Smoke drifted low through the forest—thin at first, then thick enough to sting the eyes and turn sunlight into a sickly haze. By midday the heat had settled under the canopy like a lid, pressing down until the air felt heavy, reluctant to move.
Gunther sat with his back jammed against a tree, the radio pack crushed between bark and his spine. Bullets snapped past in angry little cracks, shaving leaves, punching splinters from trunks. Somewhere behind him something burned; the smoke carried the sharp, oily bite of it. Farther out, beyond the nearest line of trees, the enemy roared—voices rising and breaking in waves, screams mixing with prayers, men calling for their mothers, calling for God, calling for anything that might answer.
Gunther didn't need to understand the language to understand the sound.
It was the sound of human beings coming apart.
His carbine lay across his thighs. His hands shook so badly the weapon felt too light, almost unreal, like a toy in the grip of a child. His ribs still rang from the impact—an ugly punch that had knocked the breath out of him when the round hit his bulletproof vests plate. The pain didn't feel like a wound so much as a hammer strike that kept echoing through his chest.
First time, he thought. First time I've ever been shot.
Get it together.
He fumbled a magazine. It slipped, clattered softly against metal, and his stomach lurched as if the sound alone might summon a bullet. He caught it with clumsy fingers and tried to seat it again.
It didn't go.
"Fuck—" he hissed, not loud, not brave—just the involuntary sound of frustration and fear.
A rifle cracked to his left. Another answered. Then, somewhere farther right—beyond the imperial road where another squad was fighting their own private nightmare—a machine gun spat a short, hard burst that chewed bark into splinters.
"Calm down, Sarge!" someone yelled from nearby, voice rough but steady. "Breathe. Central said—"
A round snapped past so close Gunther felt it tug at the air beside his ear.
The voice cut off.
Max—his childhood friend, his shadow since they'd been boys—crouched behind a fallen log a few meters away. His face was streaked with dirt and sweat, eyes too wide in the smoke.
"Gunther! Sarge!" Max shouted. "Any word from Central? Do we hold? Do we pull back? What do we do?!"
Gunther forced the magazine in again, harder this time—anger lending his hands a little strength. It clicked into place. That single sound—solid, final—felt like a lifeline.
He swallowed, pressed his shoulder into the tree, and answered like he wasn't shaking apart inside.
"Hold for now," he said, voice flat with effort. "Stay low. Stay covered!"
To his left the newest man—Adolf, who had been selling cars a year ago and now wore the same moss-colored veil of war as the rest of them—had come unmoored. Günther could see it instantly: that wild shine in the eyes, the half-laugh, the refusal to accept mortality.
Adolf was half-standing behind a stump, firing too fast, too high, laughing like noise itself was fuel.
"Yeah! Yeah! Come on!" he yelled. "Get some!"
Otto's voice snapped back, sharp with fury and fear.
"Jesus Christ—they're insane!" Otto shouted. "Don't they have any sense of self-preservation? They're just coming straight at us—like madmen! I knew we should've dug more pit traps! Fuck!"
The forest answered with more shots.
Single reports—mostly old rifles. Loud, slow, scattered. Most rounds snapped into trees or buried themselves in dirt. But there were so many rifles that the sound became a constant harsh irritation—like hail against a roof.
And through the smoke, dark shapes moved between trunks.
Sometimes Gunther caught a glimpse: a man in wool, a flash of metal, a face for half a heartbeat.
Then nothing again.
Out near the road—where cover was thinner and the ground was more open—men tried to push forward anyway, crouching behind bodies as if bodies were walls. They came in waves, and they died in waves, and still more kept coming, feeding themselves into the same narrow mouth of violence as if devotion could make them bulletproof.
Gunther leaned out just enough to fire—three controlled shots into a moving shadow. One figure dropped. Another stumbled, disappeared. Return fire ripped through leaves above him and he ducked back so hard his shoulder barked against the tree.
