But his body, this adult man's body, did not stop. Its muscles moved with instincts he did not recognize, with reflexes he possessed without ever having learned them.

He blocked, struck, kicked, and defended as if he had done this his entire life.

Yet he had never hit anyone in his short life.

He felt the man's fist slam into his ribs, and pain exploded in his side.

He felt his knee connect with the man's thigh, and the man winced.

They grappled, falling into a pile of corpses, pressing cold flesh beneath them.

Voltase felt the bones of the dead beneath his back pierce through his uniform like blunt knives.

Finally, after one of Voltase's kicks struck the man's chin and sent him staggering back until he sat atop a mound of corpses, their fight stopped.

Not because either of them surrendered.

But because there was another sound.

The sound of footsteps.

Many footsteps.

Clear, rhythmic, and approaching.

Voltase and the man simultaneously turned toward the source of the sound.

Beyond the field of corpses, among the trunks of bare black trees, dead trees, leafless, barkless, only skeletal wood rising to the sky like fossilized fingers of the dead, with branches spreading in all directions like broken ribs, three figures approached.

They walked in a spread formation like hunters encircling prey.

The distance between them was about three meters.

They moved with measured steps, unhurried.

Their uniforms were ash-colored, the color of thick ash, the color of gunpowder dust floating in the air after a shot, or the ashes left after a fire dies out.

The fabric seemed thicker, newer than Voltase's uniform.

Their collars were stiff.

Metal buttons gleamed dimly under the faint light.

On their right shoulders were different patches, different symbols, but Voltase could not see them clearly from this distance.

Their trousers were tucked into tall boots that gleamed with wetness, wet with blood and mud.

Those boots looked better maintained than Voltase's, with soles still showing clear tread patterns and buckles still shining.

On their heads, no helmets, only cloth caps fitted snugly to their skulls, with short brims in front shielding their eyes from light and rain.

They carried rifles.

The same rifles the pale green man had used earlier, wooden stocks, long barrels, ammunition boxes in front of the triggers.

But their rifles looked better maintained, with wood still glossy in places and metal without rust.

Voltase could see that the rifles had been cleaned recently, perhaps hours ago, with a sheen of oil still visible on the metal surfaces.

Their eyes were sharp, cold, and without doubt.

They were not surprised to see two survivors in the middle of a sea of corpses.

They did not wonder why these two men were still alive.

They only saw targets.

Two targets to eliminate.

The pale green man moved first, with quick, trained motions born from years of experience, from countless battles.

He ran to the pile of corpses where his rifle had fallen.

He crouched low, his body shrinking behind a wall of flesh, and his hands groped among the rotting bodies to find his weapon.

He did not care about the corpses beneath him.

He stepped on them, pushed them, moved them with practical, emotionless movements.

Voltase did not follow.

He knew the distance was too great; he would not reach the rifle before the ash men shot him.

Instead, his hand reflexively reached into his uniform pocket, he did not realize it until that moment.

His long, sturdy fingers touched something hard, cold, and elongated.

He pulled it out.

A knife.

A long bayonet with a gleaming steel blade about thirty centimeters long.

One side was razor sharp.

The other side was serrated at the base, with deep, sharp teeth designed to tear flesh when pulled out.

The handle was made of the same wood as the rifle stock, dark, worn, with deep grip grooves carved by the previous owner's fingers.

At the base of the blade was a locking mechanism, grooves and metal protrusions, designed to fit onto the muzzle of a rifle, turning a long-range weapon into a deadly close-combat weapon.

The knife was heavy, balanced, and extremely sharp.

Voltase could see the faint reflection of his face, the face of an adult man he did not recognize, on the gleaming steel surface.

Unknown eyes stared back at him from the metal surface.

Dark eyes, tired eyes, eyes full of fear he tried to hide.

Where did this come from? he thought.

But that question was drowned out by the sound of a gunshot.

Bang!

The first shot was fired.

Not from Voltase.

From the pale green man.

The man had found his rifle.

He knelt behind a pile of corpses, the wooden stock against his shoulder, and his cheek pressed against the base of the barrel to aim.

Although his position was unstable, one leg bent beneath him, having to balance on shifting flesh, his aim was true.

One of the three ash men fell backward.

A gaping hole in his chest, right in the center, where his heart should have been.

Blood sprayed into the air in black droplets gleaming under the dim light.

For a moment, Voltase saw a red flash.

The body fell with a dull thud, rolling into another pile of corpses, becoming part of that sea.

His rifle slipped from his hand and fell into the mud with a wet splash.

But the other two still stood.

They did not seem surprised to see their comrade fall.

