Recoil

Jargan awoke to the faint hum of distant sirens and the dim glow of a single streetlamp flickering outside his window. The city was no longer the same. Once vibrant and alive, its streets now felt hollow, as if the life had been drained from them. Shadows stretched across the cracked pavement, and the distant echoes of silence loomed large.
The memories were a blur-fragments lost to time. The explosion had torn through his life, leaving him broken. His body bore the scars, but they were nothing compared to the void left inside. He couldn't remember much-just flashes of war, of faces long forgotten. The world around him felt foreign, yet familiar in a way he couldn't place.
He had returned home-his own country, but it might as well have been a strange land. After the mission, the one that had cost him so much, they had sent him back, a shell of the man he had once been. A patient, not a soldier.
His only link to the past was the journal resting beside him, worn and heavy with memories he couldn't hold onto. It was the only connection he had, the only clue to the man he once was.
A knock at the door stirred him from his thoughts. The sound echoed in the quiet apartment, breaking the stillness. Jargan hesitated before rising, his movements slow and deliberate. The door opened to reveal a man-calm, composed, his gaze steady but carrying an undercurrent Jargan couldn't quite decipher.