Then—
Beep.
Faint. Tight. Almost polite.
His radio.
For a second he didn't move. His heart jumped so hard it hurt. He reached back, yanked the handset free, and pressed it to his ear.
Static hissed.
Then a voice—flat, professional, utterly calm. A voice that sounded like a world where plans still existed.
"All forward units, this is Central. Pull back. Pull back to secondary assigned positions. Reinforcements are en route. Repeat: pull back and hold. Do not give ground."
Gunther sat there breathing, headset pressed to his ear as if it might vanish. Relief hit him so hard his vision blurred, not like joy but like something draining—like his body had been holding its breath for an hour and only now realized it could inhale.
He shoved the handset back into its holster and twisted around, forcing sound into his voice.
"Alright!" he shouted. "Listen up! Central just confirmed it—reinforcements are en route. We pull back to secondary positions and hold. We do not give ground!"
"Yes, sir!" came the answers—ragged, uneven, but real.
To his right, their machine gunner Göbels was slumped against a rock, jaw clenched so tight the muscles stood out. He had one hand on his arm, tying off a bandage with grim, shaking fingers. Blood darkened his sleeve, slick and warm even through the cloth.
Gunther crawled over, staying low, teeth grit against the ache in his ribs.
"Göbels," he barked—not cruel, just urgent. "Talk to me. You still in this? You still with us?"
Göbels looked up, pale but grinning through the pain like a man too stubborn to die properly. His right hand was a mess of dark bandages, the shape wrong—missing fingers, missing pieces.
"Yeah, Sarge," he rasped. "Just a flesh wound." He snorted, then winced. "Well… they took my ring finger. Bastards." His eyes flicked down as if he could still see it. "My wife's gonna be pissed. We had matching rings, you know? Now mine's somewhere in the dirt."
Despite himself, Gunther felt a crooked smile pull at his mouth—sharp, brief, almost angry at its own existence.
"After this," he said, "we'll look for it together."
Göbels' grin widened a fraction. "My fingers also?"
"Sure," Gunther said. "We'll find the whole damn set."
Göbels coughed out something that might have been a laugh, then leaned into the machine gun braced beside the rock. He cradled it with the intact hand he still had, settling his shoulder behind it like it was a familiar tool, not a thing built to shred men.
Gunther risked a glance around the stone.
The forest had become a ruined furnace.
Smoke rolled through the trees in uneven sheets. Small fires crawled along dry undergrowth where explosives had sparked them alive. Heat warped the air until movement blurred into ghosts. Through that haze came Ottoman soldiers—dark shapes between trunks, rifles cracking, single shots popping like impatient knuckles. No banners visible here, no neat ranks—just men and belief and momentum, pressing forward because the idea of stopping had already been burned out of them.
"Göbels!" Gunther shouted over the noise. "You got suppressive?"
"Give me a second—"
The machine gun answered for him.
It roared to life in short, brutal bursts—controlled, methodical—hammering a line of fire through the smoke. Figures jerked and dropped. Others scattered, stumbling over roots and bodies, trying to crouch behind trees that splintered under impact. The forest filled with new sounds: sharp cries, wet choking, the frantic snorting of terrified horses somewhere deeper in the chaos.
Gunther turned to the three men nearest him.
"You three," he said, voice hard now, stripped of everything but command. "Incendiaries. Bottles out. Wicks ready. We light the ground when they close."
They nodded without hesitation—hands already working, pulling glass from packs, rag wicks dangling, the smell of fuel sharp and chemical even through smoke.
Gunther raised his carbine again, and his heartbeat changed.
Not fear now.
Focus.
The mission was clear.
Fall back. Hold the line. Bleed them. Buy time.
And when Central said move again—
they would vanish into the trees like the forest itself had swallowed them.
Then in the distance, the enemy blew their whistle again, and another wave came—flag carriers at the front, men behind them surging like zeal had replaced self-preservation.
