The sky dawned gray, as if the heavens themselves had chosen to fall silent before what was about to happen. The sea roared with smoke-stained waves, and each one seemed to warn the men advancing in metal landing craft: There is no turning back.
The breeze smelled of salt, burning oil, and a thick fear that clung to the throat.
—Hold! Hold! Stop, damn it! Heads down! —roared a sergeant, voice hoarse from shouting orders that tried to overpower the thunder of enemy artillery.
Bullets fell like merciless rain, ricocheting off the water, chewing the sand, punching through hulls without pausing for a second. That dry, relentless sound felt endless, like a macabre drum beating the rhythm of a freshly opened hell.
The screams of the wounded filled the air. Some begged for help, others sobbed their mothers' names, and a few simply died in silence, staring at a sky they would never see again. One soldier lay face-down, pressed to the ground, trying to shield himself while bullets whistled overhead and buried themselves in the bodies around him.
—Don't raise your heads! Unless you want your brains blown out from a fucking bullet, you heard me! —bellowed the platoon commander who had just landed.
The men obeyed, crawling however they could, dragging themselves between corpses and chunks of flesh that seconds ago had been living comrades. The ground was hot from shrapnel and sticky with fresh blood.
Every step they took felt stolen from death.
More landing craft kept coming, one after another. Each new wave brought young faces that turned into red shadows the instant the front ramp dropped. Machine-gun fire greeted them without pity: legs torn off, torsos ripped open, bodies collapsing before they could even understand what had hit them.
Those who managed to leap into the water weren't safe either. One fell backward, and the weight of his gear immediately began dragging him down. He kicked desperately, arms thrashing beneath the murky water while the ocean seemed determined to swallow him without remorse.
The soldier tried to shed his equipment, but the buckles refused to release. Every second his chest burned, starving for air. Bullets kept plunging into the water around him like silver arrows. One passed so close he felt its vibration in his bones.
With determination born of pure terror of drowning, he finally tore off his vest and backpack. He broke the surface with agonizing pain in his lungs, gasping like a newborn returning to life.
When his boots touched sand, hell continued.
Beside him, a man moaned:
—Help… help… please help me… I don't want to die…
The soldier turned and saw a scene that ripped his insides apart: his comrade had been cut in half at the waist level. Yet he was still conscious, bleeding out on the sand, staring at the medic who had just arrived. The soldier could barely breathe from the horror; his legs shook, wanting to run, but his soul was nailed to the spot.
—Wait, wait… I'm coming —said the medic, trying to open the small bag he carried with trembling hands—. You're lucky I'm a medic, okay? Hold on…
—Tha… thank… y—
He never finished.
A burst swept through the air and shattered the wounded man's skull. Blood splattered the medic's uniform. He stumbled back, fell on his back, and crawled away while a choked scream tore from his throat.
—I'm… I'm sorry… I… forgive me… —he stammered, able to do nothing but drag himself through sand and spent casings.
The advance was slow and agonizing. A beach turned into a slaughterhouse, littered with twisted metal, mutilated bodies, and black smoke devouring the horizon. Every soldier who reached the shore threw himself flat, searching for cover that didn't exist.
And still, they pushed forward.
When the medic finally reached a small group taking shelter behind a slight rise in the sand, he thought for a moment he might catch his breath. Maybe there was a sliver of calm, just one breath of respite.
But fate had no intention of granting him rest.
Just as he took one more step, just as he bent to grab his canteen, a dark spot appeared beneath his boots. A perfectly round black circle, the size of his own body.
A hole that had no right to exist in that world.
—What…?— he managed to whisper.
The ground opened as if made of smoke. The hole swallowed him whole in the blink of an eye. His comrades, too focused on surviving, saw nothing. To them he had simply vanished beneath the smoke and chaos.
There was no scream.
There was no body.
Only a dark flash devouring everything.
When he opened his eyes, the sound of war was gone. The air no longer smelled of gunpowder, blood, or death. Instead there was a sweet scent, almost impossible to describe, like flowers he had never seen.
The world before him was a luminous, picturesque green landscape: rolling mountains covered in grass, hills soft as velvet, and lakes that shone like crystal mirrors. The sky was so blue it seemed painted with a freedom no war could ever destroy.
The medic blinked several times, thinking he had lost his mind or that he was dead.
But the strangest thing wasn't the landscape…
It was his own body.
His hands were different. His arms thinner, lighter, more… agile. His chest rose and fell with unfamiliar energy. Everything about him felt different, as if he had been reborn into a form he didn't understand.
He looked around and realized he wasn't alone. Before him stood several figures of varying sizes, colors, and shapes. Some small, some burly, others so strange it felt like a dream.
But the most disturbing part was that he knew them.
He knew their names.
He knew how they moved, how they spoke what they could do.
And yet he had no memory of ever seeing them before.
His mind was chaos: images of trenches and screams mixed with memories of himself running at incredible speed across green fields, leaving a blue trail behind him.
Memories of laughing while the wind whipped his face.
Two lives.
Two stories.
Two identities.
And only one name emerged clearly, like a lightning bolt through the confusion:
Sonic.
That name was his.
He knew it with absolute, visceral certainty, even if he couldn't explain why.
Before him, the figures (comrades, friends… or perhaps distorted versions of something that had once been real) looked at him as if they had known him forever.
He tried to speak, but his voice sounded strange even to his own ears.
He didn't know if he was human.
He didn't know if he was a memory or an invention.
He didn't know if he came from the beaches of Normandy or from the colorful world of these beings.
He only knew his identity was broken, just like the man he had tried to save minutes earlier.
And in this new world, where the sun shone with an almost absurd peace, Sonic (or the man who had perhaps always been Sonic) understood that answers would not come hard.
The horizon opened before him like a new mission.
A mission without bullets, without a blood-soaked sea, but full of mysteries capable of twisting anyone's fate.
He took a deep breath, clenched his fists, and took a step forward.
Not knowing who he really was.
Not knowing what was about to begin.
But certain he was not alone…
and that the past, that battlefield inside his head, would not let him go so easily.
«Mwahahahaha! Welcome to my world we're gonna have a lot of fun because here I am God»