The artillery finally caught up just before noon the next day—long columns of 75mm field guns and the Empire's heavier howitzers rumbling into position along the ridge we had taken. The enchanted pieces were unmistakable: barrels etched with glowing runes that pulsed like living veins, shells stacked in crates marked with arcane sigils that made the air around them hum with barely contained power. Our gunners wasted no time. At the colonel's nod the barrage began, and it went on for hours without mercy.
We sat on the hillside and watched Vranje die.
Shells screamed overhead in endless salvos, landing with earth-shaking crashes that sent plumes of black smoke and orange fire boiling into the sky. Explosive rounds tore houses apart—roofs collapsing inward in great clouds of dust and timber, walls folding like wet paper, whole families buried under tons of rubble. The enchanted shells were worse: they burst high above the streets, showering the town with white-hot fragments that ignited everything they touched. Fires spread like living things, leaping from roof to roof, devouring wooden beams and screaming civilians alike. Even from our position we could hear the distant screams—thin, animal sounds of agony carried on the wind. By late afternoon the town was a smoldering skeleton: church spires snapped like broken teeth, streets choked with rubble and twisted iron, the Nisava River running thick and red with runoff from the slaughter. The smell drifted up to us—burnt hair, roasted meat, and the sickly-sweet stench of opened bodies.
When the guns finally fell silent our battalion advanced into the ruins.
There was no resistance. Only corpses.
We moved down the main road in loose formation, boots crunching over shattered glass, charred wood, and pieces of what had once been people. Dead Sarb soldiers lay everywhere—some torn in half by direct hits, torsos separated from legs by yards of bloody pavement, spines jutting white from mangled flesh; others reduced to blackened husks, skin peeled back in crispy sheets to expose glistening muscle and bone. Civilians too. A woman sprawled in a doorway, her dress burned away to ash, face melted into an unrecognizable mask, arms still wrapped protectively around the small charred shape that had been her child. An old man sat slumped against a wall, chest caved in by shrapnel, one eye dangling from its socket by a thread. Body parts littered the gutters—severed hands still clutching bread loaves, a child's leg still wearing a tiny shoe, loops of intestine draped over broken fence posts like grisly garlands. The air stank so thickly of burnt hair, roasted meat, and voided bowels that several men gagged and retched into the rubble.
Daniel—eighteen, fresh-faced, still babbling about glory and medals and parades—walked beside me, rifle at the ready. He had been excited all morning, eyes bright with the stories he'd tell back home. Now his chatter had died away. His face was pale, lips pressed into a thin line as his eyes darted from corpse to corpse.
We entered a half-collapsed house near the central square, door hanging by one hinge, roof sagging dangerously. Inside was dim, dust drifting through broken windows like gray snow. A sharp movement in the corner—two figures darting behind an overturned table. A girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, thin and wide-eyed with terror, and her mother. The woman clutched a rusty kitchen knife in shaking hands, stepping in front of her child, eyes wild with the desperate fury of a cornered animal.
Daniel raised his rifle without hesitation.
The first shot cracked like thunder in the small room. The mother jerked backward, a red flower blooming across her chest as the bullet punched straight through her heart. She dropped the knife with a clatter, blood bubbling from her mouth, and crumpled to the floor in a heap.
The girl screamed—a high, piercing wail—and tried to run.
Daniel swung the barrel and fired again.
This time the bullet struck her in the side of the neck.
She staggered, eyes bulging in shock. Blood erupted from the wound in thick, pulsing jets, spraying across the wall in bright arterial arcs. Her small hands flew up instinctively, pressing desperately against the ragged hole as if she could hold the life inside. But it was useless. Blood poured between her fingers in hot, slippery waves, soaking her dress, pooling at her feet. She made a horrible wet gurgling sound, trying to scream again but only managing a choking rattle as air bubbled through the torn artery. Her legs gave way; she sank to her knees, still clutching her neck, rocking back and forth in agony. Her eyes locked on mine—wide, pleading, filled with animal terror—as bright red foam bubbled from her lips and nostrils. She tried to crawl toward her mother's body, leaving a glistening trail across the floorboards, fingers slipping in her own blood. Her breathing grew shallower, more frantic, each gasp a wet, sucking wheeze. It took long, terrible minutes—her small chest heaving, hands weakening, eyes slowly glazing over—before she finally collapsed face-down in the spreading pool, twitching once, twice, then going still.
I stood frozen, bile burning my throat. The hatred I carried from the last war—the villages burned, the friends gutted, the land stolen—surged up stronger than the nausea. I turned away without a word and stepped back into the street. Daniel followed, quieter now, rifle barrel still smoking.
Our new orders came down by runner while we secured the town square: advance on Skopje. The rails were intact enough for troop trains, and fresh reinforcements were already arriving to hold Vranje. We boarded flatcars and boxcars the moment the first engine hissed into the battered station—exhausted men crammed shoulder to shoulder, rifles between knees, sharing the last of the tobacco and the last of the clean water.
The train rattled south through the Macedonian countryside. Fields rolled past, dotted with burned farmhouses and the occasional refugee column trudging north. Someone had a portable radio; it crackled to life between half-hearted hands of cards.
"…Kingdom of Turks has formally joined the Axis powers… Greeks have declared for the Allies… heavy fighting continues along the Danube…"
Then the announcer's voice sharpened with triumph:
"…Germano-Hungry forces, bolstered by Great Empire reinforcements, have finally broken through the outer defenses. Belgrade is encircled. The Sarb capital is cut off and falling."
Cheers erupted in the car—men slapping each other on the back, shouting "Belgrade falls!" I stayed quiet, staring out at the passing landscape. The sun was setting, painting the hills gold and red. I pulled the small photograph of my wife from my breast pocket—her smile frozen in time, taken before the last war stole so much.
I pressed my thumb to the edge of the picture and whispered her name like a prayer.
Skopje waited ahead. And home—maybe—waited after that.
If I lived long enough to see it.