It was dark.
The sky was encased in a thick veil of smoke, and the agonizing screams of fallen comrades were burying the soldier alive.
He remembered the day he left home — when he bid farewell to his mother, when he shook hands with his father, when he kissed his wife one last time.
All of it was etched into his memory, and he longed for those moments of bliss that now felt like a distant past.
But what is a soldier without despair?
What is his life without hardship? he thought.
He had a job to do, and comforting memories had to wait.
As he glanced behind, he saw faces once vivid and alive now drifting away.
Death was standing at their doorstep, and the soldier could do nothing but watch,
as the very peers he once lived for… now retired from living themselves.
He faced away.
Not because he couldn't watch them die — but because his own helplessness was haunting him.
"Fight now, mourn later," his father used to say.
He had a job to accomplish.
Now not just for the nation, but for his fallen comrades, his loving wife, his children waiting at the door.
He had to fulfill his duty — and he had to do it fast.
"How would I face my friends on the day of reunion?" he asked himself.
His conscience tormented him, but he had to suppress the guilt.
For now, he was going to make them all proud.
"Capture the base," his commander had said before shoving them off to the battlefield.
"That old hag must be sipping his coffee while we’re getting slaughtered," he thought.
"If I survive this, I’ll make sure no war like this ever happens again."
Now, he wasn’t fueled by rage alone — but by a vision.
He was a man with a rifle and a broken heart.
But he had something the enemy didn’t — a purpose.
Slowly but steadily, he made his way up the hill.
Countless lives met their end before his bullets.
But right now, his sanity was gone — and so was his humanity.
What more can be expected from a man surrounded by corpses of his beloved?
At last, he reached the top.
Winning the battle didn’t matter anymore.
He just wanted to raise the flag of his nation —
and he wanted to raise it the highest.
With trembling hands and three bullets in his torso,
the soldier planted the flag —
and with it, his name in the book of the dead.
"Peace… at last," were his final words
before he fell into the abyss.