Gunther didn't wait.
"Now!"
Three bottles arced out from cover and shattered against rock and root ahead.
All three bloomed at once with a wet, roaring whump—glass bursting, fuel splashing, flame spreading in hungry sheets. Fire ran through dry leaves like it had been waiting for permission. It climbed low trunks, devoured brush, licked upward in sudden tongues. Smoke surged thick and choking, rolling through the forest like a living thing.
A wall of fire.
A wall of cover.
The air turned black and hot.
"That's it!" Gunther shouted. "Pull back—now!"
Göbels didn't hesitate. The machine gun hammered—long, controlled bursts, steady as a metronome—chewing through the haze to keep heads down while Gunther and the others broke from cover.
They sprinted bent low, boots slipping on ash and loose soil.
Bullets ripped through the air around them—sharp cracks and ugly whistles—rounds slamming into bark, snapping branches, hissing past ears close enough to make flinching pointless.
"Move! Move!" Gunther barked.
Adolf was the smallest and the fastest. He disappeared twenty meters ahead like a thrown stone.
Then—just as drilled—he dove behind a new tree, shoulder slamming bark, spun, and raised his carbine. He fired fast and deliberate—two shots, three—picking at shapes when the smoke thinned, forcing the front of the wave to flinch and slow.
Gunther and the two others ran past him.
"Göbels—your turn!"
Göbels broke cover, machine gun bouncing against his chest, empty belts flapping like dead snakes. He ran hunched, teeth clenched, the weight of the gun making each step cost more than it should.
"I'm almost dry!" he shouted. "We need ammo, Sarge!"
"Not now!" Gunther yelled back. "Just get to the next cover—keep moving!"
Göbels barreled past, breath ragged, boots hammering earth.
Ahead, Adolf had already switched again—hand dropping to the launcher. Thump. Thump. Two dark arcs vanished into smoke. A moment later came the muffled impacts—then screaming.
"Max! Otto! Suppressive!" Gunther snapped.
Max and Otto fired hard and fast, covering Adolf as he peeled off his tree and sprinted back toward them. He didn't need to be told. He was already moving—already part of the machine.
Gunther stopped, turned, fired to cover Adolf's run-in—then Adolf slid into place beside him and Gunther nodded once.
"Go!"
Max and Otto broke from cover next, sprinting in a crouch, Göbels already ahead of them because the gun slowed him. Every second he was exposed felt like an eternity. Every second felt borrowed.
They did it again.
Fire.
Cover.
Run.
All along the line, other Moss Men squads were doing the same, falling back in staggered steps toward secondary positions—like a living net tightening and shifting without ever fully breaking.
They slid into cover again.
Günther dropped, spun, fired.
Winchester rounds cracked back in reply—wild, frantic, most of them missing—but close enough to make bark explode beside his face. One slug kissed the tree inches from his cheek and sprayed splinters across his jaw.
He tasted sap and smoke.
Through the haze he saw them more clearly now.
Young men.
Too young.
Ill-fitting uniforms. Old rifles. No spacing. No discipline—only faces twisted with fury and belief, shouting as they fired, pushed forward by faith and hate instead of training.
That kind of courage was dangerous.
That kind of courage didn't stop.
"Ammo check!" Gunther barked.
"Two mags!" Otto shouted back.
"Down to one!" Max yelled.
Adolf's weapon clicked dry. He didn't panic. He just looked up and said flatly, "Sidearm."
Günther slapped his last fresh magazine into the carbine.
They couldn't do this forever.
"Move!" Gunther snapped.
And they ran again—toward the ridge, toward the hidden trenches, toward whatever caches of ammunition were still buried and waiting.
Behind them the forest was turning into a furnace. Flames crept and leapt through brush and leaf litter, smoke boiling upward, the heat pressing at their backs. It bought them seconds—nothing more—but it forced the enemy to funnel, to bunch, to hesitate before charging through fire.
