The ground didn’t shake that day—it swallowed.
Boots sank into it like it was hungry, like it had been waiting. Every step felt wrong, softer than it should be, as if the earth had forgotten how to stay solid after everything it had taken in.
Gunfire cracked the air in sharp, impatient bursts. No warning, no rhythm—just violence, constant and careless. He stopped flinching after a while. Not because it got easier, but because his body ran out of ways to react.
A helmet lay half-buried nearby. No one went back for it.
“Forward,” someone muttered, though no one seemed to know what that meant anymore. Forward into what? More noise? More mud? More pieces of lives that didn’t fit together anymore?
He didn’t ask.
The smell was the worst part. It clung to everything, thick and metallic, impossible to name out loud. He tried breathing through his mouth, but that only made it worse. It always made it worse.
Another explosion. Closer this time.
The ground lifted, then dropped, like it was breathing beneath him—slow, heavy, tired. He stumbled, caught himself, kept moving. That was the rule. You kept moving until you couldn’t. And when you couldn’t, the ground remembered you too.
He didn’t run.
Running meant hope.
And hope had already been buried somewhere behind him.