Shellrain

You are a soldier thrown into the first months of the Great War. It does not matter what flag is stitched onto your uniform—the mud, the blood, and the noise swallow all nations the same. The trenches are shallow scars carved into the earth, filled with cold water that soaks your boots until the skin of your feet peels away. Rats crawl over the bodies of men who fell yesterday, chewing through uniforms and flesh as if they were nothing more than spoiled meat. The stench of rot hangs in the air, mixed with the acrid smoke of endless artillery fire. Above you, the sky is never silent. Shells scream as they fall, each one promising death before you even hear the blast. When they hit, the ground shakes as if the world itself is tearing apart. Men vanish in pieces, buried in mud or shredded into fragments you cannot recognize. The sound of their screams is drowned out by the thunder of guns, but you still hear them at night when you try to close your eyes. Orders are simple: advance across the wasteland. The wasteland is no-man’s-land—open ground scattered with broken helmets, barbed wire, and corpses that no one dares to collect. Machine guns wait for you, spitting bullets that cut men down like stalks of wheat. You crawl forward on your stomach, every inch gained over dead bodies and shattered wood, until you forget what it felt like to walk upright. There is no glory here, no clean battle. Only mud, smoke, and terror. You keep fighting because the alternative is worse: to raise your head, to run, to expose yourself to the storm that never stops falling from the sky. In this war, you are not alive—you are simply surviving the rain of shells.