A Fallen Dream

San Francisco had once shimmered with life, its hills crowned by skyscrapers and bathed in the glow of the bay. But now, the city lay eerily silent, an abandoned monument to ruin. Concrete crumbled, skyscrapers stood broken and hollow, their glass facades shattered like ghostly smiles. Once teeming with dreams and ambition, the streets had been reduced to skeletal remains of once-bustling neighborhoods, where trash and debris now drifted in winds that howled through empty avenues. The city was a ghost of its former self, vacant and eerie, like a forsaken temple fallen to ruin.

It hadn’t happened overnight. Decades of poor policies had turned the once-thriving city into a wasteland. Corruption had eaten at its core like a rot, festering in hidden corners and spreading through every crevice until nothing good remained. Crime ran unchecked, painting the walls with graffiti and fear, driving families to lock their doors and look for escape. The addiction crisis had sealed the city's fate, with thousands lost to the numbing comfort of drugs. Shadows of people wandered the streets, the life draining from their eyes until, one by one, they too disappeared.

Those who could leave had fled long ago, abandoning the city to its fate. Those who remained, unable to break free from vice or trapped by poverty, had slowly dwindled, their numbers fading as disease and despair claimed one after another. Parks turned to overgrown fields of weeds, and playgrounds sat empty, silent relics of the children who no longer played there. It became a place where even memories faded, washed away by time and neglect.

Years stretched into decades, and the city grew quieter, its scars left exposed to the rain and the salt of the ocean air. Nature crept back, reclaiming patches of land between buildings and stretching ivy over cracked windows. The occasional scavenger might venture in, quick-footed and wary, but even they would not stay long in this cursed place. In time, only the strongest dared to tell stories of the San Francisco that had been. One day, perhaps, a new generation would venture in to start again, but for now, San Francisco remained a city of whispers, a fallen dream that waited, crumbling into memory.