The clock doesn’t tick in here, not really. It just glares, like a sentry that’s lost its soul. I’ve stopped counting hours. Now I count breaths, and backsteps through corridors I swore I sealed shut. Walls whisper like old teammates, soft with gravel-throated warnings. They speak in fireteam hand signals etched on the insides of my eyelids. Sometimes it’s just the wind. Other times…it isn’t. I tried the pills. Tried the whiskey. Tried the rain sound app on my phone. But silence, like death, has its own rank. And tonight, it outranks me again. Kamryn’s breath from the next room, steady. Anchoring. The only thing that tells me I’m still on mission. Still needed. Still not a ghost. But I patrol anyway. From bed to door to window to memory to hell and back again. No boots. No weapon. Just instinct and scars that refuse to sign the truce. Sleep? Sleep’s for men who came home without unfinished wars stitched into their marrow. Sleep’s for the dead, and they’re not talking. So, I write. Because at least this page doesn’t flinch when I bleed on it.