They took those seconds and spent them running.
Bullets hissed past—blind, furious—snapping branches, cracking bark, ripping leaves into confetti. Dirt jumped at their feet.
"Move! Move!" Gunther bellowed mid-stride.
At first it went clean.
Textbook, almost. Peel. Cover. Run.
Adolf was off to the left, moving like something unhinged—firing his sidearm as he sprinted from tree to tree, boots barely touching the ground, laughter and panic tangled together in every breath. He reloaded on the move, hands working fast, too fast.
"Adolf!" Gunther shouted ahead of him. "Come on! Let's make a run for the top of the hill, were almost there!"
Adolf broke from cover, sprinting hard toward the squad—
—and then his body jerked violently.
Twice.
"Ah—shit!"
The sound cut through everything.
Adolf staggered, took two more steps on pure momentum, then folded sideways as if his legs had simply been turned off. He hit the ground with a grunt that drove the air out of him.
"Oh no—Adolf!" Otto shouted.
Gunfire intensified at once.
"Cover fire!" Gunther roared.
Max and Otto opened up immediately, rifles barking in rapid succession, forcing heads down. Behind them Göbels let the last of his ammunition rip into the smoke, the machine gun coughing itself empty.
Gunther didn't think.
He broke from cover and ran.
Rounds snapped past close enough to tug at his sleeves, close enough to make the air feel sharp. He slid in beside Adolf, dirt spraying as bullets chewed into the ground around them.
Adolf was on his side, gasping.
Gunther flipped him onto his back and grabbed the drag strap sewn into his vest—put there for exactly this moment. He hauled, muscles screaming, dragging Adolf behind the nearest tree as rounds cracked into bark inches from his head.
They slammed into cover.
Adolf lay there shaking, eyes wide and glassy. One hand clawed at his right side. The other pressed awkwardly behind him, fingers slick.
"Oh shit," he gasped. "Oh shit, Sarge—my side—my ass—"
"Where are you hit?" Günther snapped, already tearing Adolf's hand away to look.
"Side—right side—and… and my ass," Adolf blurted, a hysterical laugh leaking through the panic. "I—I can't feel my legs. Shit. I can't move."
Günther forced his voice to stay level, even.
"Look at me," he said. "Wiggle your toes."
Adolf swallowed hard and tried.
For a long, terrifying heartbeat nothing happened.
Then—barely—his boots twitched.
"Oh—oh fuck," Adolf breathed. "They moved. I think. I think they did."
"They did," Günther said instantly, firm as iron. "Good. That means you're still in this."
Adolf shook his head weakly, fear finally breaking through the bravado. "I don't know, Sarge. I feel… I feel weak. This might be it for me."
"No," Günther said, already shifting his weight, already reaching for the next step. "No way. I've got you."
He slung his rifle across his chest in one rough motion, the strap biting into his shoulder, then hauled Adolf up and over him into a fireman's carry. Adolf groaned as his weight shifted, gear clanking—pack, launcher, sidearm—everything piling onto Günther's already overloaded frame.
"Sorry," Adolf muttered through clenched teeth. "I'm… heavy."
"Shut up," Günther grunted. "You scrawny car salesman ass—no matter how you train, you'll never be too heavy for me."
He stood.
The weight hit like a wall.
Radio pack. Rifle. Adolf's full kit. Adolf himself.
For a heartbeat his knees refused.
Then Günther let out a raw sound—more animal than words—and forced forward.
"Just a little further," he growled, breath scraping. "Come on—come on—"
They started uphill through brush and roots, boots slipping on loose stone. Bullets cracked past, snapping twigs, whining off rock. Each step burned. Each breath tasted like smoke.
Above them—through heat shimmer and drifting haze—Günther saw the cut of the ridge line. A shallow trench. Shapes inside it. Friendly muzzle flashes spitting downward in measured bursts.
