Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Some wars don’t end. They just go quiet.”

The cities still burned in his dreams.

Ash over rooftops. Sirens swallowed by flame. A child’s scream muffled beneath rubble and smoke. He'd forgotten his own voice long before he forgot his name.

Somewhere between the fire and the silence, the war found him.

They called him a survivor. As if survival meant anything when you were young, barefoot in the snow, dragged from the ruins of your home and tossed into the back of a truck with other lost boys. They gave him a number. A uniform. A weapon. And when he was too tired to cry anymore, they gave him orders.

The others were like him—some older, some barely walking. Hard-eyed, hollow-cheeked, stitched together by trauma and protocol. Echo Squad, they would call it. Ghosts molded into weapons.

He never asked what side he was on.

Sides were for soldiers. He was something else.

Years passed in the space between gunshots. Names became codenames. Friends became memories. Enemies became mirrors. He learned to move without sound, to kill without hesitation, and to bury the pain so deep it could no longer claw its way to the surface.

But somewhere in the shadows—between the missions, the lies, the scars—he found someone who looked back. Someone just as broken. Just as deadly. Just as afraid of what they’d become.

And somehow, without ever saying the words… they chose to keep each other alive.

This isn’t a story of glory. There are no heroes here. Only survivors.

But sometimes, in the quiet that follows a long war, survival is enough.

For now.

Chapter Text

Cold.

That was the only word echoing in young M!Y/n's mind. A single syllable, looping endlessly through the wreckage of his thoughts as he sat, curled into himself, in the dim husk of what had once been a school hallway. The place was unrecognizable now. Glass shards littered the floor like fallen stars, crunching underfoot when he shifted slightly. Wind screamed through the shattered windows, hollow and vengeful, like the voices of the dead come to collect what was left.

His back was pressed against a wall of crumbling brick, the jagged edges biting through the threadbare remnants of a once-pristine school uniform. It used to be navy blue, with a crest embroidered on the chest pocket. Now, it hung from his skeletal frame in greasy tatters, crusted with dirt, dried blood, and ash. His knees were drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped tightly around them, trying to conserve what little heat his body had left.

He was so cold it hurt. Not the kind of cold that made you shiver and reach for a blanket. This was deeper. It gnawed at his bones, crept through the cracks in his skin, and hollowed him out from within. He shivered violently, his whole body convulsing in waves, as though trying to expel the frost lodged in his soul. His breath came in short, visible puffs, each one a painful reminder that he was still alive when so many weren’t.

His hair hung in limp, filthy strands over his forehead, matted with the soot of a thousand fires and the blood of people he hadn’t been able to save. His face was a grim mask—streaked with grime and tears, cut and bruised in places he no longer felt. The dirt on his cheeks had settled in like war paint, a mark of a childhood obliterated by war.

Every inch of him ached. His joints throbbed, his muscles screamed with exhaustion, and his stomach twisted itself into knots, begging for food it hadn't seen in days. Hunger had stopped feeling like pain. Now, it was just a dull, ever-present ache, a low hum in the background of his suffering. His throat was raw from sobbing, from screaming into the void, from whispering names into the darkness that never answered back.

His lips were cracked, the skin flaking and bleeding with every movement. His hands, once nimble and quick with mischief, were stiff and numb, the fingertips pale and frostbitten. He stared down at them sometimes, trying to remember the last thing they had held that wasn't a shard of glass or a crumbling stone or the still-warm hand of someone who had just died.

He looked like a ghost of a boy, a wraith drifting in the skeleton of a city once filled with life and laughter. The world had ended around him, and no one had bothered to tell his heart to stop beating.

He didn’t understand why the war had started. The news had said words like "invasion," "retaliation," "freedom," and "sovereignty," but those were just noises to him. Complicated lies told by men in suits who would never see the inside of a bombed-out classroom or hold their breath in fear as fighter jets screamed overhead.

What did politics mean to a boy who just wanted to see his mother again? Who wanted to sit at the dinner table with his father and brothers, eating soup and arguing about silly things? Who wanted to kick a ball down the street with Daniel, his best friend since first grade? Who missed the warm sugar smell of Mrs. Evard's bakery, where he'd sneak in after school and be rewarded with a sweet roll and a wink?

Those memories were slipping, dissolving like frost on a windowpane in the morning light. He clung to them as best he could, but each day made them harder to recall. They were being replaced by new images—the blinding light of bombs, the thunder of collapsing buildings, the screams. God, the screams. High and shrill, or low and guttural, or cut off so suddenly it made his heart stop.

He hadn’t eaten a real meal in...how long? A week? More? He scavenged when he could. Rotten fruit, stale bread, whatever rats hadn’t already claimed. Water came from melted snow or broken pipes. He hadn’t bathed in so long. He hadn’t smiled in longer.

Sleep came in fits. Every time his eyes closed, he saw them. The faces. Some he recognized. Some he didn’t. But all of them stared at him with lifeless eyes, accusing him for surviving. For being too slow. For not doing more. He would wake up with a scream lodged in his throat, sweat freezing against his skin, breath ragged as though he'd run for miles.

Tears pricked his eyes again. He was sick of crying, but it was all he had left. He sobbed into his arms, the sound muffled but still echoing in the empty hallway. Tears streaked down his cheeks, cutting through the filth like rivers through ash. His body shook with every choked breath.

Were his parents still alive? Were his brothers hiding somewhere, just like him? Was Daniel out there, looking for him? What about old Mrs. Evard? He clung to hope like a drowning man clings to driftwood, but every day it floated a little further away.

The silence was the worst part.

It wrapped around him like a shroud, pressing down on his ears, muting even his own heartbeat. He longed for noise—any noise. A siren. A voice. A bird. But there was nothing. Only the wind. And that wasn’t life. That was death pretending to be alive.

In that silence, his imagination turned cruel. It painted pictures with brutal clarity. A hand sticking out of rubble. A teddy bear blackened with soot. Blood spattered across the walls of his old classroom. Eyes that stared without seeing.

He tried to block them out. He pressed his hands over his ears, curled tighter into himself, rocked back and forth. But the images didn’t come from outside. They lived in his mind now, permanent residents in a brain too young to hold such horror.

He wanted to forget.

But he couldn't.

There were days when he thought he heard footsteps. A voice. Someone calling. He would bolt upright, heart pounding, eyes wide. But it was always the wind. Or rats. Or nothing at all.

Once, he thought he saw a figure moving through the rubble. Tall. Wrapped in a coat. He cried out, staggered to his feet, stumbled after it. But when he reached the place where it had stood, there was no one. Just shadows. And ashes.

Still, he hoped. Maybe someone would come. Maybe the soldiers from the radio broadcasts, the ones who were supposed to liberate the city. Maybe aid workers. Maybe someone who still had food. Or fire. Or kindness.

He told himself stories, whispered them to the air like prayers. He imagined his family huddled in a shelter somewhere, just waiting for things to calm down. He imagined Daniel building a camp like they used to in the woods behind the school. He imagined Mrs. Evard baking bread again.

Sometimes, in the moments just before sleep, he pretended it had all been a nightmare. That he would wake up in his warm bed, sun streaming through the window, the smell of coffee and eggs drifting up from the kitchen. His mother calling him down. His brothers already fighting over who got the last pancake.

And then the cold would remind him. And he would open his eyes to ruins.

But he didn’t die. He survived.

He scavenged. He learned where the feral dogs didn’t go. Which buildings still had shelter. How to avoid the worst of the fighting. He listened for planes, for trucks, for boots on gravel. He learned to hold his breath when he had to, to run without thinking.

He stopped crying so much. The tears still came, but they didn’t control him. He began to talk to himself. To the dead. To no one. Just to keep his voice alive. Just to remember what it sounded like.

He watched the sky. When there was no smoke, he looked for stars. Sometimes, he found them. Just a few. Distant. Cold. But real.

And he whispered their names. His family. His friends. Like a list. Like a vow. Like a spell to keep them safe, wherever they were.

And every time the wind howled, he whispered back.

Not yet.

Not yet.

It had started like any other day in [Nation]. The kind of day you barely remember because it felt so ordinary, so peaceful, so profoundly safe. The early morning sun crept over the rooftops, casting soft golden light on cobbled streets still slick with dew. Market stalls, covered in colorful canopies, opened slowly like sleepy flowers. Vendors arranged fresh produce in neat piles—gleaming apples, soft-skinned peaches, bundles of herbs tied with twine. The air was thick with the aroma of baked bread and fried onions, a scent that made even the sternest passerby smile.

Children darted through the town square, their laughter rising like birdsong into the open sky. A group of boys kicked a worn leather ball back and forth, while little girls played clapping games beneath the statue of some long-dead general. M!Y/n had been one of them, not quite boy, not yet man. He had woken up with messy hair and tired eyes, dragging his feet through his morning chores before slipping off to meet his friends near the bakery.

Someone played the accordion on the corner—an old man with a crooked hat and a toothless grin. His melody was bright and fluttering, winding through the alleyways and over rooftops. Women in aprons leaned out of windows to listen, clapping in time with the rhythm. Shopkeepers bantered, children laughed, the bell tower chimed the hour.

There had been rumors, of course. Whispers behind closed doors, exchanged glances when someone mentioned the neighboring cities. The sound of distant gunfire at night, like muffled thunder on the horizon. Sirens blaring miles away. But the radio had insisted it was safe.

"Far from the front lines," it said. "No need to worry. The State protects its citizens."

And the people believed it. They had to. What else could they do?

M!Y/n remembered the moment it changed. How the sky dimmed—not with storm clouds, but with something far worse. It started with a hum. A strange, low vibration that made the windows tremble. People stopped in the streets, heads tilted upward.

Hundreds of silver shapes appeared above them, glinting in the light. At first, they looked like birds, like artful streaks of metal soaring across a pristine canvas. A few people even applauded, unsure of what they were seeing. But M!Y/n’s stomach turned cold.

Then came the whistling.

Shrill. Deafening. Unrelenting.

The first bomb struck the bakery. A deafening roar split the world apart. One moment he was standing near the corner, and the next his ears were ringing, his body hurled backward by a shockwave that shattered windows and splintered doors. The explosion sent flames licking through the air. The scent of fresh bread turned to scorched flesh and ash.

Screams filled the air. Mothers screamed for their children. Children screamed for their parents. People ran in every direction, tripping over rubble, clawing at the air. Someone caught fire and collapsed in the street. The accordion man was gone—just gone—as if he'd never existed.

M!Y/n ran. His legs moved on instinct, mind blank with terror. He didn’t know where he was going, only that he had to move. A second blast tore through the tailor’s shop. Glass rained down. He ducked behind a boundary wall, an old stone relic of the town’s medieval past. Just as he pressed his back against it, another explosion rocked the earth. The shockwave sent debris flying, a shard cutting his temple open. His skin burned where the heat kissed it.

Then, silence. The kind of silence that feels like pressure in your skull. A silence that said nothing was left.

He didn’t know how long he lay there. Minutes? Hours? He woke to the sound of crackling fire and the distant wails of the dying. His ears buzzed. His limbs were heavy. The air was thick with smoke, choking, acrid, clinging to his lungs. He pushed himself upright, every muscle trembling.

The city was gone.

Ash drifted from the sky like snowflakes, blanketing the ruins in grey. The cheerful stalls were scorched skeletons. Buildings had collapsed into heaps of brick and wood. A charred doll lay in the rubble, its eyes melted. A hand poked from beneath a pile of stone, fingers curled like they were still reaching for help.

M!Y/n stumbled through the destruction, calling names: his mother, his father, his brother, his best friend Daniel. The sound of his own voice echoed too loudly in the hollow remains of streets that once buzzed with life. He passed bodies—some whole, others torn apart. Some still clutched each other in death.

He walked and walked, barefoot now, the soles of his feet cut and bloodied. His school uniform, once neat, hung in tatters, streaked with soot and blood. His skin was blackened from smoke, his eyes swollen with tears. He called until his voice gave out, until all he could do was whisper.

Finally, he collapsed in the shell of what had once been his home. Only one wall still stood. He pressed his back against it and slid to the ground, curling into himself as the sky turned orange with firelight.

He didn’t cry—not at first. His body was too tired. His eyes too dry. But inside, something broke. Something fragile and sacred, the part of a child that still believed in safety, in fairness, in morning sunrises and warm hugs.

