Himmel's journey began with such naïve vigor, full of youthful hope, as he donned his uniform, eager to serve his country with a kind of unfounded pride. There was an energy about him then, a belief that perhaps war could still be something pure, something where heroes rose amidst the smoke and ash to protect the innocent. He was, after all, a boy, filled with grand dreams of glory, with no understanding of the darkness that lay beyond. He had kissed his mother on the cheek, the echo of her love lingering like the last sweetness of a dream, promising he would return soon. What did he know of war, of death, of the unending gnaw of fear that would, like a disease, creep into every inch of his soul?

Boot camp had been a blur of grueling routines, endless drills, and shared laughter with comrades who, like him, had yet to taste the bitterness of real battle. Their youthful energy seemed invincible, for they were a brotherhood of ideals, of men who believed they could withstand anything. War was a distant echo then, a word on a page, a tale of heroes who emerged victorious, their names etched in glory.

But when Himmel's first battle came, it shattered him. A sound he would never forget—a thunderous crack of gunfire, and then... terror, like an iron claw clutching his chest. There, beside him, a man, Peterson, had fallen, his life snuffed out in an instant, his body jerking in grotesque convulsions. He had only moments ago spoken of the future, of dreams that would never be realized, and now he lay there, an empty shell in the dirt. The world around Himmel began to collapse, the flood of panic overwhelming him. It was no longer a game, no longer a noble cause. The ground beneath him seemed to tremble, and his mind, for a moment, could not process the reality that had descended upon him. He had once been full of hope, but now there was only the overwhelming, crushing weight of fear. The kind that stops you, that paralyzes you in place.

That moment marked the first fracture in Himmel's spirit, but it was not the last. As the days wore on, the terror would only intensify. His comrades fell one by one, their faces twisted in agony, their lives snuffed out like candles in the wind. But more than the loss, it was the way Himmel changed, the way his very soul seemed to crack, like brittle bone under too much pressure. The battlefield, that chaos of violence, of death, left a scar that time could not heal, no matter how far he would go, no matter how much he tried to outrun the haunting memories.

Years passed since the war ended, but for Himmel, time itself seemed to have stopped. His body might have returned home, but his mind—no, his soul—was still trapped in the horrors he had witnessed. His home, once filled with warmth, now stood as a hollow shell. The air, thick with the staleness of abandonment, pressed down on him. He was alone, left to fight battles of a different kind—battles fought not with weapons, but with the fragments of his shattered self. His mind was a constant battleground, and there was no escape. The faces of the dead, the memories of screams and blood, they lived within him, relentless, gnawing away at what remained of his sanity.

Each night was a new war. The dreams would come, vivid and terrifying. He would wake, drenched in cold sweat, the echoes of battle still ringing in his ears. Faces of those who had fallen—Peterson, Joseph—would haunt him, their eyes wide in terror, asking him why he had not saved them. The guilt consumed him, gnawed at him like a parasite. Was he to blame for their deaths? Did they die because he had been too weak to act, to save them from the inevitable?

And still, as the years stretched on, Himmel remained in his prison. His house, once a place of comfort, had become a cage. He did not leave. The thought of the outside world was unbearable. The people, the noise, the life—he couldn't face it. He was a ghost among the living, a man whose soul had been torn asunder, trapped forever in a nightmare from which there was no awakening. He wandered through the empty rooms, his footsteps echoing like the memories that haunted him, the faces of the fallen forever etched in his mind. There was no escaping it. There was no forgetting.

In the silence, Himmel would sometimes catch himself staring out the window, watching the world continue on, watching the people walk by, their lives so simple, so full. They laughed, they talked, they lived. He had once been one of them, hadn't he? Once, he too had been full of hope. But that man was gone. What remained was a husk, a broken shadow of a soldier who had entered the war with a sense of purpose, only to leave it with a shattered mind and a heart drowned in sorrow.

There were no answers for Himmel, no resolutions. The memories of war, of the terror, of the lives lost, clung to him like a disease. He couldn't escape it. He couldn't escape himself. The world moved on, but Himmel remained, trapped in his own mind, forever bound to the horrors he had witnessed. His journey, it seemed, had no end.