Bloodshed – Chapter 6: Questions in the Smoke
The sun barely pierced the smoke-hazed sky, casting the ruins in a dull, gray light. King crouched behind the wall of a collapsed building, rifle ready, eyes scanning the streets. Somewhere in the distance, the echoes of battle had begun again—shouts, gunfire, the ominous roar of artillery.
Kael knelt beside him, unhurried, his expression calm even amidst chaos. "You've been quiet since this morning," he said.
King's jaw tightened. "I've been listening. That's all."
Kael's eyes met his, steady and knowing. "Listening doesn't mean you hear. You're listening to the words, not the meaning behind them."
King frowned. "You mean that sermon about free will again?"
Kael shrugged. "Call it what you want. I'm just saying… cruelty is not always divine. Sometimes, it's human."
King's hands clenched the rifle tighter. "Human cruelty is obvious. I see it every day. Children die, families vanish, soldiers butcher each other. And still, you say it's not God's fault?"
Kael nodded. "Not directly. But maybe it's not about blame. Maybe it's about understanding what we're capable of, what we do when left to our own devices. Look around." He gestured to the battlefield, to the ruined homes, to the smoke curling above the corpses. "This chaos isn't God's design. It's ours. Men make choices. Men kill. Men betray. And sometimes… we survive."
King laughed, bitter and hollow. "Survive? What's survival when everything you care about is gone? When God just stands there and watches?"
Kael leaned back, resting on his elbows. "Maybe He does stand there. Maybe He lets us burn. But maybe that's the point—not punishment, not cruelty, but freedom. The freedom to act, to respond, to decide whether we are monsters or men."
King turned his gaze to the distant ruins. "So you think all the screams, all the death, all the suffering… is just some test of character?"
Kael's lips pressed into a thin line. "I don't know. I don't claim to have the answers. I just know that the world is what we make of it, not what He makes of it."
A shell exploded nearby, throwing dust and debris over them. King flinched, feeling the heat on his face. When the smoke cleared, Kael's eyes were still fixed on him, calm.
"Why do you doubt Him so fiercely?" Kael asked.
King exhaled, letting the weight of it spill out in a whisper. "Because if He exists, He owes us all an apology. Every child, every innocent life, every person who's suffered… He owes them an apology. And if He won't give it, then I won't pray. I won't hope. I won't believe."
Kael was silent for a long moment, then said softly, "Maybe that's your test, too. Not to receive an apology, but to decide how you act without one. To see what kind of man you will be, in a world that gives you none of the answers you want."
King's hands loosened slightly on the rifle. He didn't answer immediately. He looked at the ruins, at the burned homes, at the children he couldn't save, and realized Kael wasn't trying to convince him God was merciful. He was trying to show him that life, suffering, and choice existed independently of divine justice.
For the first time in weeks, King felt a flicker of… understanding. Not comfort. Not hope. But something sharper, something dangerous: clarity.
The two of them rose as gunfire erupted closer. King's mind raced, not with prayers or curses, but with calculation. Survival was all that mattered now. Philosophy could wait.
And yet, even as he moved through the smoke with Kael at his side, he carried the conversation in his mind, twisting it, dissecting it. One day, he realized, they would talk like this again—longer, deeper, harder. Until he either broke or understood.
The battlefield waited for no one. But King's questions were relentless.
And in the quiet spaces between explosions, he asked himself again: If God exists… why must this world burn? And what are we meant to do in it?