Crimson bled across the sky, a canvas of fury. The stench of burnt earth, acrid and choking, filled my nostrils. Fields, once emerald waves, now lay a scarred, rust-colored wasteland, testament to the rot that had consumed us. My brother—once my shadow, my confidante—now stood a silhouette against the inferno, his eyes twin embers of hatred. Greed, a ravenous beast, had gnawed at our souls, leaving only hollow shells fueled by a madness that tasted of ash and blood.
This wasn't war; it was a ritual sacrifice to the insatiable maw of avarice. The screams of the dying—a symphony of agony—were drowned out only by the thunderous roar of artillery, each blast a hammer blow against the fragile remnants of our humanity. The commands, barked like the snarls of rabid dogs, echoed in my skull, shattering what little sanity remained. We marched, puppets on strings of delusion, driven by a lie so seductive, so comforting, that questioning it felt like self-mutilation.
We, the righteous, the self-proclaimed saviors, clutched our weapons like talismans against the encroaching darkness. But the darkness wasn't external; it festered within us, a malignancy mirroring the blood-soaked landscape. The taste of fear, metallic and cold, coated my tongue as the next wave crashed down upon us. Was this victory, or were we merely delaying the inevitable descent into oblivion?
Then, a figure emerged from the smoke—a ghost, gaunt and broken. His eyes, pools of desperate supplication, met mine. The weight of his despair pressed down, a suffocating blanket. My finger tightened on the trigger. The recoil slammed into my shoulder, a brutal kiss of death. The muzzle flash seared my vision; the world fractured into a kaleidoscope of crimson and black. His life, extinguished in an instant, left behind only a void the size of the chasm between us.
The regret, a venomous serpent, coiled around my heart. The wisdom that arrived too late, a bitter pill to swallow, tasted of ash and remorse. I had glimpsed a truth beyond the battlefield—his pain, mirroring my own, a chilling testament to our shared destruction. His sorrow, a palpable entity, reached across the chasm of our conflict, seizing my soul in its icy grip. I knew his name, his story, the injustices that had twisted him into an enemy.
The earth tasted of my own blood as life ebbed away. Words, strangled in my throat, remained unspoken apologies – a testament to the devastating silence between brothers. Yet, even in death, I saw a future, a flicker of hope reflected in the tears of someone I'd never known, yet somehow understood completely. Were these tears for me, or for the shattered legacy we'd left behind? This regret, this profound sorrow, it wasn’t enough. It was the bitter sting of a life lived in the shadow of a lie, a life I wish, in my final breath, I could have given back to him. My brother… forgive me. Forgive us.