They were almost there.
Then—
Impact.
A round slammed into Günther's right thigh—glancing, but hard enough to buck his leg. Pain flashed white. He staggered and dropped to one knee with a curse.
"Oh shit—Sarge!" Adolf gasped.
Günther tried to push up—
—and a figure burst out of the smoke below them.
An Ottoman soldier, bayonet fixed, charging through brush like he'd been born into rage. His face was twisted with devotion and panic, mouth wide as he screamed—
"Allahu Akbar!"
"Sarge—watch out!" someone roared from the trench.
Adolf didn't hesitate.
Still draped over Günther's shoulders, he twisted hard, fumbled his sidearm free, and fired one-handed—shaking, but aimed.
Crack.
The charging man jerked but didn't stop. Blood sprayed dark against green and he kept coming, eyes wild, foam at the mouth, stumbling uphill like an animal that refused to understand it was already dead.
Adolf fired again.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
The soldier finally collapsed into the brush, sliding face-first down the slope.
Adolf sucked in a ragged breath. "I've got your back, Sergeant."
Günther barked a laugh through clenched teeth. "Good. Then I'll focus on carrying your sorry ass."
He forced himself upright, thigh screaming, and pushed on—step by brutal step—until the trench lip loomed through smoke like salvation.
"There!" Adolf rasped. "Trench—up ahead!"
"Hold on," Günther warned.
He reached the edge and, with the last of his strength, heaved Adolf forward and let him drop.
Adolf landed inside with an undignified oof—then a strangled, "Ohh, fuck, my back—!"
Günther followed, half falling, half collapsing into the trench beside him, chest heaving as rounds snapped overhead and friendly rifles answered back.
The trench was already alive.
Other squads. Other faces. Men tearing open camouflaged ammo boxes, shoving fresh magazines home with dirty hands. Someone binding a bleeding arm. Someone shouting into a handset with clipped urgency. A couple of snipers lay prone along the line, firing measured shots into the smoke as if time still belonged to them.
"Jesus," Günther panted, forcing himself upright. He spotted the sniper squad leader nearby. "What the hell was that? You fired too early. Half the roadside charges missed because of it!"
The sniper leader didn't flinch. Didn't apologize. He just shrugged, calm as stone.
"They spotted the wire," he said. "Trap was compromised either way. I gave the fire order."
Günther stared at him, disbelief mixing with fury.
"…You're serious."
The sniper nodded once. "Come on. This was always going to be a shitshow. This is the first real combat mission for all of us. Training only takes you so far."
Gunther exhaled hard, jaw tight.
He hated that the man was right.
Göbels dropped into the trench beside Adolf, panting, face slick with sweat and smoke. He glanced up at the sniper leader.
"Where's the mortar support?"
The sniper leader didn't even look over. "Twelve rounds each. They're dry. Already pulling back."
Gunther froze.
"…So we're on our own?"
"For the moment," the sniper said, calm and matter-of-fact. "We hold. The enemy stalls. Then Central pulls us back when pressure drops."
Gunther nodded slowly. He rose just enough to peer over the trench edge, eyes already tracking the treeline where movement flickered through smoke and flame.
"Alright," he said. "Then we hold."
Behind him Adolf groaned.
"Sarge," he rasped. "You got a bandage or something?"
Gunther whipped around. "Oh—shit. Right."
He dropped beside Adolf, already dragging his kit free. "A tourniquet won't do much for your ass or your side," he muttered, "but we'll patch you up."
Adolf huffed a laugh, breath shallow. "Yeah… I hope so. I still would like to see my kids."
Gunther froze. "Kids?"
"Well—not yet," Adolf rasped. "But Sonja. Sonja Wallenberg. You know her—the one you saw at the amusement park with me. That redhead. Deep copper hair… that beauty." He swallowed, eyes glassy. "I'm pretty sure she's pregnant."
