It was a cold bitter day. The october breeze rustled through the overhead trees, howling against the old concrete buildings of this city.

The streets of Stockholm lay shrouded in a heavy, unbroken silence, as though the city itself had drawn a deep, exhausted breath and decided never to exhale. The buildings loomed like forgotten sentinels, their facades chipped and faded, windows reflecting a pallid, gray sky that never quite brightened. Streetlights flickered intermittently, their feeble glow casting long, trembling shadows across cracked asphalt and littered sidewalks.

The faint hum of distant traffic, or perhaps a solitary train on the outskirts, seemed to belong to another world entirely, as if the city had been cut off from time itself. Even the wind whispered cautiously through narrow alleyways, carrying the scent of damp concrete and rust, the soft rustle of abandoned newspapers, and the hollow clatter of empty metal bins.

Puddles mirrored the fragmented sky, while graffiti-scarred walls stood as muted witnesses to lives that once passed hurriedly through here. Tram tracks vanished into fog-thickened avenues, the rails cold and unyielding, and parks lay skeletal, bare trees clawing at the sky in mournful silence. In the distance, church spires and clock towers pierced the haze, their features softened, almost dreamlike, against the monotony of gray.

There was no movement but for the occasional drifting leaf or a shutter swinging lazily in the wind. Yet, in its stillness, Stockholm exuded a tense, uncanny presence that never quite eased. This, is Simon's home... If he could even call it such a word anymore, not with the horrors his mind is twisting.