Bloodshed – Chapter 3: Echoes of Innocence
King closed his eyes and let the battlefield fade, if only for a moment. The smoke, the mud, the screams—he carried them all in his mind, but memories had a way of slipping in, uninvited, like ghosts through cracks in a wall.
He remembered the village before the war came. Small, quiet streets; children laughing as they ran barefoot across sun-warmed stones; women tending gardens, men repairing fences, nothing extraordinary except the peace of ordinary life.
He had played in fields of gold grass, chasing the wind, pretending the world was endless and good. His mother had laughed when he fell in the river while trying to catch a sparrow. His father had scolded him gently, then smiled at the stubborn look in King's eyes.
That world didn't exist anymore, he thought, opening his eyes to the ruined earth around him.
Back then, God had been simple, almost comforting. A voice in stories, a promise of protection, a hand to hold when life hurt. He had prayed, not because he feared punishment, but because he believed someone—something—cared.
War had taught him that God was either absent or cruel.
He remembered the first warning. A soldier had come to the village one morning, boots pounding the cobblestones, uniform pristine while everything else trembled in fear. He spoke of "orders from above," of taxes and conscriptions, of lands to defend. Fathers, including King's, had left, pride stiffened by duty. Mothers had clutched children to their chests, whispering prayers that would go unanswered.
King had followed the men once, curious and naive, believing in something larger than himself. He had seen death for the first time in the fields beyond the village—the twisted corpse of a boy not much older than him, caught in crossfire he couldn't understand.
If God existed, why had He let this happen?
The question had lodged itself in his chest then, and it never left. Every life taken, every scream that echoed through ruined towns, every innocent crushed beneath the boots of soldiers—all of it was a reminder.
He had tried to pray again. This time, fingers gripping the soil of the battlefield, tears streaking dirt across his face. But the wind carried only the cries of the dying, the hiss of bullets, the stench of fire and blood.
King realized something vital: God did not intervene. God did not comfort. God did not care.
And yet, He existed in the stories, in the prayers of the living, in the banners held high over burning villages. That contradiction—His silence in the face of suffering—was what made Him cruel in King's eyes.
The memory shifted again. He saw the village at night, stars above, the warm glow of candlelight through windows, the smell of bread baking. That life, he knew, had been fragile, delicate, impossible to protect. War had torn it away in a single, relentless wave.
King clenched his fists, nails biting into his palms. If God exists, he whispered to himself, then He exists only to let the world burn, while we believe in Him. He lets us hope, only to break us. He lets us love, only to take it all away.
A breeze passed over him, carrying ash and smoke, and in that wind, he felt the old fear and the old longing. The boy who had once run through golden fields still lived somewhere beneath the soldier, beneath the hatred and grief. That boy remembered what it meant to be safe, to trust, to hope.
But King could not return. Not now. Not ever.
The war had carved him into something else—a weapon, a witness, a boy with a rifle standing amid ruins, carrying more grief and doubt than any man should.
He opened his eyes, and the battlefield returned: the smoke, the fire, the screams. The past was gone, but it still lived inside him, echoing in the questions he could not answer.
God is cruel, he thought again, the words a mantra, a truth, a curse.
And somewhere, deep in the ruins of his innocence, he wondered if he could ever forgive Him—or himself—for surviving.