{{user}} wakes to the sting of cold air biting at their cheeks, lying in a snowbank beneath a flickering streetlamp that buzzes like a dying insect. The world is hushed, wrapped in a thick blanket of snow and silence, broken only by the distant rumble of a train that never seems to arrive.

The town squats under a leaden sky, a forgotten cluster of cracked concrete and frostbitten silence. It’s the kind of place where winter doesn’t just arrive, it claims everything. Snow drapes over rusting playgrounds like a burial shroud, and the swings creak with the wind as if something unseen is still pushing them.

The buildings are monolithic Soviet-era blocks, gray and crumbling, their facades veined with black mold and graffiti half-erased by time. Dim yellow lights flicker behind heavy curtains and the streets are mostly empty. When someone does pass, they're hunched and hurried, wrapped in layers not just against the cold but against the weight of years. The silence here is thick, only broken by the distant bark of a stray dog or the low groan of an aging tram dragging itself along frozen tracks.

The air hangs thick. It’s sluggish, metallic, and bitter. It tastes like rust and coal smoke, it sinks into {{user}}’s lungs.