Seconds
passed…
Then realization
hit me suddenly.
I had made
it back alive.
I was back
on Uzazzu's soil after days of torment.
One moment there had been screaming roots and suffocating dark and the taste
of blood in my mouth…
and the next, the world had tilted into light and noise and hands dragging me toward safety.
Everything after that was a blur of faces.
Arms around me.
Questions I couldn't answer.
Voices layering over one another until they all sounded like wind.
I think someone hugged me.
I think someone cried against my shoulder.
I think Nala said my name three times.
But I was too tired to hold any of it.
My mind was a bowl with a cracked rim — everything spilled out before I could grasp it.
By the time they brought us into the compound, my legs were no longer my
own.
Someone pressed a waterskin to my lips.
Someone else lifted my chin to check my pupils.
I blinked, and suddenly I was lying on a mat in the women's quarters.
My sandals were gone.
My tunic had been changed.
Bandages wrapped my ribs and shoulder, and I couldn't remember when anyone had
touched me long enough to put them there.
Nala sat nearby, leaning against a pillar. Exhaustion softened her face, but even half-asleep she watched me like she expected me to vanish.
"How long… have we been back?" I croaked.
She smiled faintly. "Not even a full hour. Rest. Talk later."
I wanted to ask about the others — who lived, who didn't — but the words tangled somewhere in my throat.
The camp hummed around us: whispered reports, running footsteps, hurried movements.
Too much.
Too loud.
Too alive.
I closed my eyes.
Sleep took me like a blow to the skull—hard, sudden, merciless.
And then…
The forest swallowed me again.
The air was thick, wet, pulsing like a living lung. Every tree leaned inward, black silhouettes twisting, watching. My feet thrashed against mud that wasn't mud—hands, pale and cold, clutching my ankles, dragging me down.
"Nala!" I screamed, but my voice came out shredded, like something was peeling it from my throat.
I saw her ahead, running, but the fog warped her shape. One moment she was whole—
the next, blood streaked her back, a spear jutting through where her heart should be.
"No—NO, Nala!" I tried pulling my feet free. More hands clawed up my legs.
Nails dug into my skin. Something sharp sliced across my calf.
The forest groaned.
A shadow detached itself from the trees. Tall. Faceless. Its arms stretched wider and wider, ribs cracking open like branches snapping under weight.
It whispered my name.
Amira…
Its voice was made of every cry I heard in those three days, every dying breath. It knew my fear. It drank it.
I tried to run but the ground melted beneath me, thick like mud swallowing my knees.
Dead eyes began to surface in the blackness—warriors I knew, warriors I
didn't—their mouths moving soundlessly.
Then one faceless stood infront of me
"You left us," he rasped. Blood bubbled where his voice should've ended.
"You'll leave her too."
"No. You lie" I choked.
Behind me, someone screamed my name—Danladi this time. I spun, trying to see
him, but the trees rearranged themselves like a maze, swallowing his voice.
The faceless shadow lunged.
Its cold hand clamped over my ribs—
the exact place of my wound—
and squeezed until the world went white with pain.
I felt something tear.
I screamed—
a raw, helpless sound— and the sound echoed, filling the forest like a thousand dying warriors mocking me.
Then the ground gave way completely and I was falling, falling through darkness, grasping for something—anything—until suddenly—
I slammed awake.
Pain exploded through my side. My bandage had ripped. My breath choked in my throat as I curled forward, gripping my ribs.
The room spun.
My skin was cold. My wrapper clung to me with sweat.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.
For a moment, I didn't even know where I was.
My voice trembled out of me "Nala…"
I searched for her and found her sound asleep, snoring from exhaustion.
The world snapped back into place: the quiet room, the low fire light, the
slow breathing of sleeping women.
I swallowed a groan.
I couldn't stay here.
My skin felt too tight, like the nightmare was still wrapped around it.
Slowly, holding my side, I slipped out into the night.
The camp was almost silent.
Fires smoldered low, casting soft rings of orange along the ground.
I moved without thinking — down the familiar corridor, past the training yard,
toward the quarters for the sick.
My feet knew where to go even before my mind caught up.
Something inside me needed to see the others.
Needed to see that we had survived.
Or to see who hadn't.
The air grew colder the closer I got.
The smell of herbs, iron, and smoke clung to everything.
I pushed aside the curtain.
The soft moonlight caught Danladi first.
He was sitting by a pallet, elbows on his knees, head bowed.
A boy lay beside him — small, pale, chest shivering with shallow breaths.
"Danladi…?"
He looked up slowly, eyes red around the rims.
"You should be resting."
"I couldn't sleep."
He nodded like he already knew.
I eased down beside him. My ribs burned. I ignored it.
"Who is he?" I whispered.
Danladi's gaze returned to the boy.
"No one," he said softly. "At least… no one the world will claim."
My heart tightened.
"No family?"
"None." He exhaled shakily. "He joined the units alone. From one of the small settlements. Barely trained. Barely grown."
His voice caught. "But brave."
The boy winced in his sleep — if it could still be called sleep — and a tremor passed through Danladi's hands.
I watched the boy's chest rising too slowly.
"He's no older than Maimuna," I whispered to myself.
His voice cracked. "He shouldn't have
been in that forest. He shouldn't have been on any battlefield yet."
"How did he get hurt?"
Danladi's breath came uneven.
"Protecting another."
Then he paused to take in some air and calm his nerves before continuing.
"Protecting me."
A dull ache gathered behind my ribs that had nothing to do with my wounds.
The boy coughed — a wet, rattling sound that made the healers flinch.
One of them rushed over and frowned at us.
"Don Allah, ku matsa gefe. Yana bukatar iska."
(Please… step outside. Give him air.)
We obeyed.
We stood just outside the tent, the night colder than before, felt heavy like wet cloth.
Neither of us spoke.
Inside, the rasping breaths came slower.
Then… slower.
Then not at all.
A stillness settled.
Danladi's eyes closed.
The healer pulled the cloth over the boy's face.
A life ended.
Quietly.
Unnoticed by the world.
Witnessed only by a warrior who owed him his own survival.
We stood there for a long time.
Only when my breath stopped matching the pace of grief did I finally speak.
"Danladi… how many times does this happen?"
His voice was barely above a whisper.
"Too many."
The wind touched my face like a cold hand.
In that moment, the world felt terrifyingly fragile.
A breath.
A heartbeat.
A wrong step in a dark forest. In the heat of battle or on a mission.
And you were gone.
This — not the stories, not the songs — was the life of a warrior:
quiet deaths, unseen bravery, young faces fading before they ever learned the
fullness of their names.
I wasn't sure I wanted it.
And yet… here I was.
Alive.
Shaking.
Unsure.
Danladi didn't try to comfort me.
He just stood beside me, sharing the silence, sharing the cold, sharing the
truth.
Somewhere far off, a night horn sounded.
Another day survived.
But tonight… tonight I understood that survival wasn't a promise.
It was a borrowed thing.
A fragile thing.
A thing that could be taken back at any breath.