The train rumbled to a stop, its whistle piercing the stillness of the autumn air. Samuel Jenkins stepped off, the familiar creak of the platform beneath his boots sounding foreign now. He stood for a moment, scanning the town—his town.

It looked unchanged. The same cobbled streets, the same towering oak in the town square. But beneath the surface, everything was different. There was no flag in the town square this morning, no welcoming committee. Just the quiet hum of a place that had moved on without him.

He had come home to peace. A peace bought by the ink of treaties and the promises of politicians. The Treaty of Versailles had signed away the last hope of any real victory, leaving nothing but a hollow sense of finality. The war was over, but the scars it left behind would last a lifetime.

Samuel adjusted the weight of his pack, feeling the familiar ache in his shoulders, but it was no longer from the rifle. It was the weight of memories—of trenches, of comrades lost, of days spent staring into the nothingness of war. He had hoped the countryside would wash it away, but the land felt just as heavy.

He walked into the main street, where the shop windows glinted in the early morning light, but the smiles he saw in passing were unfamiliar. A mother ushered her children past him with a glance that seemed to say stay away. A man tipped his hat, but Samuel knew that behind those eyes was judgment—curiosity wrapped in pity.

His hand instinctively went to the scar on his neck—a mark of a battle fought months ago, but still fresh in his mind. He stopped in front of the pub, its sign swaying in the breeze, but the thought of going inside felt suffocating. The laughter that echoed from the windows felt like a betrayal.

Inside, everything was quiet.

The barkeep looked up, his face softening when he saw Samuel, but there was no handshake, no warm welcome. “You’re back, then,” he said simply.

Samuel nodded, pulling up a stool and sitting heavily. “Back to the war that never ended.”

The barkeep poured him a drink, but Samuel didn’t touch it. His eyes wandered to the door—toward the open fields in the distance. There was a sense of dislocation, as if the world had shifted on its axis and left him spinning. The soldiers he’d fought beside, the men he’d once called brothers, were now nothing more than names carved into gravestones, their legacies reduced to war statistics.

He realized, with a sinking feeling, that he wasn’t the only one who had returned home. The world had changed too. The town was filled with men like him, scarred by a war that hadn’t quite ended for them, but had already been buried under the weight of treaties and promises of peace.

“Are we supposed to forget?” Samuel muttered, more to himself than to the barkeep.

The man behind the counter sighed. “Some try. Others, they never do.”

As the hours passed, Samuel found himself walking the streets again, feeling the weight of the years press down on him. The world had moved on—there was a new order now, and Samuel wasn’t part of it. He wasn’t sure where he belonged, or if there was a place for him at all. The ink on the treaty was drying, but for him, the war was far from over.

The streets were still empty, but he could hear the ghosts of battles fought long ago in the wind.

And for the first time since he had returned, Samuel wondered if he would ever find peace, or if it was something he had already lost forever.