He sat there as night fell, shivering violently, lips cracked and bleeding. Hunger gnawed at his stomach. His fingers were too numb to feel. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked once, then whimpered. Somewhere else, someone called for help until their voice was swallowed by silence.

Was this the end of the world?

He thought of the old man with the accordion, of Mrs. Evard’s laughter, of Daniel’s goofy grin. He thought of the smell of warm bread and the way his mother tucked his hair behind his ear when he cried. He thought of stories by firelight and dreams of becoming a pilot, a teacher, a poet.

Now there was nothing left.

But still he breathed. Still his heart beat.

And so, with the last light of the fires flickering in the distance, he forced himself to stand.

The city was gone. His childhood was gone.

But he wasn’t.

And now, here he was. A broken child in a broken world.

The hollow silence of the ruins weighed heavy in his ears, almost peaceful in its absence of gunfire, screaming, and collapsing stone. The smoke still hung low in the air like mourning veils, whispering through the crumbled city like the final breaths of the dead. M!Y/n sat against the shattered skeleton of what had once been a building—maybe a clinic, maybe a shop. It didn’t matter anymore. Everything was dust.

He didn’t hear the footsteps.

Not at first.

Not until they were right in front of him.

A crunch—sharp and brittle. Glass shattering beneath heavy boots.

His eyes lifted sluggishly, more instinct than awareness, barely registering the silhouette above him. Blinking against the haze, he tried to focus.

A gloved hand gripped the front of his tattered shirt and hauled him upright with one swift motion. M!Y/n’s feet dangled momentarily off the ground before landing unsteadily beneath him. He didn’t scream. Didn’t fight. What would be the point? What fight was left in a body that had run on nothing but fear and fumes for days?

Before him stood a man.

A soldier.

Tall, broad-shouldered, rigid in posture and presence. The kind of man who looked carved out of iron and storm clouds. His U.S. military uniform was neat despite the dust, the medals and insignias on his chest dulled but present, glinting faintly in the waning light like relics of a world still functioning somewhere. His beard was neatly trimmed, his jaw locked in a grim line, but it was the man’s eyes that held M!Y/n captive.

Cold, stormy gray.

Not cruel. Not exactly. But not kind, either.

There was no pity in them—only calculation, fatigue, and a haunting familiarity with loss. This man had seen too much. Perhaps not unlike the boy he now held.

Still silent, the man shifted his weight and slung M!Y/n over his shoulder like he was a sack of grain. The movement made M!Y/n’s body flare with pain—his bruises screaming, ribs aching, his breath wheezing out of his lungs—but he didn’t cry out. He was done crying. The tears had dried up, leaving only salt crusted on his cheeks like the ghost of his sorrow.

The soldier walked.

Through the skeleton of the city.

Past the school with its roof collapsed inward like a broken mouth.

Past the remnants of the tram line, where twisted tracks poked out of the earth like the ribs of a dying beast.

Past the café where M!Y/n’s mother had once worked, now a gaping hole of blackened stone, the scent of charred pastry and flesh still lingering in the air.

Memories stabbed at him as they walked.

The alley where he and Daniel used to race.

The streetlight he’d once climbed on a dare.

The bench where his father had sat reading the paper every Sunday.

All gone.

All dead.

The city park came into view, or what was left of it. The great chestnut trees had been stripped bare by the blasts, their trunks blackened, hollowed like bones. The air was thick with the metallic tang of fuel and the unmistakable stench of rot. A once-beautiful fountain in the center stood silent and scorched, its marble cracked, frozen mid-spurt as if time had stopped when the first bomb fell.

There, behind sandbag barriers and the charred remains of decorative iron fencing, was a convoy.

Military trucks. Camouflaged. Weathered.

Soldiers loitered nearby—most young, gaunt-eyed, rifles slung carelessly over their shoulders as they scanned the ruined skyline. Their faces bore the same hardened weariness as the man who carried him—war-worn, hollow.

Without a word, the soldier who had found him stepped up to the back of one of the trucks and lowered M!Y/n inside. The boy hit the cold metal floor with a soft grunt, a thin military blanket cushioning the impact slightly. The truck bed was half-full already.

Children.

They sat in small clusters or alone, every one of them wrapped in silence like a shroud. Boys and girls, none older than eighteen, most younger. Their faces were ashen, skin stretched tight over bone, eyes ringed in purple and red. Bandages clung to arms, heads, legs—some clean, some bloodied, some barely holding together. No one spoke. No one smiled.

M!Y/n sat up slowly, scanning their faces with a mix of desperation and dread.

None familiar.

Daniel wasn’t there.

No one from his street. No neighbors. No classmates.

Strangers. Every one of them.

And yet they all shared the same look.

That hollow, haunted gaze of the lost.

He sat against the side of the truck, drawing his knees close, trying not to wince at the pain it brought. Trying not to cry again. A girl with wide eyes and blood-caked hair stared at him from across the space, her expression unreadable. A boy with dark skin and a broken arm sat beside her, humming something softly—barely audible over the rumble of approaching engines.

Then the truck roared to life.

No one told them where they were going.

The journey took hours. Or days. Time lost meaning quickly.

M!Y/n drifted in and out of a half-sleep, jostled awake every few minutes by the truck bouncing over debris-strewn roads. The city faded behind them, smoke on the horizon. Then fields—once lush, now trampled. Then barbed wire. Guard towers. A checkpoint.

Then walls.

Concrete. Cold. Towering.

The base was more prison than refuge. Built on the outskirts of the country, perhaps once meant to house soldiers en route to the front—it now held something else. Rows upon rows of tents and barracks stretched across the compound like scars on scorched earth. Floodlights buzzed overhead, painting the world in harsh white. Barbed wire glinted atop fences. Armed guards stood at every gate.

There was no warmth here.

No welcome.

Only steel and structure.

The truck hissed to a stop. The back gate opened, and barking voices filled the air. Orders. Names. Numbers. Files were shoved into hands. Blankets issued. Clothes rationed. Everything cold. Efficient.

They were herded like cattle into the facility. Not a single adult smiled. No one explained what would happen. Some kids cried. Some yelled. One boy tried to run.

He didn’t get far.

M!Y/n was led to a cot inside a barracks. Thin mattress. Wool blanket. The walls smelled of disinfectant and mildew. His uniform was taken. Burned. A plain gray set of fatigues was issued in its place. It was too large for his thin frame. It swallowed him whole.

The days blurred.

Roll call. Physical exams. Interviews. DNA tests. Vaccinations.

Training.

They started small. Basic physical endurance. Drills. Obedience. Cleaning rifles. Then weapons. Then strategy. Then missions. The children were told they were lucky. They had been chosen. That they were needed. That their pain could serve a purpose.

Some believed it.

Some didn’t.

M!Y/n didn’t know what to believe. He went through the motions. He kept his head down. He memorized routines. He hit targets. He didn’t ask questions.

Because questions were punished.

And the screams from the solitary cells echoed late into the night.

Months passed.

Maybe years.

The child who had once clung to the last memory of his mother’s laugh, to the feel of his dog’s fur under his fingers, to the taste of cherry bread from the corner bakery—he faded.

He was replaced.

By a soldier.

Thin but strong. Quiet but deadly. M!Y/n became something else. A weapon, shaped by grief and forged in fire. His eyes no longer widened in fear. They narrowed. They calculated. When he spoke, it was only when necessary. His voice was low, hoarse.

But sometimes—just sometimes—when he closed his eyes at night, under the too-thin blanket in the too-quiet barracks, he remembered.

His brother’s laugh.

Daniel’s stories.

His mother’s voice calling him in for dinner.

And he wept. Silently. Always silently.

Tears that froze before they could fall.

He had become a ghost. Not quite dead. Not truly alive.

And still, somewhere deep inside that shell… a single ember flickered.

Not hope.

But the memory of it.

But M!Y/n—he survived.

He endured the drills, the beatings, the long nights where frost gathered on the inside of the barrack windows. He survived the blistered feet, the empty stomach, the aching arms from holding a rifle too heavy for a boy. He survived the loss, the loneliness, the endless echo of his own breathing in the darkness.

It wasn’t strength that carried him through, not at first. It was instinct. A feral, desperate need to keep going. Something inside him—the last shred of a boy who once laughed freely, who once ran through tall grass chasing dragonflies—refused to die.

He found ways to cope. Small things. Stupid things. He drew patterns in the dirt with a stick during downtime, humming songs he barely remembered. He told stories to the other boys—jokes, half-remembered fairy tales, nonsense. Anything to fill the silence. He shared what little he could: a piece of bread, a canteen sip, warmth from his blanket. Laughed, when he could afford to. Even when hollow, laughter was better than the silence. Silence was a grave.

And he refused to be buried.

One boy stood apart.

Stanley.

M!Y/n noticed him on the first day.

He was tall for his age—lean, broad-shouldered, with an almost adult stillness in the way he moved. He didn’t shuffle like the others, didn’t twitch nervously under the gaze of the guards. He moved like he belonged here. Like he’d always belonged.

His hair was dark, shorn close to the scalp. His jaw tight. His body already marked by the discipline of war. But it was his eyes that M!Y/n remembered most: cold, gray-blue, sharp as glass. Always watching. Never blinking.

He spoke little. When he did, his voice was like gravel scraped across ice—low, quiet, rough. There was no softness in it.

Rumors floated around the barracks. Stanley had come from a military orphanage in the East. That he’d been trained since he could walk. That he’d killed before. That he didn’t feel pain. Or regret. Or anything at all.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t share. He kept his back to the wall and his hands ready.

M!Y/n couldn’t accept that.

He started small.

Sitting beside him during meals.

Pretending it was coincidence.

Tossing light comments during drills: "You always glare like that, or is it just me?"

Ignoring the lack of response. The occasional scowl.

He made a game of it. Like chipping away at a block of ice with a wooden spoon.

Stanley ignored him.

Then glared.

Then finally snapped, his voice low and dangerous: "Leave me alone."

But M!Y/n didn’t.

He was stubborn that way. Maybe it was foolishness. Maybe loneliness. Maybe it was just that he couldn’t bear the idea that anyone could live in this place without even a scrap of warmth.

If he had one thing left, it was his will to make someone else’s life less terrible.

One day, Stanley didn’t snap.

He answered.

A word. Then a sentence.

"You talk too much," he muttered during weapon maintenance.

M!Y/n grinned like he’d won the lottery. "You noticed!"

Stanley rolled his eyes.

Another day, during morning drills, Stanley passed him a full canteen without being asked. M!Y/n accepted it with a half-mocking salute, and saw, for the first time, a smirk twitch at the corner of Stanley’s mouth.

From then on, it was different.

They were opposites.

Fire and ice.

M!Y/n burned. Spoke too fast, too loud. Laughed too easily. He made jokes during the hardest drills, even when he collapsed afterward. He took punches and kept swinging.

Stanley was cold. Measured. Every movement calculated. He fought like a machine, moved like smoke, spoke like silence. But slowly—hesitantly—he began to thaw.

It wasn’t dramatic.

There was no tearful confession, no grand moment of trust.

But Stanley started standing a little closer.

Started watching M!Y/n's back during simulations.

Started making sure he had an extra ration on hard days.

They became something like friends.

They trained together.

Fought side by side in combat simulations.

Ran drills until their legs gave out.

Argued about tactics, called each other names, competed to see who could shoot tighter groupings at the range. They bled together. Bruised together. Failed together.

And survived together.

Other recruits took notice. Whispered. Some were jealous. Some relieved, hoping the friendship would make Stanley less terrifying.

But it didn’t.

If anything, it made him more focused. More dangerous. Because now he had something to protect.

Stanley never said it aloud. Not once. But deep inside, he was grateful. For the loud, relentless, warm-hearted boy who refused to give up on him. Who poked the bear until the bear decided maybe, just maybe, not to bite.

M!Y/n gave him something no drill, no bullet, no strategy ever had:

Connection.

In a place designed to crush the human spirit, they found something to cling to. Something stubborn and strange and vital:

Each other.

And in that frozen, blood-soaked world, it was enough.

Enough to keep them alive.

Sometimes, late at night, when the barracks were quiet and the world outside was nothing but wind and death, M!Y/n would whisper something dumb across the aisle.

A joke. A memory. A story about a dog he once had, or a song his mother used to hum.

Stanley never replied.

But sometimes, in the silence that followed, M!Y/n heard a breath—a small, amused exhale. A smirk, invisible in the dark.

Sometimes, Stanley would shift his cot slightly closer.

