day, hunger faded into something dull and distant. Thirst replaced it—sharp, unforgiving, relentless.

  He kept asking himself the same question, over and over again.

  How did this happen?

  Just one day ago, people greeted him by name.

  Just one day ago, this was his home.

  Just one day ago, his parents were alive in the memories of others.

  And now—

  Now he was nothing.

  On the second day, his legs carried him outside.

  Not because he had hope—but because the body refuses to die quietly.

  He walked through the same streets he once ran through as a child. Shops he remembered. Houses he knew. Doors he believed would open for him.

  They didn’t.

  People looked at him the way they look at something unpleasant—something they don’t want to touch. Their eyes slid away the moment he approached. Conversations stopped. Windows shut.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  He asked for food.

  At first, politely.

  Then quietly.

  Then, when his throat burned too much to speak properly, he begged.

  No one answered.

  Some pretended not to hear.

  Some stared at him with open disgust.

  Some looked down at him as if he were less than dirt.

  Less than a dog.

  The same society that once praised his family now treated him like something that had crawled out of the gutter.

  He stopped counting how many times stones were thrown.

  A rock struck the ground near his feet. Another hit his arm. Someone laughed.

  “Traitor’s son.”

  The words followed him wherever he went.

  He ran.

  Not toward safety—

  but away from their faces.

  Tears blurred his vision as he ran, spilling down his cheeks without restraint. He didn’t wipe them away. He didn’t look back. He just ran, breath ragged, heart pounding, feet carrying him farther and farther from everything he had ever known.

  He didn’t know where he was going.

  Only that he couldn’t stay.

  Days passed like a fever dream.

  Roads blurred together. Villages turned into distant shapes he never entered. His thoughts fractured, looping between memories and curses.

  They feared my father.

  They never loved us.

  This is the true face of humanity.

  The sun burned him by day. The cold gnawed at him by night.

  By the sixth day, his body was barely listening to him anymore. His vision dimmed at the edges. His steps grew unsteady. Every breath felt heavier than the last.

  Then the rain came.

  Heavy. Sudden. Merciless.

  The sky cracked open above him as he stumbled into the forest, soaked within seconds. Mud swallowed his feet. Water streamed down his face, mixing with tears and dirt until he could no longer tell them apart.

  He laughed weakly.

  Bitter.

  Broken.

  “So this is it,” he whispered hoarsely, rain filling his mouth.

  “This is what you turn people into.”

  He cursed them—all of them.

  The society.

  The neighbors.

  The friends.

  The world his parents believed in.

  His legs finally gave out.

  Samye collapsed onto the forest floor as rain pounded against his back, against the earth, against what remained of his strength. The cold seeped into his bones. His body refused to rise again.

  The darkness crept closer.

  The last thing he felt before everything faded was the sound of rain—

  washing away footprints,

  washing away names,

  washing away the boy he once was.