"Hey, can you help me with that?"
An old man was calling out to a boy in his mid-teens.
The boy pointed at himself, unsure if he was the one meant. His skin looked like it hadn't seen sunlight in a long time, and his messy hair had ash-gray streaks running through it, like that of an old man.
"Yes, you, young gentleman," the old man said, waiting patiently. The old man stood beside a small wooden box on the ground, filled with all kinds of old junk; photographs, scraps of paper, a pocket watch, and many other things.
The street around them was alive with noise. People brushed past each other, the air buzzing with the usual city chaos, car horns, vendors shouting, the distant bark of a dog. The boy couldn't help but wonder why, out of everyone here, this man had picked him.
He sighed and walked closer.
"I need to bury my old memories," the man said quietly, running his fingers over the box. "Can you help me with that?"
The boy blinked. "Bury your memories?"
"Yeah." The old man's lips twitched into a half-smile. "They've been haunting me too long. I thought maybe it's time to let them go."
The boy frowned, confused. "Why would you want to bury the things you care about?"
The old man's eyes softened. "Because sometimes, the things we care about the most are the ones that hurt us the deepest. Don't you think… when a memory becomes too painful, maybe it's better to let it rest? To bury it with everything else you've lost?"
The boy didn't answer. He didn't really understand what the old man was trying to say.
But before he could think more about it, the sky changed.
It happened so fast the boy almost missed it. The golden evening light that had been shining through the clouds dimmed and turned black and red, bleeding into something that looked like a dying sunset mixed with night.
Within seconds, the whole sky looked wrong. It wasn't night. It wasn't sunset. It was something in between like the heavens had cracked open and something else was leaking through.
Around them, people stopped walking. Conversations died mid-sentence. Cars rolled to a stop. Every face turned upward.
For a moment, everything was silent. The entire city just… watched.
Then the stars appeared, but not the ones the boy remembered from quiet nights. These glowed red, pulsing faintly. They multiplied fast; first a few, then dozens, then hundreds until the sky was covered with them.
The boy's chest tightened. "What the hell…" he whispered.
Beside him, the old man's expression didn't change. He just stared at the sky like he'd seen this before. The boy looked around him. Everyone was silently staring at the new sky with wide eyes until some of them began to laugh.
At first it was one or two. Then more joined in. Soon, the laughter grew louder, echoing down the street. Soon, it was everywhere.
People were laughing – men, women, children – faces upward, their mouths wide open, laughing so hard it didn't sound human anymore.
The boy stepped back. "What's wrong with them?"
But no one answered.
In the distance, sirens began to wail. The sound of metal scraping echoed across the skyline as something huge crashed. Flames burst from a skyscraper far away.
He could hear glass shattering, explosions rumbling through the air but none of it felt real.
The crowd didn't move. They just kept laughing and looking at the new sky above them.
The old man's shoulders sagged. His voice, when it came, was low and rough.
"See what old scars can bring back to life?"
The boy looked at him, confused, heart pounding.
And that's when he saw it: the old man's left eye – once dull and clouded – was now perfectly clear. Inside it, where a pupil should have been, there was a clock. A small, golden clock face, its hands completely still at 12.
The boy's voice cracked. "What's wrong with your eye…?"
The old man didn't answer immediately. Instead, he rummaged through his box again, muttering to himself. When he stopped, he pulled out a small hand mirror and lifted it toward the boy.
"Look."
The boy froze. In the reflection, his own left eye was the same. He had the same looking clock inside his own eye.
"What... what is this?" he whispered.
The old man's tone turned strange. "Don't you hear it? The whispers, the voices twisting your memories?"
"What do you mean by tha–"
Before he could finish, everything shattered. The ground vanished beneath him. The city stretched and melted, dissolving into a sea of stars. The people, the buildings, even the burning skyline, all of it tore apart into streaks of red and black light. Those same red stars he just saw, now surrounded him.
The boy floated, suspended in nothing.
He tried to call out, to scream, but no sound came out. His throat was frozen. His voice didn't exist here.
For a long moment, there was nothing but silence and that faint ticking sound: tick, tock, tick, tock...
Then the stars began to gather together, connecting line by line, until they formed something that looked like a huge smile, stretched across the void.
And then everything blinked out again. He gasped and stumbled backward and before he could realize it he was back on the street.
Same cracked pavement. Same cold wind. But the world was empty now. No people, no sound.
The boy spun around. "Hello?!" His voice echoed through the empty buildings and streets. "Hey!" He shouted again, louder this time. "Is anyone here?!" But only his echo answered him.
His head throbbed. "Argh, my head hurts… what's happening to this world?" he muttered, gripping his temples.
Flashes of something like memories, maybe, started flickering behind his eyes. Faces he didn't recognize. Places that didn't exist anymore. A woman's voice calling a name he couldn't remember.
He tried to focus, but the harder he did, the faster they faded.
In just one moment, the entire world he knew was gone. And worse, his own mind felt like it was slipping away with it.
He couldn't remember who he was. Not his name. Not his age. Not where he came from. Nothing.
It was as if the stars had reached inside and devoured everything that made him human.
He fell to his knees, gasping for air. The sky above was still that same red-black haze, the grin faintly visible among the stars.
The ticking in his head grew louder: Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock
"Tell me…" he whispered with a trembling voice. "Who am I?"
No one answered. Only the sound of the clock.