The news hit the barracks like a thunderclap one sticky morning in Sofia. I, Ivan Girin, stood at attention with the rest of my division as the colonel read the proclamation aloud from a freshly printed sheet. "Bulgariana has joined the Axis! The Great Empire calls us brothers-in-arms. We march south to reclaim what was stolen in the Second Balkan War—our lost lands in Sarbiane!"
I felt the words sink into my bones. I had been here before. Back in 1912, as a raw eighteen-year-old private, I had charged these same hills with a bayonet and a prayer during the Second Balkan War. I still carried the scar across my left forearm where a Serb blade had opened me up like a fish. I still woke some nights smelling the blood and the smoke. Now, at twenty-four, I was a corporal with calloused hands and a chest full of medals I never wore. This time we would finish what we started. Cheers erupted all around me—men slamming rifle butts on the ground and shouting "Za Bulgariana!" I roared with them, throat raw, heart pounding with something fiercer than patriotism. Revenge.
By noon we were on the move, boots pounding the dusty roads south. My battalion—mostly tough farm boys and mountain men like me—formed the spearhead of the 2nd Division. The air smelled of pine and dry earth as we crossed into Macedonia, the landscape opening up into rolling hills and river valleys we knew in our bones. Pirot fell without a single shot. The Sarb garrison had pulled out days earlier, leaving only a white flag fluttering over the town hall and a handful of frightened civilians peeking from shuttered windows. We marched straight through the main square, flags snapping, and claimed it for Bulgariana. The men laughed and slapped each other on the back—first victory, and we hadn't even fired.
We didn't stop. Orders were clear: push along the river toward Vranje. The Nisava glittered beside us, its banks thick with reeds and willows. Most Sarb soldiers were tied up far to the north, against Germano-Hungry—those Austrian bastards grinding them down in the trenches trying to advance towards Belgrade and beyond. That left only a few thousand men to slow us down here. We marched in high spirits, rifles slung, bayonets catching the sun. I kept thinking of my father's stories, of the villages burned, the women taken, the land torn away. This time the debt would be paid in full.
Halfway to Vranje the scouts came galloping back, faces flushed. "Sarbs ahead! A few thousand, advancing across the open field—no trenches, no tricks. Just trees, rocks, and whatever cover they can find."
We deployed fast. Our machine-gun teams scrambled up the highest hill overlooking the valley, setting up their Maxim guns behind rocks and low earth berms. The rest of us spread out along the slope—rifles ready, hearts hammering. The Sarbs advanced first, a gray wave of infantry coming straight at us across the open ground, bayonets fixed, officers shouting in that harsh tongue I still hated.
Our machine guns opened up first.
The chatter was deafening. Tracers ripped across the field in long, sweeping arcs. Sarbs dropped by the dozen—bodies jerking violently as bullets tore through chests and stomachs, blood spraying in bright crimson arcs that caught the sunlight. One man took a burst across the face; his head simply disappeared in a red mist of bone and brain matter, the headless torso stumbling three more steps before collapsing. Another clutched at his belly as rounds stitched him open, intestines spilling out in slippery gray loops while he screamed and tried to stuff them back inside. A hundred fell, then two hundred. The grass turned slick and dark. Wounded men crawled behind rocks only for the gunners to walk fire over them—skulls exploding like overripe melons, limbs twitching in the dirt. The air filled with screams and the metallic stink of blood mixed with the sharp tang of cordite. I watched one Sarb officer try to rally his men—he took a burst across the torso and folded like wet paper, ribs shattering, lungs punctured, coughing up frothy red foam as he died.
After the first few hundred dead littered the field like broken dolls, our commander raised his saber high. "Bayonets! Charge!"
We surged down the slope like a tide—shouting, shooting, steel flashing. The Sarbs broke. Some tried to run; we caught them from behind. My bayonet found a fleeing soldier between the shoulder blades—he gasped, coughed a thick gout of blood, and slumped forward, the blade grating against his spine. I ripped it free with a wet sucking sound and kept running. Another turned to fight; I clubbed his rifle aside and drove the steel up under his ribs, feeling it scrape bone before punching through the other side. He screamed, hot blood pouring over my hands as his guts slid out in a steaming tangle. A third threw down his weapon and raised trembling hands. "Surrender! Surrender!" I spared him, shoving him toward our rear with the growing line of prisoners, their faces pale with terror.
The ones who escaped melted back toward Vranje, leaving the field carpeted with their dead and dying. Moans rose from the grass—men with shattered legs dragging themselves through the mud, guts hanging out in glistening ropes, begging for water or a bullet in voices that cracked and broke. One young Sarb, barely older than a boy, lay with his jaw shot away, tongue lolling in the ruin of his face, eyes wide with animal fear. Another clutched the stump of an arm, blood pumping in rhythmic spurts between his fingers. We didn't stop to help. We regrouped on the captured ground, breathing hard, bayonets dripping thick crimson, uniforms spattered with other men's blood and bits of flesh.
Now we wait. The artillery is still rumbling up the road behind us—big 75mm guns and a few of the Empire's enchanted howitzers that can lob shells bursting into firestorms. Once they arrive, we'll pound Vranje into rubble and finish the job. The men are already sharpening blades and sharing cigarettes, eyes bright with the taste of victory and the promise of more blood to come. I lean against a rock, rifle across my knees, staring at the distant spires of Vranje on the horizon.
This land is ours again. And we're not stopping until every inch of it flies the Bulgarian flag and every Serb who stole it lies bleeding in the dirt.