Trying to find this dystopian sci-fi story
I remember reading an excerpt of this book ( or maybe it was a short story ) for my English class in this program called StudySync back in middle school. Here’s what I remember:
It’s post-disaster on Earth, surviving humans are now split into tribes of mountain people and forest people and then there’s a forbidden city in which nobody may ever travel to for it contains secrets of the past. The main character, the grand-son of the mountain people’s tribe’s leader has been obedient and fought his urges to explore the forbidden city but he is curious and consistently asks his grandpa why is he not allowed to travel there.
Eventually, after much resistance, he sneaks away and into the forbidden city which there are ashes and ruins, it looks like some sort of bombing or nuclear disaster happened with crumbled buildings and debris everywhere. The main kid goes into one of these buildings and finds a skeleton of someone looking out the window and in a rocking chair, their last moments before disaster struck.
When he comes out of the ruins, he gains a whole new perspective of their past and what happened and feels sympathy for his ancestors despite what he was told about the city beforehand. He was always told that the city beyond the gates was dangerous and was similar to Hell but after exploring it and seeing it for himself, his mind awakens and he encourages others to start visiting the city too.
That’s all I remember but hopefully it’s enough to be able to help find it! It was just an excerpt I’m pretty sure so there wasn’t too much in the first place.