By inches.

By habit.

And one night, when M!Y/n’s nightmares clawed him awake, chest heaving, sweat freezing to his skin, Stanley said nothing—but stood, crossed the barracks, and sat beside him.

They didn’t speak.

They didn’t need to.

Some things were louder in silence.

Their bond didn’t fix the world.

It didn’t stop the training.

It didn’t stop the missions, or the killing, or the pain.

But it made survival more than just a word.

It made it mean something.

There would come days when they were deployed into ruins, into cities torn open by old wars and new orders. Days where they would watch children die. Days where they would pull triggers and bury guilt and tell themselves it was for the greater good.

But there would also be days they would spend sitting shoulder to shoulder on a rooftop after patrol, sharing a single chocolate bar someone had stolen from a shipment. Days where Stanley would say something dry and cutting, and M!Y/n would laugh like he couldn’t believe it.

And it would feel like life.

Not the one they lost.

But the one they could still fight for.

The bond between them wasn’t fragile. It was forged. In blood, in bruises, in the bitter cold.

And it would last.

Even in silence.

Even in pain.

Even if the world around them collapsed.

It would last.

For now.

Chapter Text

U.S. Military Training Base, Somewhere in Europe

The sky remained a canopy of obsidian, unyielding in its silence, when a shrill whistle pierced through the dormancy of early morning like a jagged blade. It wasn’t the whistle alone that disturbed the peace—it was what it signaled. It heralded the beginning of another trial in the unrelenting forge where soldiers were made. Frost curled against the windows of the barracks, crystallizing in ornate filigree that mimicked the fragility of lace, soon to be shattered by the riotous eruption of life.

The interior of the barracks was no refuge. It was just as bitter, just as punishing, as the tundra waiting beyond. Breath curled from chapped lips in thin spirals of white, vanishing before they reached the low ceiling. The heaters—if they could be called that—might as well have been decorative. Everything was cold. The walls. The bunks. The hearts.

Then came the voice—loud, coarse, and forged from gravel and fury.

"ON YOUR FEET, MAGGOTS! I WANT YOU OUT OF THOSE COTS IN FIVE SECONDS OR I’LL TURN THIS WHOLE DAMN BARRACKS INTO A GRAVE!"

The command was an explosion. Sheets flew. Feet slammed against the icy floors. There was a chorus of curses and grunts as the men scrambled to obey, their bodies jerking into action with the precision of a drill wound too tight. Boots were thrown on with frantic hands, dog tags clinked like wind chimes in a storm, and the wooden floors trembled under the chaotic stampede.

M!Y/n rose with the rest, no longer needing to think. His body moved on instinct, trained by months of discipline, pain, and repetition. He stood straight in formation, steam rising from his skin as if he were forged from steel rather than flesh. His expression was unreadable, carved from stone. Gone was the boy who had first arrived—wide-eyed, trembling, and unsure. In his place stood someone else. Hardened. Weathered. Cold.

His uniform clung to him like a second skin. The fabric scratched at raw spots where previous injuries hadn’t fully healed. His hands, calloused and cracked from countless hours with rifle and shovel, flexed at his sides. Bruises colored his body beneath the layers, each a lesson in humility. Each a badge of perseverance.

“TWENTY-MILE MARCH,” bellowed the drill sergeant. His face was a roadmap of scars and rage, eyes gleaming like gunmetal. “FULL GEAR. NO WATER BREAKS UNTIL CHECKPOINT THREE. ANYONE FALLS BEHIND, THEY’RE CLEANING THE LATRINES WITH THEIR TOOTHBRUSH.”

Not a single word of protest came. The silence was unanimous. Resigned.

With mechanical efficiency, they donned their gear—packs stuffed with sandbags and supplies, rifles slung tight, belts secured with trembling fingers. The march began like the shifting of tectonic plates, slow and groaning but inevitable.

The trail was a serpent of ice and mud, winding through the woods with malicious intent. Snow lay like a burial shroud over the landscape, hiding roots, holes, and dangers beneath its deceptive calm. Each footfall came with risk. Slipping meant injury. Injury meant weakness. Weakness meant punishment.

M!Y/n trudged forward, every muscle in his body roaring in protest. His pack seemed to double in weight with each step, and his rifle banged against his spine like a reminder of what awaited at the end of all this: more drills, more yelling, more ways to be broken down and built back up.

The air was alive with panting breaths and crunching snow. Every man’s face was a mask—grim, pale, and drawn. Frost formed along eyelashes, threading silver into eyebrows and freezing the edges of balaclavas. The cold didn’t ask permission. It simply took.

Then came a presence beside him. A silent figure falling into rhythm with his stride. Stanley.

Tall, composed, and eerily silent, Stanley was a mystery wrapped in discipline. His breath came in calm puffs, his eyes fixed forward. Not even the frigid winds could shake him.

“Don’t slow down now,” Stanley said, voice low like the rumble of distant thunder.

M!Y/n managed a weak chuckle, dry and raw. “Didn’t know you cared.”

“I don’t.”

For a beat, they walked in silence. Then Stanley added, without shifting his gaze: “You just make an easy target when you trip. Bad for morale.”

A faint smirk tugged at M!Y/n’s lips. “Glad to know you’re so worried about morale.”

“You’re loud,” Stanley replied without inflection. “If I have to hear you bitch for another hour, I’ll put a bullet through my own foot just to get carried back.”

M!Y/n slipped on a patch of ice, catching himself with a grunt. “Aw, that means you’d miss me.”

A glare from Stanley, cold and sharp as the morning air. Maybe it was annoyance. Maybe amusement. Hard to tell. He didn’t say a word. He just moved faster, pushing ahead with the same machine-like pace.

But M!Y/n noticed it—how Stanley didn’t leave him too far behind.

Hours bled together. Time lost all meaning when your entire world narrowed down to snow, breath, pain, and survival. The checkpoint felt like a myth whispered in exhaustion.

By mile ten, some men faltered. Their legs trembled like saplings in a storm. One collapsed into the snow with a grunt, groaning. The sergeant didn’t even flinch.

“GET HIM UP!”

Two others lifted the fallen man, dragging him until he could walk. Pride died quickly here. What remained was the need to finish.

M!Y/n’s shoulders burned like fire. His boots were soaked through, and every step sent shocks of pain up his legs. But still he moved. Gritted teeth. Tunnel vision. Stanley remained a steady silhouette ahead of him—like a ghost that wouldn’t die.

At mile thirteen, the path turned upward. A hill, steep and jagged with hidden ice beneath the snow.

One man slipped. Then another.

“MOVE!” shouted the sergeant. “OR I’LL BURY YOU RIGHT HERE!”

M!Y/n stumbled but caught himself. Behind him, someone cried out—a twisted ankle. The sound echoed like a gunshot. He glanced back.

And then Stanley was beside him again.

“Don’t stop,” Stanley muttered.

“He needs help—”

“He’s got help. You don’t.”

It was brutal. Honest. Necessary. M!Y/n turned away, guilt a hot coal in his chest. But he moved.

Checkpoint Three loomed in the distance. A cluster of tents and men, faint smoke curling from hastily built fires. It was salvation. A mirage made real.

M!Y/n’s legs barely functioned now. His knees buckled with every step, and nausea clawed at his gut. Still, he pushed on. One foot. Then the other. His breath was shallow. Vision blurred.

Stanley reappeared at his side. Quiet. Wordless.

He didn’t say anything, just reached out and steadied M!Y/n’s arm for half a second.

That was all it took.

Together, they crossed into the checkpoint.

And for the first time in hours, M!Y/n allowed himself to fall.

Into the snow.

Into silence.

And Stanley stood beside him.

Silent as always.

But not gone.

Not leaving.

The night had been merciless.

Cold crept through fabric and flesh alike, numbing fingertips and stiffening joints until even the act of walking felt like an affront to human design. The boots they wore—standard issue, ill-fitting, unforgiving—had rubbed raw the skin beneath until blisters wept into socks, every step a quiet agony. Breath came in huffs that turned instantly to fog, only to freeze on their lashes and brows. The men didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. The silence of shared suffering said more than words ever could.

They marched through frostbitten terrain, their shadows long and wavering in the dim predawn light. The air was sharp with the scent of churned earth and sweat, mingled with something older—older than the war, older than even the bones of the land beneath them. It was the smell of desperation. Of men being ground down to the core, remade by pain and survival.

When they were finally ordered to halt, it wasn’t relief that met them but dread.

The ring.

A crude circle had been carved into the ground, half-frozen earth ringed by soldiers who stood, arms crossed or hanging limp, eyes hollow from too little sleep and too many dead. Blood stained the center from yesterday’s training—a splatter here, a dark smear there, frozen now, part of the landscape. This was no gymnasium. No clean-swept floor with safety mats and fair rules. This was a crucible.

Combat drills.

The word itself felt like a mockery. There was no drilling here—only the slow, brutal lesson of how to destroy the man in front of you before he did the same. It wasn’t about technique. It was about intent. Hunger. A will to dominate so fierce it could burn through ice.

Captain Harris stepped into the circle’s edge. His presence silenced what little murmuring had remained.

He was a living monument to war, broad-shouldered and gnarled, with a jawline like quarried stone and skin that had long forgotten how to smile. His uniform was old, threadbare in places, but clean. His boots, polished. One eye had long since clouded over—a pale, milky gray that stared through men more than at them. The other was sharp as a hawk’s.

“You think this is about survival?” His voice, when it came, was gravel and iron. “You think that if you’re fast enough, clever enough, you’ll get to go home?”

He let the question hang there. It wasn’t rhetorical. It was a dare.

No one answered.

“This isn’t survival,” he growled. “This is domination. You kill before you’re killed. You hesitate, and you’re dead. UNDERSTOOD?”

“YES, SIR!” the line roared back in unison, the shout sharp enough to lift frost from the ground.

“Good.”

He turned, gloved hand rising like the judgment of some battlefield god. “Snyder. L/N. In the ring.”

A ripple passed through the soldiers like a current through wire. Heads turned. Eyes flicked to the chosen.

M!Y/n stepped forward.

His body ached in places he hadn’t known could ache. His ribs, still tender from a bad fall the week before, throbbed with each breath. But he moved, rolling his shoulders slowly, testing the limits of what he could still trust. His hands curled into fists, not in confidence, but in necessity.

Stanley Snyder moved into the circle with a calm that bordered on unnatural. Where M!Y/n wore his grit openly, Stanley hid his behind a quiet, precise demeanor. His steps were measured. His expression unreadable. His hands hung loose at his sides—not limp, but ready. Always ready.

M!Y/n smirked. “Don’t go easy.”

Stanley’s mouth didn’t even twitch. “I wasn’t planning to.”

The whistle blew.

Stanley was fast.

A blur of motion, one fist striking out like a thunderclap. Pain exploded across M!Y/n’s jaw and his vision sparkled with stars. His head snapped sideways and instinct alone saved him from the follow-up jab aimed at his temple. He ducked low, muscles screaming in protest, and charged forward.

They collided like storm fronts.

M!Y/n slammed into Stanley’s ribs, forcing the breath from his lungs. But Stanley didn’t crumble—he absorbed the impact and retaliated, grappling with clean, disciplined movements. Elbows met ribs. Knees drove into thighs. Dirt kicked up around them in a storm of chaos.

It was a study in contrasts.

Stanley moved like a machine—every action calculated, every motion efficient. M!Y/n fought like a beast, wild and fierce, each swing loaded with a lifetime of stubbornness. One of Stanley’s punches landed against his side and M!Y/n felt something crunch—but he didn’t stop. He wouldn’t.

He couldn’t.

He swung back with a roar, knuckles splitting on Stanley’s cheek. Blood joined the mix now—wet warmth smearing across skin and dirt. They circled each other again, breath heaving, sweat streaking through grime.

And then Stanley swept the legs.

M!Y/n crashed to the earth, the wind punched from his lungs in a ragged gasp. The world narrowed to sky and pain.

Stanley stood above him, expression hard. “You done?”

M!Y/n coughed, blood pooling at the corner of his mouth.

But he smiled.

Not a pretty smile—more teeth than anything else. A cracked, bloodied, stubborn thing.

“Hell no.”

With a growl, he surged upward and tackled Stanley with everything he had left. They hit the dirt again, a tangle of limbs and fury. Fists rained down. Nails scraped. Grunts and curses mingled with the frenzied cheering of the ring.

It was no longer a drill.