No expression on their faces.

Only pure focus.

They returned fire.

Two shots almost simultaneously, separated only by a fraction of a second.

Bullets whizzed through the air with a sharp sound that shattered the silence.

Bang!

One bullet struck the pile of corpses near Voltase, exploding flesh and bone fragments into the air.

Warm blood splattered across Voltase's face, and he felt small pieces of flesh stick to his cheek, sticky and cold.

The other bullet hit the ground near the pale green man, splashing bloody mud onto his uniform.

Voltase ran.

Not toward the enemy, but to the side, seeking cover behind a taller pile of corpses.

His large, strong body felt strange as he ran.

He was not used to the length of his stride, the wide swing of his arms, the shifting of his body weight from one foot to the other.

But survival instinct was stronger than his confusion.

He knelt behind a pile of corpses, pressing his back against the cold, damp wall of flesh, trying to steady his breathing.

His chest rose and fell rapidly, his large lungs inhaling air thick with stench.

Beside him, about five meters to the right, the pale green man fired again.

Bang!

One of the ash men fell to his knees, but did not die.

The pale green man's bullet struck his right shoulder, tearing through the ash uniform and the flesh beneath.

Blood spurted from the wound, and the ash man screamed, a short, choked scream.

But he still raised his rifle to return fire.

Voltase looked at the knife in his hand.

The bayonet.

He could fix it onto a rifle, but he did not have one.

So all he could do was use it as a dagger, as a close-quarters weapon.

If the green man dies, I am alone, thought Voltase.

A pure feeling of loneliness, with no one searching for him, no one mourning him, gave him a strange courage.

He did not care if he died here.

No one would miss him.

But he did not want to die in vain.

He did not want to die without fighting.

Voltase leaped from behind the pile of corpses.

He was a ghost.

A corpse rising from the grave.

The corpses that had covered him shifted and fell aside.

From that pile, his tall figure emerged with the knife raised in his hand, the steel blade gleaming under the dim light.

He thrust.

The bayonet pierced the man's right arm, between the elbow and shoulder, where the deltoid muscle attaches to the humerus.

He felt the elastic resistance of flesh.

Skin stretched then tore.

Muscle separated under the pressure of steel.

Warm blood sprayed from the wound, splashing across Voltase's face, blinding his eyes.

The metallic taste returned to his mouth, the man's blood, or perhaps his own from his split lip.

The man screamed.

His voice was high and piercing.

Not a battle cry, but a pure scream of pain rising from deep within his body.

His rifle fell into the mud with a wet splash.

But the man did not give up.

With his left hand still intact, he grabbed Voltase's collar and pulled him down with tremendous strength, the strength of a man who knew that if he lost, he would die.

Voltase lost his balance.

Their bodies wrestled on top of corpses, falling, rolling, exchanging blows and kicks on a pile of cold flesh and broken bones.

Voltase felt the man's teeth bite into his arm.

He felt the man's nails claw at his face, scratching the skin beneath his eye.

Blood flowed between them, mixing with the blood of the corpses beneath them.

Voltase could not tell whose it was.

Beside them, the fight between the pale green man and the last ash man continued.

Two figures grappled in the darkness, punching and shoving each other.

Sometimes one of them fell, but they quickly got back up.

The sound of fists hitting flesh, the sound of ragged breaths, and the sound of boots stepping on scattered bones became the backdrop of unending chaos.

Voltase finally managed to push his opponent down.

He sat on the man's chest, his knee pressing on the wounded shoulder, making the man wince in pain.

With his other hand, he held the knife and raised it high, the steel blade gleaming with fresh blood dripping from its tip.

He prepared for the final thrust into the man's neck.

But at that moment, he heard another gunshot.

Not from the fight beside him.

From the pale green man's fight.

Voltase turned.

He saw the pale green man jerk.

His entire body stiffened.

His back arched backward like a bow drawn too tight by a giant hand.

On his forehead, right in the center, a small hole appeared, black inside, with a red rim glistening.

Blood flowed from that hole, thin and bright red, flowing slowly down past his thick eyebrows, past the bridge of his straight nose, and dripping onto his half-open lips.

His dark, lively eyes were now empty and dull, like cracked glass that had lost all reflection.

He fell backward onto a pile of corpses, the expression of surprise never leaving his face.

His mouth remained open as if he wanted to say something but never got the chance, a word trapped between life and death that would never be spoken.

The pale green man was dead.

Voltase froze.

He stared at the fallen body.

For a moment, he felt a strange loss, a loss for someone who, minutes ago, had tried to kill him.

They were enemies, but they were also both survivors, both trapped in this place, both not knowing why they were here.

