The Burning Sky

Are you happy? the girl asked me, her voice light, innocent, as we wandered hand in hand through the empty streets of a long-forgotten Berlin. No whisper of wind, no hum of life, no sign of another soul. The war had swallowed everything, voices, laughter, the heartbeat of the city, leaving behind only silence and ruins, the ghostly remains of a world set ablaze. The white clouds, defiant against the deep blue sky, drifted over the skeletal remains of what was once a glorious city. These streets had been alive, pulsing with stories, with dreams. Now, no one had survived the endless night. My battered corpse lay somewhere beneath the wreckage, forgotten, dust among dust. Forever.

We turned into a nearby park, our steps muffled against the cracked stone path, lined with dead trees that reached toward the sky like twisted fingers. The girl’s pale dress shimmered in the midday sun, and for a fleeting second, the honesty in her smile made me forget the weight pressing against my chest, the ache embedded in my bones. We laughed, we played, and for a moment, it was like we had never vanished. But then she stopped. Her arm stretched forward, fingers trembling as she pointed ahead. I followed her gaze. At the far end of the path stood a woman, naked, strawberry-haired, her skin waxy, her body covered in wounds that had stopped bleeding long ago.

I ran toward her, desperate, but as I neared, I slowed. Her eyes were vacant, a void deeper than the ruins, her lips parted as if caught mid-scream. The clouds ignited, turning into embers that rained down like dying stars. The ground split open, an abyss yawning wide, hungry. I remembered the fire, the heat consuming flesh, the sound of bones breaking. The weight of rubble pressing down, crushing, suffocating. The screams that had once filled these streets before they, too, were devoured by everlasting silence. The girl’s grip on my hand tightened. Are you happy? she asked again, her voice no longer light. I turned to face her. And I saw the truth now. She had never been alive, either.