It was war.

The sharp shriek of the whistle cut through the haze.

“Enough!”

Captain Harris stood at the edge of the ring, arms crossed, his single good eye watching them like a judge at a gladiator match. He looked—not pleased, exactly—but impressed. Grimly, deeply impressed.

Stanley rolled off M!Y/n, both of them gasping, chests heaving. Blood and sweat coated their faces. Neither had truly won, but neither had lost.

Harris nodded once. “Snyder. Y/N. Med tent. You’ve earned your meals today.”

It was praise.

Almost.

But for two men who had given everything they had to a ring of blood and frost, it was enough.

They staggered upright, supporting each other by instinct more than thought. No words passed between them. None were needed.

They had fought.

They had bled.

And in that savage moment, they had been seen.

The barracks that night were hushed, cloaked in a fragile calm that felt borrowed, as if it might be revoked at any second. The single bulb hanging from the low ceiling buzzed with an inconsistent hum, flickering now and then like it was fighting to keep its grip on the world. A pale glow spilled over the metal bunks, the chipped lockers, and the scattered gear strewn with the kind of absent-minded chaos only exhaustion can create. Outside, snow whispered against the frost-rimmed windows, the sound almost too delicate for a place so brutal.

M!Y/n sat curled on his bunk, arms wrapped tightly around his knees, posture defensive in ways he probably wasn’t even aware of. The barracks were cold, but the kind of cold that came from the inside out—not temperature, but weariness. The kind of cold born from pain and knowing tomorrow promised more. A thick bandage was wound tight around his ribs, the edges stained faintly pink where the wound beneath it still wept. His lip had split during the fight, and dried blood curled along the edge like rust. Pain pulsed through every limb like a second heartbeat, each throb a reminder that he was still alive, still here—and still angry.

Across the aisle, Stanley Snyder sat with his back to the wall, his legs spread comfortably as he methodically cleaned his rifle. His hands, wrapped in calloused grace, moved with practiced ease—fluid, deliberate, like he could do it blindfolded if need be. The soft metallic clicks and swipes of oiled cloth on steel filled the silence between them. His expression was unreadable, features half-carved in shadow. There was a stillness to him, not peace exactly, but a centered kind of discipline that was almost eerie.

"You were holding back," M!Y/n said at last, voice rough.

Stanley didn’t look up. "You would've lost faster if I hadn't."

"Appreciate it," M!Y/n muttered, sarcasm lacing his words like barbed wire.

A silence followed. Not comfortable, but not hostile either. Just heavy. Like everything else in that place.

"You ever wonder why we’re still here?" M!Y/n asked, eyes fixed on the floor, where a crack split the concrete like a scar.

Stanley's hands stilled. The rifle rested in his lap. He didn’t answer right away.

"I used to."

M!Y/n looked up. "Why’d you stop?"

Stanley’s eyes didn’t move. "Because wondering gets people killed."

M!Y/n let those words settle, the weight of them sinking deep into the marrow. Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the windowpanes like bones in a cage.

"Maybe," he said quietly. "But so does blind loyalty."

The silence that followed was different this time. Not tense. Just real. Honest.

Stanley’s voice dropped to a whisper. "I don’t trust them either."

M!Y/n blinked, heart thudding. "You mean the brass?"

"All of them. The whole chain. They didn’t save us. They used us. From the beginning."

M!Y/n stared. There was no edge to Stanley’s voice—no bite. Just truth. In that moment, Stanley didn’t look like the composed soldier everyone else saw. He looked like a kid with old eyes and scars where his dreams should’ve been.

"Then why follow them?" M!Y/n asked, voice cracked open by disbelief and something softer. Hope, maybe.

Stanley looked at him then, the full weight of his gaze landing like a blow. "Because if I survive, I get to decide what happens next. And maybe... maybe I can stop it from happening to someone else."

M!Y/n swallowed hard. Something caught in his throat and refused to budge. He turned his face slightly, ashamed of how that answer made him feel—small and brave all at once.

"Then let’s survive it. Both of us."

Stanley smirked, just a flicker. A crack in the mask.

"Don’t slow me down."

"You wish," M!Y/n shot back, smiling through a wince.

Sleep didn’t come easy.

It never did anymore. Not since the first drop into the field, not since the first explosion that left dirt in their lungs and blood on their teeth. But that night, it was different. The silence wasn’t just from fatigue. It was the silence of realization—two souls on the edge, finding something close to understanding.

M!Y/n lay back against the thin mattress, staring up at the rusted underside of the bunk above him. His ribs hurt with every breath, but beneath that pain, there was a strange flicker of resolve. Maybe it was Stanley. Maybe it was the shared look they’d exchanged after the fight, that half-second of communion where it felt like they were more than just weapons in uniform.

Across the aisle, Stanley had set the rifle down. He sat now with his head bowed slightly, arms resting on his knees. His eyes weren’t closed, but they looked far away—like he was staring into a memory he couldn’t shake off.

"What was it for you?" M!Y/n asked softly.

Stanley didn't pretend not to know what he meant.

"My brother," he said after a moment. "He was drafted. Never made it back. I signed up because I wanted to understand why."

M!Y/n nodded slowly, the pieces sliding into place. "And did you?"

"No. But I stopped blaming him. And I started blaming them."

They sat in the stillness of that truth, the barracks stretching wide and empty around them.

Over the weeks that followed, something shifted.

The barracks remained the same—hard, cold, indifferent—but the distance between two bunks narrowed. M!Y/n and Stanley weren’t exactly friends. That word didn’t survive long in places like this. But they were something else. Something older. A pact written in blood and silence.

They began sparring again, but it was different now. Less about dominance, more about pushing each other to survive. M!Y/n learned to watch Stanley’s eyes, the way they narrowed half a second before a strike. Stanley started trusting M!Y/n to cover his blind side. There was a rhythm between them, rough but steady. Reliable.

In the rare moments of quiet, they talked. Not about the war—never the war. But about things long buried: music, old cities, people they’d left behind. Stanley told him about the ocean, about the way the air smelled different on the coast. M!Y/n spoke of his grandmother’s hands, always kneading bread, and the sound of summer storms.

These memories didn’t make the cold go away. But they made it feel less final.

The night before deployment, the barracks were electric with tension.

Everyone felt it. Some men laughed too loud. Others sat in silence, eyes hollow. Cards were dealt and drinks were passed around in chipped mugs. But M!Y/n and Stanley sat side by side on the steps outside, breath frosting in the air.

"You ready for this?" M!Y/n asked.

Stanley didn’t answer for a long time.

"No," he said. "But I’m going anyway. That’s the only kind of bravery left to us."

M!Y/n exhaled, watching the smoke rise. "I’ll watch your back."

Stanley looked at him, and for once, let everything show.

"You better."

And as the snow fell around them in whispering sheets, they sat in a silence that no longer felt fragile.

Chapter Text

France, 1944 — Dusk

Rain fell in a cold, steady drizzle, weaving rivulets down the skeletal trees and washing dust from leaves—but not the blood from the soil. The storm had turned the world to shadow. Every drop seemed to echo in the woods like distant footsteps, ghostly reminders of all who had passed through and never left.

The air was damp and thick, clinging to every breath and weighing heavy on the lungs. It carried the scent of wet moss, decaying bark, and something far more grim: old blood. The forest outside Saint-Vaux, once a tranquil village nestled between sleepy hills and thick woods, now seemed carved out of hell. War had touched this place, clawed it apart, and left it rotting.

Private M!Y/n crouched beneath a tangle of roots and dripping ferns, the bark of a fallen tree pressing into his spine. His fingers were locked around the slick metal of his rifle, and each breath escaped in visible clouds. His heart was hammering, hard and unrelenting. The trembling in his hands was more than the cold.

This was fear. Not the kind you admitted out loud—but the kind that rotted your stomach and made your thoughts scatter like leaves in wind.

A low whisper cut through the silence.

"Quiet."

M!Y/n turned his head. Stanley. The tall figure crouched beside him was all harsh lines and mud-streaked shadows. His eyes were like slivers of ice in the gloom, constantly scanning, always calculating.

"I'm not making a sound," M!Y/n whispered back.

Stanley's gaze didn’t shift. "You're breathing loud."

M!Y/n huffed through his nose, annoyed, but said nothing more. It was always like this with Stanley. They pushed each other’s limits, but there was a rhythm in it. Somewhere beneath the bite of sarcasm and sharp glares, there was trust—the kind forged only through the fire of survival.

He looked along the line of soldiers hunkered in the brush. Eight in total, himself included. A lean recon team, cobbled together from veterans and greenhorns. Their uniforms were soaked through, smeared in grime, mottled with soot and smoke. Boots sunken into mud, hands frozen around their weapons.

Nobody spoke. Their eyes were locked on the village ahead.

Saint-Vaux had once been a place of laughter. Of bakeries and morning bells. Of quiet streets and church hymns. Now, it was a mausoleum. All that remained were splinters, smoldering wood, and silence.

Their orders were clear: infiltrate the ruins, confirm intel on an ammunition cache hidden beneath the church, and extract without contact. No firefights. No dramatics. A ghost operation.

But M!Y/n had already seen too many ops like this fall apart in the time it took to pull a trigger.

Sergeant Holloway crouched at the front of their staggered line, one eye squinting through the haze. His helmet cast long shadows across a face lined like cracked stone. He looked more like a prophet than a soldier—one who had read the end of the story and kept walking anyway.

“Five minutes to move,” he muttered, voice husky and slow.

The words passed down the line like a sacred rite. Each man checked his gear in silence. The clicks of bolts, the soft thuds of grenades secured to belts. Ritual.

M!Y/n met Callahan’s eyes. The Bostonian’s face was flecked with dirt and ash, his usual cocky grin replaced by something tighter, quieter. He gave a short nod, more a brace than a reassurance.

Next to him, Tomaszewski was still as a statue, adjusting the scope of his rifle with a marksman’s touch. He never said much, but when he did, it mattered.

Stanley, as always, hadn’t moved. He stared into the forest like he saw through time.

“M!Y/n,” Holloway called, barely above the rain.

He stiffened. “Sir.”

“West flank. You see anything that twitches, you signal. Don’t think. Don’t hope. You act.”

“Understood.”

He shifted toward the left edge of formation, adjusting his rifle, willing his pulse to slow. Two fingers raised from Holloway’s hand. It was time.

They moved.

The forest closed around them like a beast. Branches tore at their sleeves. Roots snagged their boots. Rain masked their steps, but the weight of fear made every movement feel deafening.

Saint-Vaux emerged from the mist like a corpse. Collapsed houses. Burnt-out cars. Street signs hanging crookedly. A child’s bicycle, rusted and overturned. There was no life here, only the imprint of it—the memory of what had been.

A bell tower loomed over the center of the village. The church. Their target.

Holloway signaled halt. They crouched behind a broken stone wall, rain trickling down the cracks like tears.

“Two guards,” Tomaszewski whispered. “Smoking. Another three near the tower.”

“Panzer tracks too,” Callahan added. “Fresh. Within the day.”

Thunder grumbled above. Whether nature or artillery, M!Y/n couldn’t say.

They began the infiltration. Back alleys. Rubble. Cracked windows like empty sockets. M!Y/n peeled off left, eyes sweeping for motion. Every doorframe became a potential threat.

He paused by a house burned from the inside out. In the mud near the threshold lay a doll. Its cloth face was blackened and half-melted.

He stared.

“Eyes up,” Stanley hissed behind him.

M!Y/n flinched. “There was a kid here.”

“There’s no one here now. Ghosts don’t shoot. Soldiers do.”

He turned away, throat tight.

The church loomed.

Its steeple cast jagged shadows. Stained glass windows were shattered, the saints within reduced to shards.

They regrouped at a crumbled bakery. Holloway pointed to the church. “Stash is beneath the altar. We confirm. We don’t engage. Photos. Fast.”

They split: M!Y/n and Stanley left, Callahan and Tomaszewski right, Holloway with three others center.

The church’s interior was a wound.

Pews overturned. Dust layered over shattered glass. A crucifix hung broken, tilted toward the ground as if shamed.

They found the trapdoor beneath the pulpit. Stanley opened it. M!Y/n descended.

Crates. Dozens.

Black stencil marks: 7.92mm. MG42. HE.

M!Y/n’s throat dried. “Jesus. This isn’t a cache. It’s a stockpile.”

Callahan’s voice shook. “Could arm a regiment.”

