"Echoes in the Rubble"

Title: "The Last Letter"

The sky burned orange over the ruins of Valmere, a city once known for its music festivals and lavender-lined streets. Now, all that remained were splintered buildings and ash swirling in the bitter wind.

Sergeant Lena Coren adjusted the strap on her rifle and trudged through the rubble, boots crunching glass. Her squad had gone silent three days ago. Command suspected they were all dead. Still, Lena volunteered to go back for them.

She didn’t believe in lost causes.

As she passed a collapsed school, she heard it—a faint cry. Human. Desperate. She froze, ears straining.

Another cry, closer this time. Beneath a crumbled wall, a hand weakly moved.

Lena dropped her weapon and sprinted, digging with her bare hands. “Hang on!” she shouted. “I’ve got you!”

Under broken stone and dust was a boy—maybe ten—his face smeared with dirt and blood. His eyes met hers. No tears. Just silence.

Lena pulled him out and wrapped him in her jacket. “Where are your parents?” she asked.

He shook his head.

Lena scanned the area. No signs of life. No one but the boy.

“We’re getting out of here,” she said.

As they moved, he clutched her hand tightly, never speaking. Each step felt heavier. Distant explosions rumbled like a heartbeat beneath the earth.

By nightfall, they found shelter inside an overturned bus. Lena lit a small fire with what paper she could find, careful to hide its glow. The boy sat beside her, eyes wide.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

He hesitated, then whispered, “Oren.”

“You hungry, Oren?” She offered him half a protein bar.

He took it and nodded. Still no tears. Not even after all this.

“Were you with the civilians hiding in the theatre?” she asked gently.

He shook his head.

“Underground bunkers?”

Another shake.

“Then how are you still here?”

The boy finally looked up. “I waited.”

“For what?”

He pulled something from his pocket and handed it to her.

A letter—wrinkled, stained, but legible.

Lena unfolded it. It was addressed to a man: Captain J. Coren.

Her brother.

She read the scrawled words, her hands trembling:

“You saved me once. You said I’d never owe you anything. But I do. I owe you everything. My family’s gone. My village’s gone. I’m the only one left. I’ll wait here like you said. Because I know you’ll come back.”

Lena’s vision blurred. She remembered that mission. The young scout her brother had protected—sent him away while he stayed to cover the retreat. They never found his body.

This boy had waited, just like her brother promised.

“You knew my brother,” she said, her voice cracking.

Oren nodded slowly.

Lena pulled him into a hug, the first one he didn’t resist. His body shook, not from fear, but release.

By morning, the shelling started again. They had to move.

As they ran through the skeletal city, Oren stopped suddenly.

“I have to go back,” he said.

Lena knelt. “No. We can’t. It’s too dangerous.”

He pointed toward the theater ruins. “He’s still there.”

She stared at him. “Oren… my brother is gone.”

But the boy's eyes held something strange—certainty.

“I hear him. He’s not dead.”

She should’ve dismissed it. A child’s hope, a ghost in the rubble.

But Lena had learned to listen to the impossible.

Together, they reached the theater’s edge. The ceiling had collapsed, but the basement tunnels were intact. Smoke curled from below.

Lena descended, gun raised.

Then she heard it.

Coughing.

A voice.

“Is… anyone out there?”

Her heart stopped.

“Jack?” she whispered.

The reply came back—weak, rasping. “Lena?”

Her scream caught in her throat. She dropped to her knees and tore through the debris.

And there he was.

Bruised. Bloodied. But alive.

“I waited,” he whispered.

She turned to Oren, who only smiled faintly.

“How did you know?” she asked him.

Oren looked past her. “Because he told me he’d keep his promise.”

When she turned back, Oren was gone.

No sound. No sign.

Just a gust of wind and a folded letter in her pocket.

The same one.

Moral: War takes. But sometimes, it leaves behind echoes strong enough to guide us home.