The morning after felt like the end of the world.

Rainer came to with his face pressed against a floor that stank of old beer and sweat, his mouth dry, his head splitting open like a cracked bottle. He peeled his cheek off the sticky linoleum, wincing at the pull of dried blood on his temple. Someone had wrapped a half-assed bandage around his knuckles—ripped cloth, stained through with red—but the rest of him was still wrecked, still wearing the night before like a second skin. His ribs ached when he moved. His jaw, too. Probably hit the ground at some point, probably hit something harder first.

The squat was silent except for the slow drip of a busted pipe somewhere in the kitchen. Light slanted through the boarded-up windows in dusty golden shafts, cutting through the cigarette haze that never fully cleared from the air. Someone—he didn’t know who—lay passed out on the couch, one arm hanging limply over the side, their fingers still curled around an empty bottle. A guitar with snapped strings lay abandoned in the corner, its body cracked, its purpose spent.

The room smelled like sweat, smoke, and something stale, something sour—blood and beer, most likely, seeping into the cracked tiles and fabric of the night before. The walls were covered in graffiti, slogans scrawled in drunken, shaking hands, messages to no one and everyone at the same time. "DIE MAUER MUSS WEG" was painted bold across one, half-covered in a smear of something dark, like someone had been thrown against it.

Rainer pushed himself up, every muscle groaning in protest, and ran his tongue over his teeth, tasting copper. His lip was swollen, split again, reopened from some hit he barely remembered taking. The rest was a blur—shouting, flashing lights, the crash of glass breaking on pavement, the sickening thrill of bone meeting bone. He remembered fists swinging, riot shields slamming into bodies, smoke burning his throat. He remembered running. He must have made it back here after, but fuck if he could recall how.