Gunther blinked, like his brain refused to accept the sentence. "…Wait—did you seriously marry into the Wallenbergs? I thought that brunette was your wife."
Adolf grinned despite himself. "Nah. She was just my secretary back when I was selling cars." He winced, then added with strained confidence, "Although… maybe I'll make her my second wife."
Gunther stared at him for half a second, then barked a laugh in disbelief as he worked. "You are unbelievable. You knock up a rich Swedish redhead and then go get yourself shot in the ass—and you've got a second woman waiting back home too."
Adolf winced, then chuckled. "Worth it."
Around them rifles cracked and snapped. The snipers worked in calm rhythm, the rest of the squads feeding controlled fire down the slope. The pressure eased—just a little—like the enemy had finally learned to fear the flames and the invisible teeth in the trees.
Gunther tightened the bandage hard enough to make Adolf suck air through his teeth, then slapped his shoulder.
"You're not dying today," he said. "I'll make sure of that." He leaned closer, voice dropping into rough, joking menace. "And after this—if you marry those women under the roof of the Church of the New Dawn—you make me your best man. I want to see mister car salesman turned special forces, mister Hitler, and his little Hitler family. I want to see what the hell this is all about."
Adolf let out a shaky breath that almost turned into laughter. "Deal." His eyes drifted, heavy. "And… if possible… keep the wounds a secret. I really don't wanna explain this to my women. I'd never hear the end of it."
Gunther nodded, grinning despite everything, and finished the dressing. Then he checked his own leg—quick, practiced, teeth grit—binding it tight enough to hold.
The battle raged on around them.
Max, Otto, and Göbels were already returning fire down the slope, shooting through smoke and heat shimmer at the shapes that dared to move. The Ottomans had slowed—no longer surging blindly now, but forming a rough line where they could, crouching behind trees, stones, fallen bodies. Even the bravest men hesitated when the forest itself became a furnace. Fire and smoke punished faith as much as bullets did.
So it was in that moment, that Gunther had a moment to breathe.
He sat back against the trench wall, chest heaving, hands still trembling from adrenaline. Adolf lay beside him, pale, eyes half-lidded—conscious one moment, then slipping under, still breathing, still there.
Gunther dragged a half-empty ammo box closer and began to feed rounds into magazines clipped across his vest. The work was simple. Mechanical. Thumb, press, click—thumb, press, click—over and over until the motion started to calm his hands.
Then his eyes drifted to his rifle.
And he thought of the people he had shot today.
Not targets. Not shapes. People.
He saw them falling again in his mind—faces flashing into view for a heartbeat through smoke, bodies folding into the dirt, the blood darkening the earth in messy stains that didn't care whose flag flew over it. Death. Dying. Men making sounds they didn't know they were capable of making.
He swallowed hard.
Damn… what the fuck.
It was insane. Not long ago, the craziest thing he'd ever seen was in America—those Wright brothers' fools leaping off a cliff in wing suits, smiling like idiots right before they fell like stones to their deaths.
And now?
Now he'd been ending lives with the same numb repetition as stuffing meatballs into his mouth at the restaurant back home, trying to beat the stupid meatball-eating record. The comparison made him shiver, disgust curling up his spine. Not because war was new—because it was already becoming routine.
How had it come to this?
The answer—when it rose to the surface—felt more unreal than the killing itself.
A train.
A stupid, ordinary train.
Third class. Winter-dark. A carriage packed tight with bodies and breath, coal smoke hanging low like a second ceiling. Frozen windows. Wooden benches polished smooth by generations of the poor. And Prince Oskar of Prussia sitting there as if he belonged—his knees nearly touching the opposite bench, his shoulders filling the space, his presence bending the air around him.
No guards. No ceremony.
Just Oskar. And his dwarf, Karl.
Gunther could still feel it—the moment the prince's shadow had fallen over him. A hand like iron closing around his collar. His boots leaving the floor. One arm lifting him as if he weighed nothing at all, his fist so close Gunther had been certain his skull would split like kindling against it.