Holloway’s voice was calm. “Pictures. Now.”

Flashbulbs flickered.

Then—

CRACK.

A gunshot. Echoing. Followed by screams.

“CONTACT! MOVE!”

Glass shattered. Bullets tore through the rafters. Callahan fell with a scream, thigh soaked in blood. M!Y/n dragged him behind a pew.

“AMBUSH!” Holloway shouted. “FALL BACK!”

Smoke bombs hissed. The church vanished in fog. Gunfire turned the air into thunder.

Tomaszewski fired from the stairwell, calm and cold. Stanley moved like a machine—precision incarnate.

“Can you run?” M!Y/n asked Callahan.

“Don’t got a choice,” he gasped.

M!Y/n slung his arm over his shoulder. They moved. A whistle. Grenade.

BOOM.

Heat. Wood splinters. Ringing ears.

Stanley yanked them to their feet.

“MOVE OR DIE!”

They ran. Down alleys, past corpses, smoke at their heels. Holloway barked orders. Tomaszewski covered them. Bullets chased.

M!Y/n turned, fired blind, and didn’t stop running.

They hit the trees like dying birds, stumbling and crashing into the underbrush, gasping for air, clinging to what remained of themselves. The world was a blur of rain and blood and smoke. Limbs gave out beneath them. Chests rose and fell in ragged syncopation. Hearts pounded in throats, not just from the sprint but from the knowledge of what—who—had been lost.

Four of them.

Just four.

The rest were gone.

Carter. Morales. Davis. Nguyen.

Each name landed like a hammer against glass, shattering the false illusion of survival. They weren’t coming back. There was no confusion, no hopeful waiting. Each man had fallen hard, and each had been left behind.

M!Y/n collapsed onto his knees, the forest floor cold and damp beneath him. Mud clung to his uniform, to his skin. His breath came in bursts, like he couldn’t catch it no matter how hard he tried. There was blood on his sleeves. It wasn’t his.

It was Callahan’s.

The Bostonian sat hunched nearby, back against a tree, face ghost-white under the canopy’s dim light. His thigh was wrapped in a tourniquet, tight and unforgiving, and he bit back groans with a trembling jaw. Still alive. Barely.

Tomaszewski was kneeling beside him, fingers working methodically through gauze, bandages, morphine. His expression never changed, not even when Callahan cursed and bucked against the pain. The sniper's face was a mask carved from stone.

Stanley sat a few paces away, rifle across his lap, boots caked in mud and ash. He wasn’t breathing heavy. He never did. His pale eyes roved the darkness between trees, alert, mechanical, deadly.

The silence wasn’t silent. Rain drummed on leaves, somewhere an owl called, the wind hissed through the canopy like breath through clenched teeth. But to them, it felt like the whole world had fallen quiet in mourning.

Holloway stood with his back against a tree, battered helmet pushed back, face shadowed. He'd taken a hit—shoulder, maybe—but didn’t show it. His voice was gravel.

“Extraction in ten. We hold here. They come, we kill them.”

There was no argument. There never was.

M!Y/n leaned against a birch, its white bark flaking away under his touch. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. No matter how tightly he clenched his fists, no matter how hard he tried to steady his breathing, it was there: the tremble. The tremble of fear, of adrenaline, of something deeper.

The blood on his sleeve seeped into the fibers. Bright, wet, red. Callahan’s.

He turned his head, blinked through the blur in his eyes. Not rain.

Callahan caught his gaze, teeth gritted, sweat running down his temple. “Still breathing, M.”

“Yeah,” M!Y/n croaked, voice barely his own. “Barely.”

Callahan tried to laugh, but it turned into a cough. Tomaszewski pressed him back down, murmuring something in Polish that none of them understood.

“He said shut up and don’t die,” Stanley translated, dry as dust.

M!Y/n gave a weak chuckle, then winced. His ribs ached. His ears still rang.

“Did we get it?” he asked. His voice felt too loud, too sharp against the hush.

Stanley didn’t look at him at first. Just kept watching the trees.

Then he nodded. Once. “Yeah. We got it.”

There was a long silence. M!Y/n swallowed.

“And the cost?”

That did make Stanley look at him.

His face didn’t change. But something in his eyes shifted, cracked just slightly at the edges.

He looked away.

And said, so quiet that M!Y/n almost missed it:

“Don’t start counting now. You won’t make it.”

The minutes stretched. Every snap of a twig, every rustle of a branch turned heads and raised rifles. The forest was no longer a refuge. It was a trap, a coffin waiting to close.

Holloway moved among them like a ghost, checking wounds, weapons, eyes. He stopped by M!Y/n.

“You good?”

M!Y/n nodded, too quickly.

Holloway watched him. “You’re not. But you will be.”

He moved on. Stanley rose, rifle shouldered. “Perimeter sweep.”

“Alone?” M!Y/n asked.

Stanley arched a brow. “You volunteering?”

A breath. A pause. Then a nod.

They moved together through the trees, step for step. Rain soaked through their uniforms. Every root felt like a wire, every shadow a muzzle flash waiting to bloom.

But the forest held its silence. For now.

When they returned, Tomaszewski had finished binding Callahan, who had finally passed out, face slack and pale. The sniper stood and gave them a short nod. No words. There rarely were.

Holloway checked his watch. “Three minutes.”

Three minutes until extraction.

Three minutes until salvation.

Three minutes for the ghosts to find them.

M!Y/n sat beside Callahan, watching the shallow rise and fall of his chest. He reached out, adjusted the jacket to keep him warm. A small gesture. Human.

Stanley crouched nearby again, cleaning his rifle.

M!Y/n finally asked, “Why do you never flinch?”

Stanley didn’t answer at first. Just kept wiping the barrel.

Then, without looking up:

“Because if I flinch, someone dies.”

Engines. Low. Distant.

Hope.

The sound of the extraction bird cutting through the mist, thudding closer, louder.

They moved fast, lifting Callahan between them, Tomaszewski and M!Y/n bearing his weight. Holloway and Stanley moved ahead, sweeping the clearing.

The helicopter touched down with a roar of wind and rain.

They made it.

They were alive.

Just four.

But alive.

Chapter Text

Allied Base – French Countryside, 1944

Four Days After Operation Black Dagger

The tent flap creaked.

In the dead stillness of the barracks, it might as well have been a rifle crack. Sharp. Sudden. Shattering.

M!Y/n flinched like he’d been struck, jerking upright with a startled breath. The dull ache in his spine howled in protest after hours of unmoving silence, but it barely registered. His eyes darted to the tent entrance, muscles coiled beneath his soaked uniform, fingers twitching instinctively toward a weapon that wasn’t needed—not this time.

Lieutenant Holloway stood framed in the doorway like a monument carved from thunder and command. The storm behind him blurred his silhouette, rain cascading down his greatcoat in dark rivers, pooling at the tips of his boots. The heavy collar was turned up against the cold, but it didn’t do much. His cap brim drooped with moisture, a single droplet clinging to the edge before falling to the earth with quiet finality. Despite the downpour, a cigarette burned low between his gloved fingers—its ember a single, stubborn glow against the gray.

He didn't speak right away.

Just stood there. Taking them in. The cots, the silence. The shadows of men who once stood shoulder to shoulder now hunched and unraveling in corners.

When Holloway finally spoke, his voice was stone—weathered and deliberate.

“Memorial service is at 07:00.”

The words felt like cold iron, dropped into the middle of the room. No warmth. No preamble. No attempt to soften the impact.

No one replied.

The rain hissed louder in the quiet that followed, whispering through the seams in the canvas, tracing thin lines down the walls like veins in skin too long left in the cold.

“For Carter,” Holloway continued, his gaze sweeping across the cots, then settling squarely on M!Y/n. “Morales. Davis. Nguyen.”

He didn’t blink. Didn’t falter. Just fixed M!Y/n with that granite stare, like he could see straight through him, right into the raw, trembling mess that hadn’t stopped unraveling since Saint-Vaux burned to ash.

“You’re expected to attend.”

The unspoken addendum—don’t make me come back here—hung in the air, thick and unmistakable.

And then, without waiting, without giving anyone time to respond, he turned.

The flap snapped shut behind him with a finality that rang louder than a gunshot. The sharp slap of canvas struck like a gavel.

The silence left in his wake was suffocating.

For a long moment, no one moved.

M!Y/n sat frozen, his limbs tense, his lungs half-full, like he’d forgotten how to exhale. The words echoed inside him—memorial, expected, gone—scraping against the inside of his skull like nails on concrete.

He dropped his gaze to the floor. But all he saw was fire.

Not in front of him. Not really. But behind his eyes. Always behind his eyes.

The church. The altar. The crucifix swallowed in flame.

Crumbling stone. Screams buried beneath the roar of collapse. Stained glass bursting into a thousand shards—color and light devoured by black smoke. Morales reaching out with blood smeared down the side of his face, his hand trembling under the weight of the beam pinning him to the rubble.

And M!Y/n had looked right at him.

Had locked eyes for a single, devastating second.

And then he turned.

“I should’ve dragged him out,” M!Y/n muttered, the words rasping from his throat like they’d been torn from a rusted pipe. His voice cracked on the edges, barely more than gravel soaked in grief. “Morales. I should’ve...”

The sentence splintered. Broke. Shattered on his tongue and died there, unfinished.

Callahan shifted, the motion stiff and deliberate. He leaned heavier on the wall behind him, the bandage on his leg stark against the dirt-stained fabric of his uniform. His jaw clenched before he spoke, the words tight, worn at the edges.

“You would’ve died too,” he said softly.

M!Y/n didn’t look at him.

“Maybe I should’ve.”

It came out too fast. Too easy. Like it had been there the whole time, waiting. Ready.

Tomaszewski didn’t lift his head, didn’t even stop cleaning the bolt of his rifle. But his voice cut through the quiet with the sharpness of tempered steel.

“Don’t say that shit.”

Each word was deliberate. Cold. Final.

“Not now. Not ever.”

The cot beneath M!Y/n groaned as he stood abruptly, the sound jagged and jarring. A nearby stool toppled, clattering to the floor with a crash that seemed to echo off every taut canvas wall. His breath came in sharp, angry bursts, fogging the air in front of him.

“Why not?!” he snapped, voice ragged with something that had no name—grief, rage, guilt, all of it fused into a single, venomous exhale. “We left them! We ran! We’re supposed to have each other’s backs, we promised! And we left them—like they didn’t matter!”

Callahan’s hands tightened around his crutch. His knuckles went bloodless. He stared at M!Y/n like he was looking at a stranger, someone who had once worn the same uniform, shared the same foxholes, but now stood apart—fractured beyond recognition.

“They did matter,” he said. Quiet at first. Then, louder. Sharper. “You think I don’t see Morales every time I shut my eyes? You think I don’t hear Carter choking on his own blood? You think I don’t wake up screaming some nights—just so I can remember I’m still breathing?!”

His voice cracked on the last word, and he turned his face away, as though ashamed of letting it.

Tomaszewski finally looked up. His gaze was cool, steady. Unforgiving.

“You think you’re the only one carrying ghosts?” he asked.

The words were a hammer—blunt, heavy, meant to crush.

M!Y/n stood frozen. Hands curled into fists at his sides. He opened his mouth to argue. To fight. But no words came.

Just breath.

Just the weight.

His shoulders sagged.

And slowly, his hands started to shake.

But this time, it wasn’t rage that made them tremble. It was the grief again. The guilt. The part of him still trapped under that burning roof, watching Morales die.

The cot creaked behind him, but he didn’t move to sit.

He couldn’t.

Not yet.

Callahan’s voice returned, quieter now. Raw.

“They trained us how to survive,” he murmured, staring down at the floor like it might give him answers. “But they never taught us how to live after.”

Outside, the rain kept falling.

And inside, four men tried to remember how to be alive.

That night, the rain had lost its rage.

It no longer lashed at the tents like bullets, no longer roared against the metal like artillery fire. Instead, it whispered. Thin, reluctant strands of water wove through the cracks in the tarps, soft and sorrowful, like the sky had finally tired of screaming and could only manage a sob. The kind of rain that wasn’t meant to cleanse but to mourn—too gentle, too late, too quiet to undo anything that had already been done.

M!Y/n moved through it like a shadow.

His boots made no sound in the mud, only a faint squelch with each step as he wound his way through the camp’s labyrinth of darkness and makeshift structure. The pathways were familiar, etched into muscle memory now, carved into the hollows of his brain after months of marching through hell. He didn’t need light. He didn’t need guidance. He just needed to move. To keep his legs moving before his thoughts caught up.

