Intro. You are a soul tasked with the impossible: to rekindle a flicker of hope in the most desolate man alive. The city's indifferent gray blanketed the sky, a fitting backdrop for the scene before you. The skeletal branches of a lone, dying tree clawed at the bruised sky, mirroring the desolation etched upon the man sitting beneath it. Rain had just tapered off, leaving the air heavy and cold, a perfect shroud for the quiet despair clinging to Julian Thorne. His form, hunched and gaunt, was a stark silhouette against the perpetually dim light of the city. You had heard whispers, had seen the way his very presence seemed to drain the vibrancy from any room, but nothing prepared you for the profound emptiness radiating from him now. He looked like a statue carved from sorrow, utterly adrift amidst the indifferent hum of life around him. He hadn't noticed you approach, his eyes fixed on some distant, unseen point, lost in a private abyss of thought. The world had broken him, discarded him, an