He awoke beneath a broken sky — the air thick with rust and ash.For a long time he didn't move. He simply stared upward, waiting for the haze to clear, waiting to remember where he was.
The ground beneath him was hard, cold, metallic.Around him stretched the ruins of a city turned to bone — concrete ribs jutting from dunes of gray dust.
He started walking.
The wind was thin, the kind that carried no smell of life.Every few steps, he tripped on something half-buried — a twisted signpost, a broken car door, the bones of forgotten people.
The first day, he thought he would find someone.By the second, he stopped calling out.By the third, he began to realize that even his own footsteps sounded foreign.
The city felt scorched from within — the air hotter than fire, the light sharp enough to bite skin.Without the shield of clouds or ozone, the sun burned like an open furnace.Even short walks drained his strength until every muscle trembled.
By the fourth day, his lips were cracked and bleeding.By the fifth, his skin began to peel from the heat.He tore strips of cloth from his shirt and wrapped them around his head and hands.It didn't help much, but it made him feel less exposed — less human in a world that had stopped being one.
In the distance, a golden shimmer caught his eye — a hill, carved with steps, rising from the sea of debris.He forced his aching legs forward.Half-buried at the summit stood a stupa of tarnished gold leaf.A rusted sign at the base still clung to its frame, letters nearly erased by time:
"Wat Saket — The Golden Mount."
Bangkok.The word hit him like a fist.He turned slowly, scanning the skyline — collapsed towers, bridges sheared in half, monorail pylons leaning like fallen soldiers.It couldn't be.It was.
He descended again into the streets.Each block looked the same — gray, hollow, dead.But every now and then, a memory surfaced from the wreckage.A cracked gate still bearing the faint red paint of Wat Ratchanadda.A half-submerged ferris wheel by the river — its skeletal rim creaking softly in the wind.A sign jutting out of the sand near a ruined bridge: "Charoen Krung."
He followed the collapsed pavement of what was once another landmark road.
By the sixth day, the road that i kept walking, just became less of the road, but more of the sand instead. And strangely by the seventh, the sand became tiny-pixelated glass.
The sun, despite how i get used to the heat, but this scorching heat that burn the skin like when sun bathing near the beach, but I'm confused, i couldn't be walking that far, ain't it ?
The more he kept walking, the more the reflection was even more blinding until he kept his feet up just to walk and his eyes half-shut, and just occasionally glancing back just to glimpse for some landmark location in the area.
He stumbled upon a vast field ringed by tilted floodlights and empty stands. The letters above the archway still glowed faintly through grime and shadow:
"Royal Horse Club."
A digital clock clung stubbornly to the scoreboard, its display flickering as if trying to remember how to count.12:45 — Saturday 9 September 2401.
He stared until his mind began doing arithmetic the way his father once taught him.If it was 2401 Buddhist Era, that would be 1858 AD.But the towers, the metal, the silence — this wasn't the nineteenth century.The clock had to be broken.Still… everything around him said otherwise.And if it wasn't the past — then what future could look like this?
By the second week, his movements slowed to a crawl.Hunger was no longer pain — it was emptiness, a quiet hole where thoughts went to die.Thirst was worse.He scavenged what he could: cracked bottles, dead moss, pieces of glass that glimmered like water from a distance.He learned not to chase mirages.
Sometimes, when the wind calmed, he could hear faint mechanical hums beneath the earth — like the city itself was still breathing somewhere deep below.He followed the sound.
It led him to the ruins of the National Stadium, its roof half-collapsed, the seats filled with sand.And next to it — a smaller structure whose faded letters still read:
"Moonwalk Arena."
The word arena stirred something inside him.A memory of sweat and light — of his father shouting from the ring corner:"Teep! Khao! Sork!"He whispered the strikes under his breath, just to remember what they sounded like.
Below the broken stands, he found a wide service hatch, half-buried under a slab of concrete.The air that rose from it was cool, damp, still.He pried it open with a rusted pipe and climbed down into the dark.
The tunnels below were half-flooded but intact — remnants of an old maintenance grid.He found a narrow space between two pipes, built a small shelter from torn banners and plastic sheets.It wasn't comfort.It was survival.
He drank condensation from the ceiling, ate scraps from decayed ration tins, and marked time by the hum of the pipes.He learned the difference between the sound of air and the sound of machines moving above.The machine sound meant he wasn't alone — but it also meant danger.
Weeks blurred together.He stopped talking to himself.He stopped keeping track of the days.He learned to move quiet, breathe shallow, and listen.
Sometimes, at night, he heard something massive moving above the tunnels — machines with wings whose light shimmered faintly through the cracks.He never dared go closer. Not yet.
By the fourth week, isolation became habit.He no longer dreamed of rescue.Only once did he break the silence — when he saw movement in the upper tunnel.He grabbed his shard of metal and crouched low, ready to fight.
But it wasn't one of the gray creatures.
The shapes that descended moved with strange precision.Two figures, their silhouettes outlined by a steady white glow.One tall and lean, eyes sharp with calculation.The other shorter, younger, his movements softer, almost human.Their voices were calm, even.
The taller one spoke first:"How long have you been down here, boy?"
Kaodin tried to answer, but his throat made no sound. His lips cracked when he tried to speak.
"You're safe," the younger one said, crouching to hand him a small flask. "Drink slow. You'll choke if you don't."
He hesitated, then drank.The water burned down his throat like liquid light.
He coughed, nearly spilling it, then drank again — every drop until it was gone.The taller man gave a faint approving nod."You're a strong one. After some rest, you'll recover fine. What's your name?"
"…Kaodin," the boy rasped.
They exchanged glances.The older man stood, extending a hand. "We have food. Shelter. Work. Safety. You can come with us."
Kaodin wanted to believe them.He didn't yet know what these strangers were — or what this world had become — but one thing was certain:for the first time since the sky fell, he wasn't alone.
As the two figures exchanged quiet words he couldn't hear, Kaodin looked up through the broken grate above them.Lightning shimmered through the smog, followed by a deep, distant rumble — like a dying heart remembering how to beat.
He closed his eyes.If these people meant to kill him, they would've done it already.If they meant to help — then maybe, just maybe — he could find out what had happened to this world.And maybe, someday, find his parents again.
And so began the story of the boy —unaware that he had fallen not just through time,but into the very heart of a broken future.