Now Voltase was alone again.

As always.

The last attacker, the ash man who had shot the green man dead, now aimed his rifle at Voltase.

Time seemed to slow.

Voltase saw the muzzle of the rifle.

A black hole gaping at the end of the barrel, surrounded by dull gleaming metal.

He saw the attacker's finger on the trigger.

The muscles in that finger tensed as he began to pull the trigger back.

Then, heat.

The heat in his chest was extraordinary.

Like a hot iron pressed against bare skin.

Igniting inside his chest and beginning to burn from within.

There was no real pain at first, only heat.

Heat spreading from a point on the left side of his chest, spreading across the entire left side of his body, to his shoulder, to his arm, to his back.

Then, numbness.

A strange numbness that made him unable to feel anything on the left side of his body.

And then, after that numbness, a dull, deep pain.

A pain that felt like all the contents of his stomach were being crushed by an invisible giant hand.

Voltase fell.

He felt his body, this tall, strong adult man's body, become light and heavy at the same time.

Light because his legs no longer supported him.

Heavy because gravity pulled him down with extraordinary force.

He fell backward onto a pile of corpses.

His head hit something hard, perhaps another corpse's skull, perhaps a broken femur, perhaps a stone covered in flesh.

For a moment, his vision blurred, filled with white spots dancing at the edges of his field of view.

He lay on the cold, wet ground, or rather, on cold, wet flesh.

His back pressed against other cold, stiff, motionless bodies.

He felt the contours of a corpse's ribs beneath his back, the protruding spine, and the hollows between those bones.

Each time he breathed, the corpses beneath him moved slightly, shifting under his weight.

He stared at the black, starless sky.

In the gaps of the light drizzle that began to fall, wet fog hung in the air, not heavy rain, he saw white spots created by his oxygen-deprived brain.

Spots that moved slowly, dancing at the edges of his vision like dying fireflies in winter.

Blood flowed from his chest.

He felt it warm and sticky pooling beneath his back, seeping through the faded blue uniform that was now turning reddish-black on the left side.

The thick wool fabric absorbed blood like a sponge, becoming heavier, wetter, clinging to his skin like a damp shroud.

He felt blood flowing down his back, onto the ground beneath him, mixing with the blood of the other corpses that had died earlier.

Each breath produced a horrible bubbling sound from his chest, the sound of air bubbles passing through fluid in his lungs.

He knew there was blood in his lungs.

He could feel it pooling there, heavy and warm, filling cavities that should only contain air.

Each time he inhaled, he felt that fluid rise and fall, creating a horrible sound he heard clearly in his own ears.

The attacker stood over him.

Voltase saw his tall silhouette above, against the black sky.

The man's face was not clearly visible, only a dark shadow with two eyes gleaming dimly like two embers in the darkness.

The man stared at him with empty, emotionless eyes.

The eyes of a killer who had seen death too many times, who was no longer surprised or disturbed by it.

He turned his rifle over, examining Voltase as if Voltase were just an ordinary piece of meat that would soon rot with the others.

Then, without a word, he turned and walked away.

His footsteps faded.

Squelch... squelch... squelch...

The sound of boots in bloody mud, growing fainter, farther, until finally swallowed by darkness and silence.

Voltase was alone.

He could not move.

He tried to move his fingers, those long, sturdy fingers belonging to an adult man.

But they would not obey.

They felt heavy, like lead poured into a mold.

He tried to lift his hand, but his arm felt nailed to the ground by an invisible force, by gravity that suddenly became a hundred times heavier.

He tried to turn his head, but his neck was stiff.

Each time he tried, pain exploded in his chest and made him lose his breath.

Blood continued to flow.

Not spurting; his major blood vessels were probably already sealed by clots.

But in a steady, warm stream, seeping through the wool fabric, pooling beneath his back, spreading into the ground.

The ground absorbed his blood like dry earth absorbs rain.

Ravenously.

Never enough.

Never satisfied.

Each breath produced a horrible bubbling sound from his chest, air bubbles passing through fluid in his lungs.

He heard it in his own ears.

That sound reminded him of something, of a drink being sucked through a straw when almost empty, of water flowing through a leaking pipe.

Blood in his lungs made every breath a struggle, a dull, deep pain spreading throughout his chest.

This is the end, he thought with a strange, sad clarity.

The clarity that comes when the body is too weak to feel panic, when the brain begins to lack oxygen and only thinks of simple, basic things.

This is the end.

I die here.

In the middle of a place I don't even know the name of.

In a uniform that is not mine.

Inside a body that is not mine.

He stared at the black sky.