He passed the medical tents first. Dim lights flickered inside, throwing ghostly silhouettes onto the canvas walls—figures that writhed and twisted in uneasy sleep. Somewhere, someone moaned. Somewhere else, someone whispered for a mother who would never come. The stink of iodine and blood clung to the air, sharper now in the wet, like the rain stirred it back to life.

The generator was next. It droned low and steady, the heartbeat of the camp. A dying one. It rattled like an old man’s breath, stubborn and tired, coughing through its circuits. M!Y/n passed it in silence, the hum vibrating in his bones. Further still, the row of abandoned trucks. Their tires sagged into the mud like they’d finally given up trying to hold the weight of the world. Windshields were streaked with weeks of grime and rain, paint faded, metal rusting. Forgotten things.

He knew where to go.

He always did.

Behind the motor pool, past the last working floodlight and around the bend where the ground sloped down just enough to pool with stagnant rainwater, he found the place.

A decommissioned supply truck, gutted, useless. And in the back of it—perched like a sentinel, unmoving, always there—was Stanley.

The faint orange glow of a distant lamp lit the space in slashes and shadows. It caught on the edge of Stanley’s profile, outlining the sharpness of his jaw, the curve of his cheekbone, the dark hollows beneath his eyes. The rest of him was swallowed by gloom. He sat on a crate like it belonged to him, arms folded across his knees, boots planted with purpose on the metal bed of the truck. The rain slicked the surface of everything, turned it silver and soft, but Stanley didn’t seem to care. Didn’t even seem to notice.

His eyes were on the sky. But there were no stars.

Just thick banks of storm cloud hanging low, a ceiling of darkness pressing down on them. Still, Stanley looked. Like he expected something to look back. A shape. A sign. Something holy or damned, he wouldn’t have cared which.

M!Y/n climbed up beside him. The crate groaned under his weight. Neither of them acknowledged it.

For a long moment, there was only silence between them.

Not an awkward silence. Not tense or strained. It was the silence of survivors. The silence between men who had already said everything that mattered with their actions and carried the rest like shrapnel in their guts.

The rain pattered on the metal roof above like a lullaby for the damned.

M!Y/n spoke first, his voice barely above a whisper.

“I keep seeing Morales.”

Stanley didn’t flinch. Didn’t turn. Just listened.

“He’s crawling. Toward me. Blood everywhere. Calling out. And I… I just stand there. Watching. Doing nothing. Like I’m frozen. Like I’m already dead.”

His voice broke on the last word. He clenched his jaw to steady it. To hold himself in place.

Stanley’s response came low and slow. Like gravel shifting underfoot.

“I don’t dream anymore.”

M!Y/n turned, his gaze catching the half of Stanley’s face not swallowed by shadow. There was nothing in his expression—no comfort, no judgment. Just exhaustion. As if the weight of every man they’d lost hung behind his eyes.

“How?” M!Y/n asked, not out of envy, but disbelief. Because how could anyone turn that off?

Stanley didn’t look away from the dark.

“Stopped trying.”

There was nothing dramatic in the way he said it. No edge. Just quiet finality. Like it was a choice he’d made long ago and buried deep enough that no one could dig it up anymore.

M!Y/n sat with that. Let it settle in his bones. The wind outside hissed through the trees beyond the camp, but it didn’t reach them here. The two of them were cocooned in shadow and steel, two ghosts in a world still burning.

He swallowed hard.

“Do you feel anything?” he asked, and immediately regretted how naked the words sounded.

Stanley turned his head slowly. Their eyes met in the dim. And what M!Y/n saw there wasn’t numbness. It wasn’t anger.

It was grief. Ancient and vast. The kind of grief that hollowed you out, that took root and grew like rot.

“Too much,” Stanley said. “That’s the problem.”

The words hit M!Y/n like a punch to the chest. Not because they were cruel—but because they were true. And he knew it. He felt it in every breath he took.

Stanley leaned forward again, elbows pressing harder into his thighs. His hands were clenched now, white-knuckled, shaking so slightly it was almost imperceptible. But M!Y/n saw it. Saw the cracks in the armor.

He took a breath.

“I thought you didn’t care,” he said, softer than before.

A dry sound escaped Stanley. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a sigh.

“I pretend I don’t,” he said. “Because the moment I let myself care—really care—I won’t be able to pull the trigger next time. And the next time might be the one that keeps someone else alive.”

M!Y/n looked down at his hands. Mud-streaked, calloused. The same hands that had held Morales back. The same hands that had hesitated.

“The others,” he murmured, “I think they hate me.”

Stanley shook his head, once.

“They don’t. They’re just trying to survive. Like you.”

“I could’ve done something. I should’ve—”

“No.”

The word cracked through the space like a shot.

Stanley’s voice rose for the first time—sharp, hard-edged, cut clean of doubt.

“You did what you could. You lived. That’s all any of us can do.”

M!Y/n blinked rapidly. The sting behind his eyes threatened to spill over, but he didn’t let it. Couldn’t. Not here. Not yet.

He looked at Stanley again.

In the half-light, he didn’t look like the indestructible soldier the others saw. Not the unshakeable leader with the steady trigger finger. He looked tired. Human. Haunted.

They sat like that for a long time, neither saying another word.

Just the two of them. Breathing. Listening to the rain. Letting the night close in around them.

And for the first time in days, in weeks—M!Y/n didn’t feel completely alone.

The rain had almost given up by then.

No longer the relentless downpour that had soaked their uniforms earlier in the day, no longer the heavy, drumming rhythm against canvas and rusted steel. Now, it was just a whisper—mist clinging to the air like breath on glass, soft and weightless, but stubborn. It brushed over skin and metal with the gentleness of something remembered. Something mourned. It kissed the edges of M!Y/n’s jaw and the hollow of Stanley’s throat, leaving cold trails that neither of them acknowledged.

The world had gone quiet around them, in the way that only war zones did when the gunfire stopped. When the screaming gave way to the eerie lull of survival. The distant generator hummed like a dying heartbeat. Somewhere far off, the echo of a cough, a groan, a barked order—muffled by fog and wet air. But here, in the shadowed alcove behind the motor pool, the silence settled between them like an old coat. Heavy. Familiar. Lived in.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Not right away.

M!Y/n sat hunched on the edge of a wooden crate opposite Stanley, boots caked in drying mud, elbows on his knees, fingers knit tightly together as if holding himself still took effort. He was damp around the edges, collar sticking to the side of his neck, a strand of hair plastered against his forehead. But he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were elsewhere—on the ground, or somewhere beyond it.

Stanley didn’t move either.

He sat with the kind of ease that came from years of learning how to be still. One foot planted on the truck bed, the other dangling off the edge, body curved forward in a posture that was both guarded and casual. His jacket was open, his shirt clinging to his chest in places the rain hadn’t quite dried, and the lamplight caught in the stubble on his jaw, turning it to silver. From the outside, he looked carved from stone—impenetrable, steady.

But M!Y/n had known him long enough to see the fracture lines.

The tension in his knuckles. The quiet twitch at the corner of his eye. The way he kept looking at the fog like he was waiting for something to rise out of it.

Maybe a ghost. Maybe a memory.

Still, the silence between them didn’t press. It didn’t ache. It just was—the kind of silence built by men who had bled beside each other, who had stood in the same ruin and made it out breathing. Who had nothing left to explain.

But eventually, M!Y/n’s voice found its way out. Low. Measured. Barely more than breath.

“Are we still a team?”

He didn’t look up when he said it. Like the question itself might disappear if he didn’t meet Stanley’s eyes. Like the answer might undo him if it came too fast.

It wasn’t just a question about mission logistics. They both knew that. It wasn’t about assignments or formations or field protocol. It was about something quieter. Deeper.

About the thing they’d been before the last op went sideways. Before Morales bled out in the dirt. Before the silence in the barracks got too loud and the others stopped meeting M!Y/n’s gaze.

It was about them.

Stanley didn’t answer right away. He let the moment breathe, let the question sit in the air between them like fog curling in the low light. His eyes flicked past M!Y/n’s shoulder, to the edge of the camp where the mist thickened, creeping like smoke through the skeletal remains of trees and tents. A world that had gone to ruin, piece by piece, and still somehow stood.

Then—slowly—he looked back.

His gaze met M!Y/n’s. Steady. Quietly bruising.

And he nodded.

“We’re what’s left of a team.”

Not a promise. Not a vow.

Just the truth. Laid bare, stripped of polish or comfort.

But in its own way, it mattered more than any reassurance could have. Because Stanley didn’t speak to fill silence. He didn’t offer words unless he meant them.

And this—this was what remained. Two men sitting in the wreckage of something once whole. Two soldiers stitched together by grief and grit and the kind of loyalty that didn’t break, only bent.

M!Y/n felt something shift in his chest. Small. Subtle. But there.

The way Stanley looked at him—steady and unflinching, even after everything—it sent a quiet heat down his spine. Not the kind that burned. The kind that lingered. The kind that reminded him he wasn’t alone, even in this broken place.

The lamplight cast long shadows behind Stanley’s frame, but it lit the edge of his cheekbone, the slope of his neck. He looked tired. Older than he should have. But still sharp in that way that had always unnerved M!Y/n a little—like Stanley could see through him if he wanted to.

And maybe he already did.

M!Y/n didn’t say anything more. He just nodded once, slow and deliberate, like the weight of Stanley’s answer needed to settle inside him fully before he could carry it.

They sat like that a while longer. In the space between old rain and new regrets. Breathing the same damp air. Listening to the mist gather on metal.

There was nothing left to fight about. Nothing left to justify.

Only the quiet understanding that in a world that kept falling apart, they hadn’t—at least, not entirely.

Next Morning – Memorial Field

The morning didn’t begin so much as arrive—uninvited, unwelcome, and heavy. Dawn never broke. It simply oozed across the horizon like old oil, thick and gray, swallowed whole by an overcast sky that hung so low it felt as though the clouds might collapse under their own grief. The sun, if it existed anymore, was nothing more than a vague memory behind slate-colored mist.

A sharp wind blew through the field, and though it wasn’t loud, it carried the kind of chill that found its way beneath uniforms and skin, down into bone. Flags flapped at half-mast in the distance—muted, deliberate movements like solemn salutes. Even the wind seemed subdued, as if it knew what the day demanded of it.

No one spoke.

No one needed to.

The field itself had been prepped days earlier—cleared with meticulous precision. A place once overrun by wild grasses and weeds was now transformed into strict, geometric order: crushed gravel laid in regimented lines, boundaries drawn with care that felt almost sacred. It was a space made not for the living, but for the memory of the dead. And those who remained to remember them.

M!Y/n stood near the center of it all. His back was straight, his shoulders square, his hands folded tightly behind him. His uniform was immaculate, not a single thread out of place, as if it had been ironed by ghosts. The medals on his chest caught a dull sheen in the weak morning light. But there was no pride in how he wore them—only reverence. And weight.

The rest of what remained of Echo Squad stood beside him, each man holding onto his own kind of stillness.

To M!Y/n’s left, Callahan braced himself on a worn crutch, his leg bandaged beneath the fabric of his trousers. His other arm hung in a sling, fingers twitching slightly in a rhythm that didn’t match anything in the air. His face was thin now, the angles sharper, more hollow. He looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. Still, his jaw was set with that same quiet defiance that had once made him unshakeable in the field.

On the other side stood Tomaszewski. Tall and unmoving, like a statue carved by grief. His face was unreadable, locked behind a stony expression, but his eyes were fixed on the ground before them—on the four rifles planted in the soil. One thumb dragged in slow, repetitive arcs over the worn leather of his belt, each motion barely visible but ceaseless. A tiny ritual. A lifeline.

And a few paces beyond that—Stanley.

He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Or maybe he had, but the kind of sleep that doesn’t bring rest. His coat sat heavy on his shoulders, the collar lifted slightly by the wind. His hands were folded tightly at the small of his back, fingers white at the knuckles. And though his gaze was fixed dead ahead, he wasn’t looking at the podium.

He was watching the rifles.

Watching what they had lost.

His expression didn’t give anything away. But M!Y/n didn’t need it to.

He knew.

The officiant stepped forward, his boots crunching against gravel as he approached the simple wooden stand at the center of the field. It was unadorned. No flags. No flowers. Just a square of stone and a voice waiting to speak.

