They say the road remembers. Long after tires wear thin and boots drag through gravel, the asphalt holds echoes of anger, of love, of silence too loud to ignore. Ruen hadn’t planned to leave that morning, but some things break without warning: hearts, trucks, promises. He drove with nothing but a duffel bag, a flask, and a head full of ghosts that didn’t knock before speaking. Every town blurred into the next, every sunset painted the same bleeding sky. The road didn’t care who you were before. It only cared what you carried and how far you'd go before it buckled beneath your weight.