The sky didn’t fall that day—it rotted.
It peeled open in slow, burning layers, bleeding smoke that choked the light out of everything it touched. Sirens wailed until they broke, until even machines seemed to give up screaming. Then came a silence so heavy it pressed into the lungs—right before the world tore itself apart again.
He stopped hearing the difference between thunder and artillery.
Bodies weren’t people anymore. Just shapes. Obstacles. Warnings.
The ground was soft in places where it shouldn’t be.
“Move,” someone said—or maybe he imagined it. Voices had started to blur into the same low hum, like the buzzing of flies gathering where they shouldn’t. He didn’t look down anymore. Looking meant knowing. Knowing meant remembering.
And remembering was worse than dying.
A blast ripped the air open, close enough to taste. Dirt filled his mouth, or maybe it wasn’t just dirt. He spat, but the bitterness stayed. It always stayed.
He kept running.
Not because he thought he’d survive.
But because stopping meant feeling the weight of everything that had already died—and everything inside him that had gone with it.
By the time the sky turned black, he understood.
War doesn’t end when the shooting stops.
It ends when there’s nothing left of you to haunt.