Afterglow and Monument

Amidst the graveyard of reinforced concrete, a stooped figure moves slowly. He carries a backpack sewn from mutated beast hides and a laser cutter salvaged from an abandoned laboratory at his waist. Each step crushes the decaying leaves beneath his feet, producing a soft rustling sound. No one knows where he comes from, only that he always heads towards the rising sun - perhaps there lies an oasis untouched by radiation, or a still-functioning underground fortress, or perhaps, it's nothing more than a mirage of his own creation.
This scavenger, whose face is etched with wrinkles by the wind and sand, clings to a nearly insane obsession: before the last cell in his body succumbs, he will find a new home for the surviving humans. He collects the fragmented memories of the old world - half-melted chips storing agricultural techniques, faded diaries recording the coordinates of shelters, and even an ordinary pebble could potentially be the cornerstone of a new civilization. Every night, when the sun sets, he unfolds a tattered map by the campfire and sketches his ideal city with charcoal. In the flickering flames, those lines seem to transform into towering city walls and meandering canals.
The dizziness caused by radiation sickness grows stronger by the day. The growls of mutated beasts echo all around, and even the dust floating in the air is lethally toxic. Yet he persists in his journey, for he firmly believes that when the last seed of hope breaks through the ashes of the apocalypse, and when the first wisp of smoke rises from the rooftops of the new settlement, this monument built from faith and sweat will bear witness to the rebirth of human civilization.