That was it, he'd thought.
This is where I die.
Not on a battlefield. Not with honor. But in a third class train carriage, remembered only as an example—what happens when a soldier disappoints a god.
Then the dwarf stepped in.
Karl.
Small. Perfectly placed. Unyielding.
He had climbed onto the bench, and put himself between Gunther and the giant without hesitation, one hand braced against Oskar's chest like a priest stopping an executioner. He spoke calmly. Firmly. Fearlessly. And somehow—it worked.
Karl hadn't just saved Gunther.
He'd saved Otto. Max. Göbels. Every man in that carriage who had frozen under the prince's wrath and thought the same thought Günther had:
We are about to be erased.
And when the terror faded—when Günther's legs stopped shaking and his heart slowed enough to beat like something human again—he learned what made it all so much worse.
The prince wasn't just strong.
He was kind.
Deeply. Unsettlingly. Dangerously kind.
That was the part Gunther couldn't escape.
The girl had been small. Too small. A scrap of a thing with red-chapped cheeks and hands wrapped around a chunk of frozen bread that might as well have been stone. She'd gone quiet when she started choking—no sound, just wide eyes and a slow, dawning terror.
Gunther had moved. Others had too. Soldiers. Fathers. Men who'd faced drills and fist fights and believed themselves capable.
None of them knew what to do.
Panic locked them in place. Someone shook her. Someone tried to pry her mouth open. Someone started praying.
Oskar didn't.
He stepped forward—not as a prince, not as nobility—but as something older than rank. Something that remembered.
He took the child with terrifying gentleness. Turned her. Struck her back with precise force. Once. Twice.
The bread came free.
She screamed. Lived.
And in that moment—before anyone could even thank him—Oskar's eyes had lifted. Found Gunther's uniform. Found the insignia. Found a soldier who had stood there helpless.
The fury that followed burned hotter than anything Gunther had ever known.
It wasn't cruelty.
It was betrayal.
A shepherd discovering his flock had never been taught how to save one another.
That was what had terrified Gunther most. Not the strength. Not the rage.
But what came after.
Oskar hadn't left.
He hadn't dismissed them as idiots or cowards. He hadn't vanished back into first class where men like him were supposed to live.
He stayed.
Right there in the carriage, with the lamps swaying and the train rattling on through the dark, he taught them.
How to clear an airway.
How to stop bleeding.
How to keep a man alive long enough for help to matter.
His voice had been calm. Measured. Patient—but edged with iron. He corrected them without mercy and without malice. He refused to accept ignorance as fate.
And that was when Gunther understood.
Oskar wasn't simply powerful.
He was compassionate in a way that demanded transformation. He loved the weak, the foolish, the forgotten—but he despised indifference. He despised the lie that suffering was inevitable.
Kindness and wrath lived side by side in him, inseparable.
He was approachable.
He was terrifying.
He was human.
And he was something more.
A man who walked into third-class carriages.
Who touched the sick.
Who lifted children from death.
Who demanded his followers learn.
If Christ were to walk the world again, Gunther thought, this was how he would look.
And somehow—impossibly—Gunther had been pulled into his orbit.
Transferred out of the Second Company. Elevated into the First. The patch of the Eternal Guard sewn onto his shoulder. Guarding the prince's children. Guarding his women. Standing watch over a man who spoke of history as if it were clay, still warm, still waiting for hands strong enough to reshape it.
It was madness.
It was terrifying.
It was the greatest honor of his life.
And sitting here in a dirty trench on a hillside—hands black with soot, thumbs raw from feeding rounds into magazines while smoke rolled through the trees—Gunther realized he didn't regret any of it.
Not the pain.
Not the fear.
Not even the killing.
