Bolzano was surrounded by mountains.
They rose on every side, tall and unmoving, like witnesses that had been standing there long before men learned how to kill each other efficiently. Even in war, even under smoke and fire, the mountains refused to look afraid. They simply watched.
I tried to imagine what this city must have been once.
A beautiful place.
A quiet place.
Morning light touching rooftops. Church bells echoing softly instead of gunfire. People walking narrow streets without flinching at sudden sounds. Children running without learning how to tell the difference between fireworks and artillery.
That version of Bolzano was gone.
Now it was just another battlefield that didn't ask to be one.
The fighting started slowly.
Not with an explosion, not with shouting—just a single shot echoing through the valley, bouncing off the mountains and returning distorted, multiplied, like the land itself was answering back.
Then another shot.
Then everything collapsed into noise.
Gunfire filled the streets, sharp and relentless. Bullets shattered windows, chewed through stone walls, tore into cars that would never move again. Smoke rolled low, hugging the ground, turning daylight into something dim and colorless.
I moved forward with the others, rifle raised, firing and firing.
One enemy dropped.
Then another.
Spanish soldiers moved through the ruins with discipline, using cover well, advancing in bursts. They weren't amateurs. They weren't panicking.
That made it worse.
I killed them one by one anyway.
There was no anger in it. No hatred. Just repetition. The same motion repeated until it stopped feeling like a decision.
Aim.
Fire.
Watch the body fall.
Again.
The mountains swallowed the sound of screams. Everything echoed, returned delayed, blurred. It felt like fighting inside a nightmare where distance and direction no longer mattered.
My rifle grew hot. My shoulder ached. My ears rang so loudly it felt like silence was screaming at me.
At some point, I stopped feeling anything.
That scared me more than the bullets.
I ducked into a shattered house to reload.
The interior was strangely intact. A dining table lay overturned. A chair leaned against the wall. Family photographs were scattered across the floor, faces burned into paper, smiling at a future that never came.
That's when I saw it.
A katana.
It rested against the wall, almost carefully placed, its scabbard dark, worn smooth by hands that were long gone. It didn't belong here—in Italy, in Europe, in this war of machines and guns.
It felt… wrong.
And yet, it was the only thing in the room that didn't look broken.
I stared at it longer than I should have.
Guns suddenly felt boring.
Two years of pulling triggers.
Two years of distance.
Two years of killing without ever truly meeting the people I killed.
I reached out.
The moment my hand closed around the hilt, something settled inside me—not excitement, not madness.
Recognition.
As if the weapon had been waiting for someone who no longer cared about distance.
"Let's try," I whispered.
I stepped back into the street with steel instead of noise.
A Spanish soldier turned the corner and froze when he saw me.
No rifle raised.
No hesitation.
He fired.
I moved before the sound reached me.
The bullet tore past my shoulder as I closed the distance in a rush of motion and breath. The katana cut through the air cleanly, silently, and his body folded as if the ground had pulled him down.
Another soldier screamed and fired wildly. I knocked the rifle aside with the blade, felt the shock vibrate up my arm, and stepped inside his reach.
One thrust.
He collapsed, choking on blood, eyes wide with confusion.
Close combat was different.
There was no rhythm.
No safety.
You heard breathing.
You smelled fear.
You saw the moment people understood they were going to die.
They came at me with guns.
I came at them with steel.
A slash across a throat.
A cut beneath the ribs.
A spinning strike that dropped a man mid-step.
Someone tried to bayonet me. I turned, cut downward, felt resistance, then nothing.
Fifteen.
By the time it ended, my arms burned and my lungs felt raw. Bodies lay scattered across the street, weapons useless beside them. Blood ran into cracks between stones, disappearing into the city like it had always been there.
I wiped the blade carefully.
It didn't tremble.
Neither did I.
That frightened me most of all.
Night fell fast.
The mountains swallowed the last of the light, and we pulled back into the forest beyond the city. Fires were kept low. Voices stayed quiet. Men sat in small groups, replaying the day in their heads.
They kept looking at the sword at my side.
"Where did you find that?" someone finally asked.
I thought about the house. The silence. The way it felt when I picked it up.
"I think," I said slowly, "it found me."
No one laughed.
Later, I sat with a young boy from Tajikistan. He couldn't have been more than eighteen. He talked about home in fragments—mountains without gunfire, rivers that still ran clear. He smiled when he spoke, like he was afraid the memories would disappear if he didn't hold onto them tightly.
Then the forest moved.
Something massive yanked him backward into the dark.
He screamed.
"HELP ME! HELP ME!"
Panic exploded through the camp. Men grabbed rifles, shouting over each other.
"Bear!"
"Brown bear!"
The screaming cut off abruptly.
I was already standing.
The katana slid free with a soft, dangerous whisper.
I ran into the darkness.
The forest opened into a clearing.
The bear was enormous—muscle, fur, rage. Its breath came in violent bursts. Blood stained its muzzle. The boy lay motionless nearby.
The bear roared and charged.
I didn't slow down.
It swung a claw wide enough to tear a man in half. I ducked beneath it, felt wind and death rush past my skull, and slashed upward. The blade bit deep into its leg.
The bear screamed.
It slammed into me, throwing me across the clearing. Pain exploded through my ribs. The ground knocked the air from my lungs. I rolled just as its jaws snapped shut where my head had been.
I forced myself up.
The bear charged again.
I met it screaming—not words, just sound—and drove the katana into its shoulder. Blood sprayed hot and thick. The bear reared back, roaring, swiping wildly.
Claws tore through my jacket. Pain burned.
I didn't stop.
One step forward.
One final strike.
I drove the blade deep into its throat and twisted.
The bear shuddered, staggered, and collapsed.
Silence followed.
Then clapping.
Loud. Sudden. Nervous.
Men surrounded me, touching my shoulders, shouting like they needed to believe something good had happened. Someone checked the boy—alive, barely breathing.
I stood there, chest heaving, katana heavy in my hand, blood soaking into the forest floor.
Under the watching mountains, a single thought settled into me with terrifying clarity:
Guns let you hide.
Steel forces you to face what you are.
And for the first time in years—
I didn't look away.