Before the stand, arranged in precise formation, were the rifles.

Four of them. Bayonets removed. Butts buried deep in the earth. Muzzles pointed down as if bowing their heads.

Balanced atop each one sat a helmet—still dented, still scratched, marked with the fingerprints of war. Scuffed paint, burnt edges, the faint line where one had caught shrapnel and the other dried blood. They weren’t displays.

They were proof.

From each rifle hung a set of dog tags. The chains were short, the links bright silver in the cloudy light. They clinked softly in the breeze, a metallic whisper against the hush.

Ghost chimes.

The officiant cleared his throat and unfolded a single piece of paper.

It looked small in his hands. Insignificant.

But what it carried wasn’t.

“Private First Class Carter.”

The name fell like a stone into a still lake.

M!Y/n’s jaw clenched, hard.

He remembered Carter’s laugh—the obnoxious, contagious kind that never knew when to shut up. The kid had once snuck a harmonica into base and played it during a blackout, pissing off the brass and cheering up half the platoon in equal measure.

They used to bet on who could do more pushups. Carter always lost. But he never stopped trying.

Nineteen.

“Private Morales.”

M!Y/n exhaled through his nose, slow and sharp.

Morales had been quieter. Bookish. He had a habit of scribbling quotes in the margins of mission briefings. Once, after a rough op, he gave M!Y/n a sketch he’d drawn—of the squad gathered around a fire, faces half in shadow. It was folded and worn, now tucked between pages in his footlocker.

Morales had died without a sound.

“Corporal Davis.”

Something inside M!Y/n twisted.

Davis had a punch like a freight train and a temper to match. She’d earned her stripes in blood and fire and protected her people like they were her siblings. She’d refused extraction three times just to stay with them a little longer.

She never should’ve been on that mission.

But she was.

“Specialist Nguyen.”

M!Y/n closed his eyes.

Just for a second.

Nguyen had been barely out of boot when they got him. Tech wizard. Mouth like a sailor. He talked to their equipment like it was alive—like Jenny, their comms unit, could hear him. Maybe she could. Maybe that’s why she never failed.

He’d died trying to do something brave.

He’d succeeded.

The names echoed across the field, not loud, but resonant. The kind of sound that gets into your bloodstream and stays there.

M!Y/n didn’t move. Didn’t blink. His breath came sharp but even, his throat dry, a muscle ticking at the corner of his jaw.

Stanley still hadn’t flinched. But his posture had shifted, just barely. Shoulders drawn in tighter. Neck locked in rigid tension. He was holding it in. All of it.

They all were.

The bugler stepped forward.

A boy, really. Couldn’t have been more than twenty. His cheeks were still smooth, the lines of his uniform crisp. He lifted the horn with trembling hands, and for a moment, the field held its breath.

The first note was a soft, aching thing.

Then came the second. And the third.

Taps.

The sound curled through the air like smoke, soft and solemn. Each note felt like it was stitched into time itself, pulling everything still. Even the wind obeyed, dropping into silence.

Callahan’s mouth twitched. Tomaszewski stared straight ahead, jaw clenched so tightly it looked painful.

Stanley…

Stanley’s gaze dropped. Not far. Not much. But enough.

Enough for M!Y/n to notice.

And he did.

Because he couldn’t stop noticing.

Not now. Not anymore.

The final note rang out. Long. Hollow. Beautiful.

Then—silence.

No words followed. No applause. No instructions to dismiss.

Just stillness.

The first boots to move broke the spell. Gravel shifted beneath soles. Murmurs rose, quiet and reverent. One by one, the crowd turned. Officers. Medics. Support staff. Survivors. They walked away not like soldiers, but like mourners.

But M!Y/n didn’t move.

He stood there, rooted in front of the rifles, staring at each helmet like he could memorize them. Commit every scratch to memory. As if doing so might keep them from being forgotten.

He thought of Carter’s final breath. Morales’ wide, frightened eyes. Davis’s hands, still curled into fists. Nguyen’s lopsided grin.

And then—

The sound of footsteps beside him.

He didn’t need to turn.

He felt the shift in the air. The quiet way the world realigned.

Stanley.

M!Y/n blinked once, slow. His chest ached, his lungs burning from the effort of keeping still.

Then—something soft. A brush of warmth. A hand, not quite touching, but hovering near his elbow.

Not an order.

Not a gesture of command.

Just…

Presence.

M!Y/n turned his head the barest inch. Their eyes met—just briefly.

It wasn’t much.

But it was something.

And maybe that was enough for today.

Stanley gave the smallest of nods. His mouth opened—closed again.

Then: “You good?”

It wasn’t the words. It was how he said them.

Low. Private. Not casual, but careful.

M!Y/n swallowed hard and nodded once. “Yeah. You?”

Stanley’s jaw worked silently for a second before he answered.

“No. But I will be.”

There was a beat. A pause that felt like the breath before a storm. Like something wanted to be said but hadn’t found its shape yet.

Then Stanley turned, slow, deliberate.

M!Y/n followed.

They didn’t touch.

But they walked in step.

Behind them, four rifles stood silent watch. Four helmets. Four names. Four reasons to keep going.

The field emptied, the sky still gray, the wind picking up once more.

But Echo Squad walked on.

Fractured.

Scarred.

And still together.

Chapter Text

Forward Operative Base "Ashfall," Bavaria, Germany – October 1946

Two years. That’s how long it had been since the blood-soaked sands of Normandy swallowed them whole. Two years since Echo Squad first stepped into the gaping maw of hell and refused to turn back.

They had landed on Omaha Beach as eight — eight boys fresh from homes scattered across America, wide-eyed and breathing in the salty sea air with lungs full of hope and fear alike. Their uniforms were crisp, pressed with precision; their boots still shining as if untouched by the dirt and grime they’d soon be buried under. They carried dreams like shields, naive and fragile—dreams of letters from sweethearts, a life waiting for them back home, a war they’d survive to tell about.

But war has a way of shredding innocence like a relentless storm tearing at fragile leaves.

Now, Echo Squad numbered four.

Four men who bore the hollowed echoes of their former selves. The rest were gone—lost to the thunderous roar of gunfire, swallowed by the mud and blood of battlefields strewn from the rolling hills of France to the frostbitten forests of the Ardennes.

War hadn’t asked for their permission. It had barged in, violent and unyielding, tearing through their youth and carving something else in its place. It stole their time, their flesh, their very souls—bit by agonizing bit—and left them wandering the ruins of their own identities. Names sewn onto ragged uniforms, names that felt foreign on tongues cracked from exhaustion. Blood beneath their fingernails that wasn’t theirs—stains of comrades, enemies, ghosts.

Time might wear down a man’s body, but war? War encased a man in stone. It calcified every moment of agony and loss until the pain became a permanent relic, lodged deep inside the marrow of their bones, impossible to forget.

They had once been boys who traded jokes beneath open skies, who passed around faded photographs of laughing girlfriends and little brothers. They had shared cigarettes in dimly lit tents, and talked about the future with wide, reckless optimism. They believed—foolishly, beautifully—that the war was just a chapter, a story to retell in quiet evenings when the fighting was done.

But war is a cruel teacher. It has no mercy for innocence.

Normandy was just the prologue.

What followed was a relentless march through shattered French villages choked with smoke and sorrow; through icy, silent forests where every crunch of frost underfoot was a death knell; through secret prisons buried beneath the cracked earth of Croatia, where shadows moved like whispers; and over the gray, rolling hills of Eastern Germany, where the wind carried the weight of ghosts long forgotten.

They moved like phantoms — sharp and alert, hardened by grief and battle, their faces carved by lines deeper than years could justify. Hollowed out. Each step echoing with the memory of fallen brothers and lost youth.

Ghosts, all of them.

Ghosts with mission logs taped to their chests and scars where their smiles used to be.

Sergeant M!Y/n

He stood at the head of the worn wooden table, not because anyone had ordered it, not because he sought glory or recognition—but simply because no one else would.

Two years ago, M!Y/n had been something else entirely. A cocky son of a bitch with a sharp jawline that caught the fading sunlight like a blade, a crooked grin that dared the world to take him seriously, and a constant wad of gum tucked between his teeth like a signature. He moved through the chaos of boot camp like he owned every inch of it—flirting shamelessly with nurses in the makeshift infirmary, goading stiff-lipped officers until they wanted to throw him out of the barracks, and shooting straighter, faster, deadlier than anyone else in his company. They joked that his nerves were forged from copper wire—unbreakable, always humming with electricity.

But those days belonged to a different man.

Now, M!Y/n stood tall, every inch a soldier, but with the rigid, taut posture of someone who expected the ground beneath him to explode without warning. His crooked grin—the one that once defied fate—had vanished like smoke in the cold morning air. The gum was long gone, a discarded relic of a past life he barely remembered. The carefree arrogance replaced by something harder, carved by loss and necessity.

Between his brows was a deep crease, like a furrowed scar no bullet could leave but time and grief etched in relentlessly. It was a crease born from sleepless nights, haunted memories, and the endless calculation of survival.

His hands were steady now, never trembling. But that steadiness was a hard-won skill. Beneath the surface, a quiet tremor lived like molten rock beneath a volcano—raw, volatile, barely contained. He channeled it. Every twitch, every silent tremor was pressure converted into focus: orders barked sharply, shields raised instinctively, vengeance executed without hesitation.

He no longer needed to raise his voice. A single look from him was enough to snap his squad to attention, to cut through the fog of fatigue and fear like a blade through cloth.

Sergeant. The title was new. A battlefield promotion earned in the hellfire of Operation Grey Eclipse. The brass had pinned those bars to his collar with clipped words and half-smiles, impressed by the stories whispered through the ranks: how he had dragged three wounded men from a burning bunker despite bullets ripping through the night air, how he’d finished off a high-value target with nothing but a broken bayonet when his rifle jammed.

But titles—those meant nothing.

The weight he bore was invisible. It sat deep in his gut and clawed at his chest in the quiet moments, like a ghost he could never shake.

Morales’ scream echoing in the dark, a sound that tore through his mind long after the warzones fell silent.
Carter’s blood seeping into the snow, a stain that refused to fade beneath his boots.
Davis’ frozen face, pale and still in the collapsed trench—eyes wide open as if accusing him of leaving.

Every name was a brand scorched into his memory. Every loss a piece of himself carved away.

At night, when sleep finally claimed him—if it ever did—it came on the wings of their eyes, their faces haunting the shadows behind his eyelids. Watching. Waiting. Reminding him.

He carried them all.

And he would carry them, until the war finally let him rest.

Corporal Stanley "Ghost" Snyder

Once, Stanley Snyder had been the loudest voice in the barracks—not in volume, but in presence.

He didn’t shout to be heard. He didn’t need to. His voice carried naturally, rough around the edges with that unmistakable Chicago drawl that made even the greenest rookie crack a smile. Stanley had been alive in a way that made others feel more alive too. He could lift the entire platoon’s morale with nothing but a cocked brow and one of his outlandish stories—usually involving his troublemaking uncle back home getting himself thrown in jail for something absurd, like trying to steal jazz records with a coat full of magnets.

Guys used to gather around him like moths to a flame, boots kicked up on crates, canteens in hand, grinning through the grime. He had been the heart of the squad in those early days—steady, warm, golden.

Now?

Now they called him Ghost.

He moved like vapor through broken cities, between crumbled stone and twisted metal, unseen and unheard. No footfalls. No voice. Just the whisper of fabric, the gleam of steel, and then silence.

When Stanley was out there—knife in hand, rifle slung low—he became something else entirely. Something colder. Not quite man, not quite shadow. The enemy never saw him coming. His presence left no trace but the cooling bodies left behind.

Intel couldn’t get enough of him. They revered him, respected him... but even they feared him a little. He was their phantom, their shade, their weapon in human skin. They sent him on recon runs no one returned from. Gave him targets buried behind miles of barbed wire and secrets. He always came back, blood dried in the seams of his gloves, eyes unreadable.

They offered him rank. Repeatedly.

He turned them down every time.

Said he didn’t want the paperwork, that he wasn’t cut out to sit behind a desk. But the truth—unspoken, heavy—was simpler.

Rank meant staying out of the field. And Stanley needed to be out there.

It wasn’t bloodlust. It wasn’t glory.

It was penance.

