Station 1

Chapter 1 The Story of a Soldier (5)

Part 5: The Horrors of the Battlefield

"They told us war was about honor. About courage. About glory. But there is no glory in the smell of rotting flesh. No honor in watching your friend bleed out in the mud. And courage? Courage is just the lie we tell ourselves to keep moving forward."

The boy no longer flinched at the sound of gunfire. The first battle had stolen that part of him. Now, war was a constant, unrelenting thing. Days blurred together, each one a cycle of hunger, exhaustion, and death.

The battlefield was never silent. Even in the rare moments between battles, the air carried the groans of the wounded, the whisper of scavengers picking through corpses, the distant thunder of artillery promising another sleepless night. The sky was always choked with smoke, the scent of blood and burning flesh clinging to everything.

There were bodies everywhere.

Some lay sprawled in the trenches, their faces frozen in terror, eyes wide even in death. Others were twisted into unnatural shapes, limbs bent at odd angles, half-buried in the mud where they had fallen. Some were missing pieces—legs torn off by cannon fire, torsos ripped open by shrapnel. The boy had once been horrified by the sight of death. Now, he barely noticed when he stepped over a corpse.

He had stopped counting how many days had passed since his first kill. He had stopped counting how many men he had shot since then.

But he could count the ones they had lost.

The Ones Who Didn’t Make It

Julian had been the first.

It had happened so quickly. One moment, Julian had been laughing—grinning even as bullets whizzed past them, as if war was some kind of twisted joke. The next moment, his body jerked, his eyes went wide, and then he simply collapsed. A single bullet, right between the eyes. His smile was still there, frozen on his face, but his body was lifeless.

No last words. No time for goodbyes. Just silence.

The boy had reached for him, shaking his shoulder, as if that would bring him back. But Julian was gone. Just like that. One moment, a friend. The next, a corpse.

They couldn’t even bury him properly. The battle had raged on, and they had been forced to leave him behind. When the boy looked back, he could barely recognize his friend—just another body among the countless others, swallowed by the mud.

Adrien had been next.

Not from a bullet, but from something crueler. A wound on his leg had festered, the flesh turning black, the stench of rot filling the air. They had no medicine, no doctors, no way to help him. They had tried to cut away the infection with a dull knife, but it hadn’t been enough.

Adrien had burned with fever for days, his body shivering despite the thick wool blanket they had wrapped around him. He had cried out in his sleep, calling for his mother, his voice cracking with desperation.

And then, one night, he simply stopped breathing.

The boy had pressed his fingers against Adrien’s neck, searching for a pulse. Nothing.

They had buried him in a shallow grave behind the trench. There had been no funeral, no time to mourn. Just a few hurried words, whispered into the cold night air before they were forced to move on.

Now, it was just Tomas and the boy.

The Living Dead

Sleep became a distant memory. Even when the guns were silent, the screams did not stop. Some came from the wounded, writhing in pain as they begged for someone—anyone—to end their suffering. Others came from the living, their minds lost to terror, reliving horrors no man should have to endure.

And then there were the dreams.

The boy dreamed of Julian, his blood staining the dirt. Of Adrien, burning with fever, whispering for his mother. Of nameless men, their bodies stacked like firewood, their eyes glassy and empty.

He woke up gasping, fingers clawing at the damp earth, his pulse hammering in his skull. He wasn’t the only one. Every night, the trenches echoed with muffled sobs, men shaking and sweating through their nightmares.

Tomas never spoke of his own nightmares, but the boy saw the way his hands trembled when he thought no one was looking.

War had stripped them bare.

They were no longer boys. No longer men.

Just ghosts waiting for their turn to die.