He was glad he hadn't fled to the United States like he'd once planned. Glad he hadn't vanished into comfort and coin and anonymity. Because this—this furnace of a forest, this trench cut into the soil, this moment where death sat so close it felt like a fifth man in the squad—this felt real in a way nothing else ever had.
He wasn't just living.
He was being used for something larger than himself.
Prince Oskar's voice still rang in his skull, clear as if someone had carved the words into bone. Not shouted, not theatrical—spoken in that underground chamber beneath Potsdam, where the air was cold and the lamps turned every face into something half-buried, half-unnatural.
"This is not a mere campaign," the prince had said. "Not just a mission to protect civilians. This is the beginning of a new age."
And then he had looked at them.
Not like a Kaiser looked at soldiers.
Not like an officer looked at men.
Like a man looking at other men and asking them to carry a weight that would break ordinary backs.
"My Eternal Guard—my warriors—hear me. A new age is coming. An age of freedom. Not brought forth only through the actions of a few, but by us all. And when it comes—when our mission is done—everyone, all the world, will know the heroes who brought it forth. The six hundred Eternal Guard who stood before hundreds of thousands… and gave their all to make a better world."
Gunther remembered the map—Thrace spread out like an opened body. Rivers like veins. Roads like nerves. And there, under Oskar's finger, Adrianople—tapped once, twice—as if it were a heart that had to keep beating.
He hadn't commanded them.
He'd asked them.
To hold it.
To fight for it.
To make the enemy die trying to take it.
And the room had answered like a cathedral answering a sermon—men roaring vows until their throats tore, fists pounding chests, eyes shining with something that was not simply patriotism. Not simply duty.
Something purer.
Something more dangerous.
Because the Eternal Guard weren't like other soldiers.
Other soldiers fought to survive.
Other soldiers fought for medals, for pay, for fear of punishment.
The Eternal Guard fought like a blade fights: to be used.
They trained to move as one body. To peel and cover and run without thinking. To burn ground without hesitation. To step into death if Central said it bought time. They didn't speak about sacrifice the way priests did—soft and mournful.
They spoke about it the way craftsmen spoke about tools.
If your life buys the mission, then your life is spent.
Simple.
Clean.
Holy.
And none of them called Oskar something divine.
Not openly.
Not in words.
Because he didn't allow it.
He never wore crowns. He never demanded anyone to kneel. He never proclaimed himself the Son of anything.
Like Christ, he didn't say it.
He just walked among the poor, lifted the dying, demanded mercy, demanded competence, demanded a better world as if suffering were an insult that could be corrected through will.
And every man of the Eternal Guard, felt the same impossible pressure in their chests:
This is what we have been waiting for.
So when they shouted "one nation, one people—under one God," they weren't talking about the old distant God who watched from stained glass while men froze and starved and choked on bread.
They meant the God of Man.
Not a voice in the sky.
A presence in the world.
A man who touched history with his hands and made it move.
The prince never said it outright.
He never proclaimed it.
But every man in that room had felt the truth anyway—heavy and radiant and undeniable—and once it settled into you, it didn't leave.
Now, in the trench, reinforcements began to pour in from the flanks—more Eternal Guard sliding into place like they'd been conjured from smoke. Soot-streaked faces. Bright eyes. Weapons up. Quiet efficiency in the middle of chaos, as if the line itself was a living machine and every new man was a gear clicking home.
The rhythm of fire steadied.
The fear in the pit of Gunther's stomach didn't vanish—but it became something else.
Certainty.
Certainty like an anchor biting into seabed. Certainty like a vow that could not be unmade.
He pushed himself to his feet on shaking legs, still wounded, rifle in hand. The forest boiled with heat and gunfire, and somewhere beyond the smoke the enemy gathered itself for another surge.
Gunther checked his magazine. Clicked it home. Felt the weight settle right.
He didn't pray for survival.
He prayed for purpose.
And then he threw himself back into the fight, roaring until his voice broke—
"For God and Fatherland!"