The light drizzle continued, droplets falling into his open eyes.

Cold, fresh droplets that contrasted with the heat in his chest.

He blinked, and water mixed with tears he had not realized were flowing.

He thought of his dormitory room.

A bed too big for his small body.

Cracks in the wooden ceiling, twenty three main branches, forty three small branches.

A window always fogged by rain, its glass cloudy and misty.

A phone that always showed 21:49 PM when he played running games, when he tried to escape from the reality that he had no one.

No one will come looking for you, he thought.

That fact felt so real in these final moments.

His foster parents would not come. They never came.

His teachers would not care.

They did not even know his name properly.

He would only be a name in a report, a note about a child who went missing from the dormitory.

In a few weeks, no one would remember his face.

No one would remember he had ever existed.

He wanted to cry, but his tears had already fallen, and he had no strength to cry anymore.

Perhaps because this body, this adult man's body, did not know how to cry like a child.

Or perhaps because he was too weak, too close to death, to feel anything except deep exhaustion.

He remembered the first time he was brought to this boarding school.

His foster parents, a polite but cold couple, set his small suitcase on the floor.

A small suitcase with used clothes and a few books.

They stood at the doorway.

The husband said, "You will be fine here. This is a good school."

The wife smiled, a smile that did not reach her eyes, and said, "We will call."

They never called.

They turned and left.

Voltase stood at the doorway, watching their backs disappear into the long, dark hallway.

He realized at that moment that he had never truly been part of that family.

He was just an object moved from one warehouse to another.

And this warehouse was the last.

You were never part of anyone, he thought, and those words echoed in his head like distant church bells.

You are just a child moved from one place to another.

And now you die here, inside another person's body, in a place that is not even the real world.

You die alone, as you always feared.

The drizzle continued.

Droplets of water fell on his face, on his open eyes, on his pale lips.

They felt cold and salty like seawater.

But there was no sea here.

Only flesh, blood, and death.

He heard distant sounds.

Perhaps the sounds of another battle in another part of this field.

Footsteps.

Or gunshots.

But those sounds grew fainter, farther, like a radio running out of battery and beginning to die.

Darkness at the edges of his vision slowly crept in, devouring everything he saw.

The black sky began to disappear, replaced by thickening fog.

The dancing white spots vanished one by one like fading stars at dawn.

Please, he thought, not knowing whom he was asking, to a God he never believed in, to a universe that never cared, to anyone who might hear him.

Please, let me go. Let me die quickly.

Do not let me suffer any longer.

Do not let me feel this any longer.

And darkness swallowed him completely.

---

01:24 PM.

Red numbers glowed on the screen of a phone lying on the wooden floor, fallen from the desk when Voltase moved in his sleep, when his small body thrashed unconsciously.

Voltase opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was the pale white wooden ceiling with hairline cracks spreading from the corner near the light.

Twenty three main branches. Forty three small branches. He knew them, remembered, had counted them thousands of times.

He pressed his palm to his chest.

His hand, a small hand.

Long, thin fingers, with short, clean nails, no dirt beneath them.

Not the long, sturdy adult hand with calluses on the thumb.

Not the hand that had held the bayonet earlier.

This was his hand.

Voltase's twelve-year-old hand.

His chest still ached.

He felt a burning heat on his left side, where the bullet had penetrated, where the blood had flowed.

But when he pressed it, there was no wound.

No blood.

Only his intact skin beneath the blue and white striped flannel pajamas.

His breath came in gasps.

His small chest rose and fell rapidly, each breath feeling like hard work, as if his lungs were still filled with blood that was not there.

He heard his own heartbeat.

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

Pounding like a war drum in his narrow ribcage, too fast, too loud.

And then, he smelled it.

The smell was still there.

The fishy stench, the smell of rusted iron, the smell of rotting flesh.

Still clinging to his nostrils, still settled on the roof of his mouth, still felt like a layer of copper on his tongue.

He felt it with every breath.

Even though he knew logically that in his cold, damp dormitory room, there were no corpses.

Only dusty air and the chemical smell of laundry soap.

That smell came from within, from his memory, from his mind, from a soul contaminated by that place.

He covered his nose with his small palm, but the smell did not go away.

It remained.

Still disturbing, still reminding him.

Voltase curled up in the middle of the bed that was too big for him.

He hugged his pillow tightly, a faded pillow smelling of dormitory soap, trying to feel something warm and safe.

But the pillow only smelled of soap.

There was no warmth in it.

No hug waiting for him.

No one would come to hold him.

He bit his lower lip, a lip that still felt sore, even though in the real world he had never been hit.

A lip intact, not split, not bleeding.

