Station 1

Chapter 1 The Story of a Soldier (4)

Part 4: The First Taste of War

"A soldier’s first battle is not just against the enemy. It is against himself—against the fear that grips his throat, the shaking in his hands, the voice in his head screaming to run."

The march to the front was long and silent. The boy—no, the soldier now—walked among the others, his rifle an unfamiliar weight against his shoulder. Around him, men who had once been farmers, blacksmiths, tailors, and students marched forward, their boots crunching against the frozen dirt. No one spoke. There was nothing left to say.

Smoke coiled in the distant horizon, dark against the gray sky, marking the battlefield ahead. The air smelled of damp earth, sweat, and something acrid—gunpowder, perhaps, or the lingering stench of death carried by the wind.

When they reached the trenches, the boy hesitated before climbing down into the maze of mud and misery. The walls were damp, the ground slick with filth. Rats scurried past their feet, fat from feeding on what had been left behind. Some of the older soldiers barely noticed. They leaned against the sandbags, smoking, sharpening their bayonets, their faces hollow with exhaustion.

The boy clutched his rifle, his knuckles white. His hands, which had once carved delicate wooden figures for his sister, now held an instrument of death.

Then—

A shrill whistle split the air.

It began with the roar of cannons, a sound that tore through the sky and rattled the very ground beneath them. Dirt and debris rained down, the force of the blasts sending tremors through the trench walls. Shouts erupted around him, commands mixed with screams.

Then came the gunfire.

Bullets cut through the air with terrifying speed. The boy barely had time to react before Tomas shoved him down. “Keep your head low!”

His breath came in sharp gasps. His pulse pounded in his ears. He peeked over the sandbags, his stomach twisting at what he saw—bodies collapsing, men clutching their wounds, the earth swallowing the fallen.

The enemy was advancing.

"Steady your aim!" Tomas barked, his voice harsh but steady.

The boy swallowed hard and lifted his rifle. His arms trembled, his vision blurred. A figure came into his sights—a man in the enemy’s uniform, no older than himself, running forward with a bayonet raised.

Shoot.

He hesitated.

Then, the enemy soldier locked eyes with him. For a moment, they were just two boys on opposite sides of a line drawn by men far away from the battlefield.

But war does not wait for hesitation.

A shot rang out.

The boy flinched as his own finger squeezed the trigger.

The man stumbled. His charge faltered. He clutched his chest, eyes wide with shock, and crumpled to the ground.

For a moment, time stopped.

The boy’s breath caught in his throat. His hands shook. His first kill.

The man on the other side had a face. A name. A home. A family waiting for him, just as the boy’s family waited for him. But he would never go back.

Because of him.

"Keep firing!" someone shouted.

But he couldn’t move.

Not until Adrien grabbed his shoulder, yanking him down just as a bullet whizzed past his head, embedding itself into the sandbags behind him.

"You’ll die if you hesitate!" Adrien hissed.

The boy forced down the nausea rising in his throat. He reloaded. Fired again. And again.

Somewhere in the madness, Julian was laughing—wild, breathless. "Can you believe this? We’re really in it now!" His grin was manic, his knuckles white around his rifle.

Nearby, Tomas fought like a man who had already accepted his fate, his face cold, his movements precise.

The battle raged on. Time lost meaning. The boy fired until his fingers were numb, until his arms ached from recoil, until the screams of dying men blurred into one endless wail.

By the time the gunfire faded, the world had changed.

Bodies littered the battlefield, their uniforms soaked in mud and blood, their eyes frozen in expressions of pain, fear, or nothing at all.

The boy’s legs threatened to give out beneath him. His breath came in ragged gasps.

Julian was alive, though the laughter had drained from his eyes. Adrien sat against the trench wall, staring at his trembling hands. Tomas stood still, his jaw tight, his fingers flexing as if trying to shake something off.

The boy looked down at his hands. They were stained red.

He scrubbed at them, rubbing his palms against his uniform, but the blood wouldn’t come off.

He was not the same.

Something inside him had been lost.

And in its place, something else had begun to take root.