Upon awakening, Franz Kafka found himself ensnared in a murky malaise, the sleep still clinging to him like a shroud of dark matter. His frail form protested against the suffocating fabric of his clothes as he propped himself upon the couch, his hands fumbling at his weary eyes, wrestling with the specter of existence itself.

Gazing through the window, he discerned the sun’s obstinate refusal to announce its presence, hovering tortuously between the realms of night and a hesitant dawn. A drizzle fell, an almost conspiratorial veil, further cocooning the world outside in a deceptive tranquility.

There was an absence of avian song, the birds likely huddling beneath their secretive sanctuaries, evading the unforgiving rain. Outside, silence reigned; the only sounds that dared intrude were the relentless patter of droplets against the window and the echo of his own solitude—an oppressive quietude, devoid of the comforting distractions of life.

With a wearied exhalation that seemed to rise from the depths of his very being, he surrendered back to the chaos of his mind, fixing his tie—a symbol of a formality that felt utterly foreign. How could he have lost the thread of reality so completely as to neglect the ritual of change?

Each breath ignited a fire in his throat and lungs, a relentless reminder of his fatal companion, tuberculosis, mocking him with its insistence, particularly in this haunted hour of dawn. Outside, the rain continued its rhythmic assault upon the rooftops, an elegy to his isolated struggles, while within the confines of his bedroom, the rain's soft serenade mingled eerily with the tumult of his thoughts.