The sun didn’t rise in Zaruma. It peeled itself off the sky like dead skin, dim and uncommitted, casting long gray shadows over the scavenger camp. Smoke drifted from somewhere beyond the barricades: a half-collapsed city where the old world once coughed its last. Now it was just another graveyard.

  Kazeem stood barefoot on the cracked metal of the watchtower, his amber eyes locked on the horizon. His skin, dark as scorched cedar, caught the dim light like polished stone. Sharp cheekbones, a sculpted jaw, and thick, unruly hair gave him a beauty that unsettled people — not soft or delicate, but the kind that looked carved by something with intent. Even here, in Zaruma, he stood out. Too clean. Too still. Too much like someone the world hadn’t ruined yet.

  He wasn’t on duty. He didn’t care. He was seventeen and knew things he shouldn’t: like the weight of silence before a raid, or how a morning without wind meant something was wrong.

  He had that silence now.

  His stomach growled. Below, his father was welding the generator casing shut with a broken torch, jaw tight, arms corded. His mother had already left to trade copper wires at the market square, if it could be called that. A dozen tents, two guards, and a rusty old bell that marked “official” deals. Kazeem knew every inch of it.

  Too well.

  He climbed down from the tower with the grace of someone who didn’t quite belong in his body. Long limbs, lean build, too alert. People in the camp called him “ghost-eyed” behind his back. He didn’t mind. They weren’t wrong. Something was wrong with him.

  He dreamed of places he’d never been.

  He remembered things that never happened.

  And sometimes, he knew what someone was about to say, word for word, before their mouth moved.

  The barracks smelled of old sweat and black powder. Kazeem ducked inside, grabbing his scavenger harness from the wall. Dried blood crusted the straps. Not his. Scavenging wasn’t a job, it was gambling with your body. You searched ruins for metal, batteries, scraps of old tech. If you were lucky, you came back with something worth eating. If not, you joined the nameless.

  He strapped up in silence.

  “Going out?” his father asked from the threshold, voice deep and rough as sand.

  “Better I go now,” Kazeem said without turning. “Before the rain starts.”

  “There’s no sign of rain.”

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  “There will be.”

  A pause. His father didn’t argue. He never did anymore. Something about Kazeem made people hesitate. Not fear. Something colder. Like suspicion of someone who had already seen too much.

  “Take a shockblade,” his father said, handing him the weapon. “And don’t go past the black vines. That area’s unstable.”

  Kazeem took the blade. Its hum was low, steady, a charge left in the coil. “If I’m not back by night?”

  “You will be.”

  Zaruma’s outskirts weren’t ruins. They were wounds. The ground was broken concrete, twisted rebar, collapsed domes, and charred skeletons of buildings once holy to someone, somewhere. Kazeem moved like a shadow through the wreckage. He passed rusting machines overgrown with black tendrils, vines that fed on iron. He passed graffiti scrawled in unknown glyphs. He passed a bone altar someone had lit with a child’s severed hand.

  He didn’t blink.

  Zaruma had no mercy. Mercy was a myth for richer lands, if those even existed anymore. All Kazeem knew was scavenger dust, silence, and survival.

  He reached the perimeter by midday. The air shifted.

  He froze.

  The vine ? Am I already this far ? He thought

  Up ahead, a man-shaped figure stood hunched near a collapsed building. No scavenger gear. No movement. Kazeem inched closer, hand on the blade.

  ”A drunkard ? What is he doing here ?” He whispered.

  His father clearly told him not to approach this cursed place. But something , a feeling kept tempting his mind.

  Ok let’s at least take him back to the camp… how did he get there anyway ?

  His curiosity (… or was it really it ?) made him “forget” the warning, he then decided to go closer.

  At that time he didn’t know that his “forgetfulness” will be rewarded by the worse thing he has seen in his life.

  The figure had no face.

  No skin.

  No mouth.

  Just smooth, stretched flesh, pulsing slightly, like it was listening.

  Kazeem didn’t breathe.

  Suddenly, it twitched. A sharp movement, insect-like, as if sniffing the air.

  Then, nothing.

  Kazeem backed away.

  He was to scared too utter a single word so let’s not even talk about screaming.

  He’d seen enough.

  Time to go… no it was time to run .

  But then the whisper came.

  “You’re late.”

  Kazeem turned. No one.

  “Too late. Again.”

  He ran with all his might, more agile than usual, more agile , but also more panicked than anything.

  The sound of his beating chest and his heavy breath stopping him to think clearly about what happened.

  By nightfall, the storm broke.

  Kazeem passed the raid camp and ran all the way to his house , drenched, skin streaked with ash. The gates closed behind him with a groan. People didn’t ask questions. The guards didn’t meet his eyes.

  To tired and traumatized to speak or eat , he went directly in his room , peeled off his harness, tossed the shockblade on the ground, and collapsed onto his cot.

  But sleep didn’t come.

  Instead, a dream.

  No … not a dream.

  A memory.

  But not his.

  He was standing in a different version of Zaruma, one where flames licked the sky and the ground trembled. His mother was screaming. His father was gone. People were running. A shadow fell across the sun.

  Then…

  Silence.

  Blackness.

  A sharp pain in his spine.

  And the sound of something devouring time.

  Kazeem awoke with a gasp.

  Except—

  The sun was brighter now.

  The cot beneath him was neatly made.

  And his body…

  …was unscarred.

  His hand moved to the shockblade.

  It wasn’t there.

  “Already awake?” his mother called from the hallway. “You overslept.”

  Kazeem stood slowly. He had a weird feeling .

  His mother called like always . But something wasn’t right … no maybe something was too right .

  “Hi mama , what day is it ?”

  He had the habit of asking the date , to verify if his Deja- vu feelings were just illusions or hallucinations.

  “ the 9th. Why ? Do you have something to do ? ”

  Kazeem didn’t answer.

  Because he remembered the 9th already.

  He remembered it too well … and that was a problem.