It started with silence.
It started with silence.
Not the calm, peaceful kind—but the heavy, expectant silence that blankets cities when something terrible is about to happen. In Islamabad, the early spring air carried the scent of uncertainty. Tensions with India had been simmering for months. By March, border skirmishes in Kashmir had turned into drone strikes, and then into full-scale artillery duels.
But it wasn’t the soldiers on the Line of Control who felt the brunt first—it was the civilians.
Arman, a 28-year-old software engineer, was standing in his kitchen when the first sirens wailed. He grabbed his phone and saw the alert: “Airspace violation detected. Take shelter immediately.” He didn’t have a shelter. No one in his neighborhood did.
Minutes later, a distant boom shook the glass panes. Another followed. The TV signal cut out.
Within days, chaos spread. Lahore was hit by a missile strike, and retaliatory shells landed in Srinagar. The war wasn’t just fought on the battlefield—it raged in cyberspace. Electricity grids flickered. Social media drowned in propaganda. AI-generated deepfakes stoked anger on both sides. People couldn’t tell truth from manipulation anymore.
In the ruins of Rawalpindi, Major Zoya Ahmed led a unit tasked not with fighting, but with rescue. Her orders were to retrieve civilians trapped under debris after drone bombardments. The faces she pulled from the wreckage haunted her sleep—children clutching toys, elderly women praying, young men whispering their last messages into dying phones.
Yet in the middle of the destruction, there was resilience. Mosques opened their doors as shelters. Teenagers volunteered as runners, carrying medicine between field clinics. A group of journalists, risking their lives, streamed live footage from the frontlines, trying to cut through the fog of war with fragments of truth.
By May, ceasefire talks began, brokered by China and the UAE. The cost of the war—tens of thousands dead, cities scarred, a generation traumatized—became too great for either side to ignore.
When the silence returned, it was not from fear. It was from exhaustion.
Arman, now volunteering at a refugee camp near Multan, helped a child draw a picture with crayons. The boy sketched a house, a tree, and a sun—simple, almost hopeful. Arman smiled for the first time in weeks.
“I think the war is over,” he said.
“Will it happen again?” the boy asked.
Arman looked out over the dusty horizon, where smoke still rose from far-off fires.
“I hope not. But we’ll be ready—not just with weapons, but with truth, with unity. And maybe, next time, with peace.”
Not the calm, peaceful kind—but the heavy, expectant silence that blankets cities when something terrible is about to happen. In Islamabad, the early spring air carried the scent of uncertainty. Tensions with India had been simmering for months. By March, border skirmishes in Kashmir had turned into drone strikes, and then into full-scale artillery duels.
But it wasn’t the soldiers on the Line of Control who felt the brunt first—it was the civilians.
Arman, a 28-year-old software engineer, was standing in his kitchen when the first sirens wailed. He grabbed his phone and saw the alert: “Airspace violation detected. Take shelter immediately.” He didn’t have a shelter. No one in his neighborhood did.
Minutes later, a distant boom shook the glass panes. Another followed. The TV signal cut out.
Within days, chaos spread. Lahore was hit by a missile strike, and retaliatory shells landed in Srinagar. The war wasn’t just fought on the battlefield—it raged in cyberspace. Electricity grids flickered. Social media drowned in propaganda. AI-generated deepfakes stoked anger on both sides. People couldn’t tell truth from manipulation anymore.
In the ruins of Rawalpindi, Major Zoya Ahmed led a unit tasked not with fighting, but with rescue. Her orders were to retrieve civilians trapped under debris after drone bombardments. The faces she pulled from the wreckage haunted her sleep—children clutching toys, elderly women praying, young men whispering their last messages into dying phones.
Yet in the middle of the destruction, there was resilience. Mosques opened their doors as shelters. Teenagers volunteered as runners, carrying medicine between field clinics. A group of journalists, risking their lives, streamed live footage from the frontlines, trying to cut through the fog of war with fragments of truth.
By May, ceasefire talks began, brokered by China and the UAE. The cost of the war—tens of thousands dead, cities scarred, a generation traumatized—became too great for either side to ignore.
When the silence returned, it was not from fear. It was from exhaustion.
Arman, now volunteering at a refugee camp near Multan, helped a child draw a picture with crayons. The boy sketched a house, a tree, and a sun—simple, almost hopeful. Arman smiled for the first time in weeks.
“I think the war is over,” he said.
“Will it happen again?” the boy asked.
Arman looked out over the dusty horizon, where smoke still rose from far-off fires.
“I hope not. But we’ll be ready—not just with weapons, but with truth, with unity. And maybe, next time, with peace.”