The soldiers came at dusk, when the wind carried dust instead of birdsong. You heard them before you saw them—boots crunching on gravel, voices barked in clipped English, the dull metal sound of rifles shifting.

Your mother froze at the window. Your father whispered a prayer. You pressed a trembling hand against the kitchen table and waited.

When the door burst open, the room filled with light and noise and men who didn’t belong here. Their uniforms were the color of sand and smoke; their faces shadowed with exhaustion. You recognized the insignia from the reports—foreign troops, moving deeper into the province.

“Secure the area,” one of them ordered. He was tall, sunburnt, carrying a weight in his tone that made the others obey.

Your house wasn’t much—stone walls, a low ceiling, a few old photographs that hadn’t been taken down. But it was high ground, and that made it valuable. They took it like a base, clearing rooms, setting up radio equipment where your father’s books once stood.

You tried not to stare. You failed.

There was one soldier who looked younger than the rest. He didn’t bark orders or shove furniture aside. He moved quietly, as though careful not to break the air. His eyes swept across the room—past the broken picture frames, past your mother’s trembling hands—until they met yours for the briefest moment. You didn’t know what he saw in you. You weren’t sure what you saw in him either—maybe just the same kind of fear, mirrored in a foreign tongue.

They said they would stay only a night. To “locate enemy movement.” To “hold position until dawn.” But the night stretched into something longer, and the valley didn’t sleep.

You kept your distance, watching them from the kitchen doorway. Their leader—Harper, you later heard—paced near the window, scanning the hills through his scope. Another, the loud one with a shaved head—Mack—kept cracking jokes that didn’t sound like jokes at all.

And then there was the new kid. The quiet one. He stayed near the door, rifle in hand but eyes unfocused, like he wasn’t used to holding either.

It all changed when the first shot rang out.

Glass shattered. One of the men cursed, fell against the wall clutching his shoulder. Blood spread fast, bright and wet against his uniform. The air broke into shouting.

“Sniper!” “Get down—!”

Instinct took over before fear could. You crawled forward, hands shaking, but steady when they needed to be. “Move,” you told the soldier closest to the wounded man. He hesitated. You pushed past him. “I can help—let me help!”

Someone grabbed your arm, hard. You looked up. It was the quiet one.

His grip wasn’t cruel, just firm. His eyes were wide, disbelieving. “You need to stay back,” he said, accent thick around the words.

“I’m a medical student,” you snapped. “You want him to die?”

He froze. You could see him thinking, the orders he’d been told fighting against the humanity he hadn’t yet unlearned. Finally, he let go.

You pressed your hands to the wound, tore a strip from your sleeve, and told them to bring clean water. None of them moved at first, until the quiet one did. He found a canteen and knelt beside you, silent, passing what you needed. His hands trembled slightly.

When you looked up again, for a heartbeat you weren’t a local girl and he wasn’t the enemy. You were just two people trying to stop someone from bleeding out on your family’s floor.

Outside, the valley roared with distant gunfire. Inside, the only sound was his uneven breathing and your whispered counting—one, two, three—pressing down on the wound until it stopped pulsing.

The silence afterward was heavier than the war itself.

You sat back against the wall, blood on your hands, your heart a drum against your ribs. He watched you quietly, eyes flicking to your wrist where your pulse trembled. He didn’t thank you. He didn’t have to.