But he felt the pain.

A ghost of the blow he had received in the dream.

Real pain in his mind even though it was not real on his body.

Tears began to flow.

Tears of a child who did not understand why he had to go through all this.

Tears of a boy who had no one to hold him, no home to return to, no parents who would ask, "Are you alright, son?"

Why me? he thought, and his sobs caught in his throat, producing a soft, pitiful choking sound.

Why do I have to dream this?

Why do I have to die inside the dream?

Why do I have to feel that pain?

He remembered the sensation of the bullet.

Heat spreading in his chest.

Blood flowing from the wound, the metallic taste in his mouth.

The bubbling sound in his lungs.

All of it felt so real.

Even now, after returning to his own body, he still felt the trace of that pain in his chest.

Like a ghost that would not leave, a wound that would never heal.

Something that had attached itself to his soul and would never let go.

He reached for his phone from the floor.

His movements were slow because his hands were still trembling.

The screen was still on, showing 01:26 PM and some notifications, messages from the class group about assignments, app ads, and notifications from the game he had played earlier.

No messages from anyone.

No one was looking for him.

No one cared.

Voltase stared at the empty screen.

His small, trembling fingers moved to the search app.

Still gasping, he typed, "Dreams of being an adult, fighting on a battlefield, getting shot, feeling chest pain after waking up."

Search results appeared.

Articles about dreams, psychological theories about trauma, forums about recurring nightmares.

None matched.

None explained why his chest hurt.

Why he still smelled blood.

Why he felt like he had just lost something he never had.

He scrolled down, reading comments from strangers, but none helped.

He turned off the phone screen.

The room became dark again.

Outside, the rain continued its long, melancholic whisper.

Drip... drip,

drip... drip...

just like before he fell asleep.

The church bells in the distance did not ring. It was past midnight.

The world was sleeping, and Voltase was alone in the darkness.

He lay back in bed.

His eyes stared at the ceiling.

Twenty three main branches. Forty three small branches. He counted them again to calm himself.

But his mind kept drifting elsewhere.

To the field of corpses.

The pale green man shot dead in the forehead.

The ash man standing over him with empty eyes.

The bayonet that felt so real in his hand.

For the adult man's body he left there, now perhaps rotting with the others.

Will that body rot? he thought.

Or will it wake up again with someone else inside?

Perhaps I will return there.

Perhaps I will wake up in that body again, next time.

He did not know.

Not knowing was more terrifying than anything he had seen in that dream.

If I sleep again, he thought with horror, will I go back there?

Will I wake up in that body again?

And die again?

But his eyes were heavy.

His small, tired body surrendered to exhaustion, even though his mind still spun.

The rain outside grew softer, as if it too was falling asleep.

The wind died down.

Silence began to creep in.

Slowly, very slowly, his eyelids began to close.

Just before he fully fell asleep, one last thought crossed his mind.

I do not want to go back there, to feel that pain again.

I only want to be myself, even though I do not know who I am, even though I do not know why I exist in this world.

But in the dark silence of the room, in the gaps of the fading rain, he heard a whisper.

Not a sound coming from his ears.

A sound rising from the depths of his own mind, from the darkest place.

You will go back.

Because there, you can become something.

There, you are not weak.

Even if you die there, you die alongside others.

Here, you are no one and have never been anything.

Voltase did not want to hear that whisper.

He pressed his head into the pillow, trying to block that sound.

But the whisper continued to repeat, soft, like a mantra he could not stop, like a song that kept echoing in his head.

Slowly, his consciousness faded.

He fell back into sleep, a dark, empty, silent sleep.

Without dreams.

Only perfect silence.

But in that silence, in the deepest corner of his mind, Voltase knew this was not the end.

This was only a pause.

A pause like the gap between two train cars on the same track.

One day, perhaps tonight, tomorrow, or when he least expected it, he would return to that place, to the adult man's body that was not his, to die again.

Again and again.

Until he understood why he was there.

Until he discovered what that place wanted from him.

Until he found who owned that body, and why it had chosen him.

But for tonight, he rested.

No one was looking for him.

No one cared.

And for the first time, Voltase Watt felt that indifference as a gift, because if no one cared, then no one would lose him when he died inside his dreams.

In his small chest, the trace of heat still remained.

The shadow of the bullet still burned.

Reminding him that somewhere, in another world, a body that was not his was rotting among a sea of corpses.

And one day, he would return there.

One day, he would feel the sensation of a bullet in his chest again.

Tonight, he fell asleep in silence.

But that silence felt like death.

And in that silence, the whisper continued to repeat, soft and endless.

You will return.