>She saw the wire—  
a heartbeat too late.  
  
  
His boot caught it, pulling the thin thread taut, just enough to wake death from its hiding place, and in that instant, she saw everything: the wire pulled tight, the shadow of a can tucked behind a stone, the spark.  
  
She lunged forward, reaching for him—his collar, his shoulder, anything.  
  
Too slow.  
  
The explosion tore through the tunnel, breaking through with the force of a cannon shot. The air itself struck her, flinging her back as shards of rock and fire bloomed in the dark. He slammed into her, and they hit the stone floor in a single, tangled heap. The cave swallowed the sound, then exhaled it back as an endless ringing.  
  
For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Just the taste of dust and blood in the back of her throat.  
  
Then—movement. She pushed at him, rolled free.  
  
And froze as she faced him.  
  
A leg was gone. Half his chest, too. The glow of her lantern caught the spray against the stone—dark and wet and glistening like the night sky.  
  
The cave was silent again.  
Except for the slow, steady drip of blood hitting rock.  
  
She turned away.   
  
As long as she didn’t look, he wasn’t there.  
He wasn’t torn to rags.His chest wasn’t ripped open.  
His face didn’t still carry that moment of fear.  
He wasn’t there.If she didn’t look—she had no reason to cry.  
  
But the tears came anyway. They ran down her dirt-caked face in silence.  
  
Then came the shaking. The breath hitching in her throat. The bile rising.She doubled over, gagging, retching until there was nothing left but the echoes. The cave gave them back to her—every sob, every gasp bouncing off the walls.  
  
When it was over, she forced herself to look.  
  
She crawled back to what was left of him—the unrecognizable shape that had once been her friend. ***Her knees fell to the stone, hands quivering as she took his. If she were a fool, she might have believed his fingers closed around hers.***

written by \_dohg on discord

Tripwire