The killing came easy now. Not because he enjoyed it, but because it had become second nature—surgical, clean, inevitable. There was no hesitation anymore. No flare of hesitation when his finger found the trigger, no pause when the blade met bone. He executed orders with the calm finality of a man who had already buried himself somewhere along the line.

Because Stanley had died, too.

Not in a blast or a firefight. No medals marked the moment. No one saluted the grave he carried.

He died in pieces. In the quiet, in the pauses between gunfire. In the seconds after the screams faded and the silence settled, and there was nothing left but breathing—his, and his alone.

But despite the ice that had settled around his heart, despite the ghosts he dragged through every mission, there was one tether left. One ember that hadn’t quite died out.

M!Y/n.

Stanley watched him sometimes—not with pity, not with awe. But with the quiet recognition of a man looking into a mirror he didn’t like. He understood the weight in M!Y/n’s shoulders, the tired lines carved deep into his brow, the way he moved with that barely contained energy, as if he were walking across landmines every day of his life.

They had been through too much. Seen too much.

And now, the only time Stanley allowed himself to feel anything—anything real, anything human—was when M!Y/n was nearby.

When they were back-to-back in some dark corridor, clearing rooms with flawless synchronicity. No orders, no words—just instinct and trust. When they sat shoulder to shoulder on cold stone, sharing a canteen and watching an oil lamp sway gently in the breeze. No need to speak. No desire to.

Their conversations had evolved past language. Past sound.

They spoke in glances. In a nod, in the way one handed a weapon to the other without being asked. A flick of the eye that said I’ve got you, a shift in posture that said I know.

There was weight passed between them that no one else could see. Heavy, sacred, unspoken.

In the end, Ghost wasn’t a name Stanley had chosen.

But maybe it fit. Maybe it was all that remained of the man who used to tell bad jokes and believe in going home.

He was a ghost.

But with M!Y/n, he remembered—just barely—that once, he’d been something else.

Something alive.

Specialist Sean Callahan

The blast at Montreval should’ve killed him.

The IED had been buried deep beneath the dirt road, hidden beneath chicken wire and layers of compacted gravel, waiting with patient malice. The convoy never saw it. One minute they were rolling through the edge of the ruined village, the next—the world turned white.

The explosion tore through the lead transport like it was made of tin and tissue paper. Fire. Screaming. Metal curled like paper and flesh folded in on itself.

Two men died on impact. Three were wounded—one of them Sean Callahan.

When they pulled him from the wreckage, his uniform was soaked with blood and engine oil, his body shredded by shrapnel, half-conscious and still cursing as medics scrambled to save what they could. He didn’t remember much—just heat, the stench of burning canvas, and the surreal sensation of floating as they hauled him onto the stretcher.

He lost the leg.

They told him later, in the field hospital, after the morphine wore off and the reality settled like a boulder on his chest. Clean sever at the knee. Lucky, they said. Lucky it wasn’t higher. Lucky he was still breathing.

Lucky.

They tried to send him home.

The brass showed up with solemn faces and neatly folded flags, clapped him on the shoulder and handed him medals like that could make up for the pieces of himself he’d left in that crater. There were letters too. Thank-you’s. Official commendations typed up by men who’d never heard a bullet whistle past their ear.

He mailed the medals back. Didn’t even open the letters. Burned them in a trash can behind the rehab ward one bitter morning before sunrise. Stood there in hospital-issued sweatpants and a winter coat three sizes too big, watching the paper curl and blacken until all that remained was ash and smoke.

Because Callahan wasn’t done.

Not by a long shot.

The next six months were a lesson in pain. In humiliation. In grit. He fell more times than he could count. Cursed his own body. Fought the urge to quit every damn day. But he never did.

Rehab turned into training. Crutches turned into a cane. The cane turned into something better.

The Army gave him a prototype prosthetic—military-grade, combat-tested, constructed of lightweight alloy and built for hell. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough.

He made it enough.

Sean trained like a man possessed. By rage, by purpose, by the simple, searing need to get back. Nights spent in the gym until his muscles screamed. Mornings on the range. Afternoons practicing with the tech—detonators, timers, tripwires, field jammers. He rewired himself, from the inside out.

And when he came back—he didn’t ask. He didn’t beg.

He told them.

Now, he was Echo Squad’s tech specialist. Their saboteur. Their trap-setter. If it could explode, blink, track, or jam a signal, Sean could make it sing. He carried tools in his chest rig the way others carried ammo. Wires, pliers, detonators—his hands never idle, his mind always calculating.

He still had that fire. That defiant, reckless spark that hadn’t quite died in the crater. But it had changed. His humor had lost its innocence, scorched into something darker. Sardonic. Macabre. He cracked jokes mid-firefight. Quoted bad movies while arming C4. Told knock-knock jokes while setting up claymores.

The others rolled their eyes, but never told him to stop.

Because beneath the wit, there was steel.

Callahan had become a force of controlled chaos. His rage didn’t come in explosions—it smoldered, low and hot and steady. He didn’t scream anymore. He didn’t need to.

And he and M!Y/n?

Their bond went deeper than rank, deeper than duty. It had been forged in a haze of smoke and blood. In that moment after the Montreval blast, when M!Y/n had climbed into the wreckage himself, ignoring protocol and orders, pulling Callahan out with his bare hands, dragging him over smoking gravel, bleeding and swearing the whole way.

That did something to a man. Created something that didn’t need a name.

Not quite brothers. Not quite friends. Something sharper. Truer.

When Callahan had woken up in the field hospital, leg gone and vision swimming, M!Y/n had been sitting right there—bloody knuckles, split lip, soot still streaked across his face. He hadn’t said anything.

He didn’t need to.

And now, months later, in the cold barracks of Forward Operating Base Ashfall, that bond remained—unshaken. A kind of gravity pulled them together, even when words failed. When they worked a mission, they synced without thinking—Callahan laying the charge, M!Y/n covering the flank, both moving like gears in a machine too battered to quit.

They didn’t talk about what they’d been through. No one really did.

But every time M!Y/n passed him the wire spool without looking, or Callahan reached out to steady his shoulder after a blast rumbled too close, it spoke volumes.

Because you don’t crawl through fire with someone and come out unchanged.

And if you do, you were never worth much to begin with.

Private Tomaszewski

They stopped calling him by his first name months ago. It wasn’t out of malice—he simply never offered it again, and no one ever asked.

He’d slipped into Echo Squad during the frozen chaos of the Ardennes offensive, when snow lay thick on the pines and the world was a hush of white and gray. Back then, there were eight of them. Eight lives bound by blood and gunfire.

Then came the ravine outside Liège. A carved-out scar in the earth where shadows moved like predators and bullets sang without mercy. No one spoke much about what happened there—just that, and in that instant, something inside Tomaszewski fractured. The easy smile, the laughter in his eyes, the warmth he carried in the mess hall—all vanished like smoke on the wind.

He never volunteered stories of home. He didn’t speak unless he had to. But his gaze—sharp, penetrating—did all the talking. Tomaszewski moved through ruined villages and pockmarked streets with the grace of a hunter. He saw every loose board that might conceal a tripwire, every shadow that might hold an enemy’s rifle. His ears caught the faintest shift of rubble, the subtlest stutter of distant voices.

More times than they could count, he’d warned them just in time—nudging M!Y/n out of the crosshairs before the sniper squeezed the trigger, tilting his rifle to pick out a hidden machine-gun nest before they walked into it. He was their sentinel, their silent guardian in the night.

He and Stanley worked together like two halves of a single mind. They breached buildings in seamless tandem, clearing rooms with the fluid precision of dancers. Stanley’s shadow, Tomaszewski’s edge—no words exchanged, no signal needed. Just instinct and trust, honed in the crucible of combat.

But with M!Y/n, things were different.

They moved in step when the stakes were life or death—M!Y/n at the lead, Tomaszewski covering their flank—but off the battlefield, there was a tension neither could dispel. A quiet distance that stretched between them, woven from shared tragedy and unspoken blame.

Tomaszewski carried Davis’ memory like a stone in his chest. He replayed that day in the ravine over and over: the echo of the grenade’s hiss, the way Davis had thrown himself forward, the final look in his eyes. He blamed himself for not seeing the trap, for leading his friend into that kill zone.

M!Y/n carried Morales’ scream. He remembered the night ambush, the sudden crack of rifle fire splitting the darkness, and Morales—his brother-in-arms—collapsing at his side. He blamed himself for trusting faulty intel, for failing to cover that flank.

Both men carried guilt heavier than any pack on their backs. Both believed the other deserved pardon that they themselves denied.

And so they shared an unspoken wound, a crack in the armor of their friendship—one that neither dared speak of, and yet which shaped every glance, every cautious step they took shoulder to shoulder.

In the pre-dawn hush of Forward Base Ashfall, Tomaszewski would sometimes find M!Y/n standing watch at the perimeter. They’d exchange a nod—no words, just the tacit acknowledgment of the burdens they bore. And in that silent greeting, there was understanding. There was the tacit vow that, however deep their wounds ran, they would still watch each other’s backs.

Because out here, in the ruins and the ash, forgiveness was a distant dream—but survival depended on something stronger: the refusal to leave a brother behind.

ECHO SQUAD – ACTIVE OPERATIVES:

Sgt. M!Y/n (Team Leader)

Cpl. Stanley (Recon/Specialist)

Pvt. Callahan (Demolitions/Field Tech)

Cpl. Tomaszewski (Sniper/Scout)

MISSION: OPERATION SHATTERGLASS

OBJECTIVE: Intercept a rogue Nazi convoy transporting stolen weapons technology through the Bavarian Alps. Intelligence links the cargo to an emerging shadow faction called the "Black Root"—remnants of the SS, deserters, zealots.

These weren’t just stragglers. They were believers. Fanatics.

Men who thought the Reich was a phoenix waiting to rise from its own ashes.

Command had issued one directive:

Cut off the root. Burn the stem. Leave no seeds.

Bavarian Alps – October 12th, 1946 – 03:42 hours

The wind came first.

It didn’t scream through the trees like in the movies—no cinematic howl or banshee shriek. It breathed. Low. Measured. A predator’s exhale brushing the back of your neck, tasting your sweat, waiting. It slipped through the pines like something alive, curling around frostbitten branches and pulling the fog tighter like a shroud.

Everything on the mountain felt… wrong. The kind of wrong you didn’t speak about—because speaking made it real. The fog clung to the ground like spilled smoke, coiling between granite boulders and clawing pine roots, thick enough to smother sound, sight, and memory.

But Echo Squad moved through it like phantoms.

Four men. Blackened faces. Silent gear. Boots pressing into frost without a whisper. They had long since become creatures of the quiet. The world had taught them well—sound killed faster than bullets, and noise brought the ghosts back.

Leading the formation was Sergeant M!Y/n, his breath a soft fog of its own in the cold air, jaw set like granite beneath smears of ash and sweat. His hand lifted mid-stride, gloved fist clenched, and behind him the squad froze like statues.

No command needed.

The trees pressed in, holding their breath.

Then—two fingers forward. Advance.

Stanley didn’t need a word. He was already beside him, sliding low through the brush like a whisper of movement. He stopped with a crouch that barely stirred the undergrowth, raised his binoculars, and scanned the mist-veiled trail ahead.

The lenses glinted faintly, catching the barest glow of breath between his lips. Everything in the glass looked wrong—bent, twisted by fog. Trees looked like skeletal hands. Shadows stretched too long.

“They’re late,” Stanley murmured, voice like dry paper in the hush.

M!Y/n didn’t shift. “Or they’re smart.”

He scanned ahead, expression unreadable. But there was something in the way his shoulders stiffened beneath the weight of his gear—something quiet, old. Not fear. Worse. The kind of knowing that only came after burying too many names.

Stanley’s sleeve brushed against his as he leaned slightly closer, adjusting his sightline. Neither of them moved away. The contact lingered—not long enough to be obvious, but enough to notice.

Their breath curled together in the space between them.

Behind them, Callahan dropped to a knee with a quiet grunt, the cold snapping audibly in his knees. “Shit, I’m too pretty for this,” he muttered, yanking the thermal scanner from his pack.

The device whirred to life, casting a dull red glow on his rugged face. “Main road’s clean. But west logging trail—cluster of warm spots. Four, five... no—seven. Maybe eight. Big signature, too. Truck, maybe heavier.”

“They’re dodging the obvious,” M!Y/n said. “Keeping off routes.”

“Smart bastards,” Callahan huffed. “I hate when they’re smart. Makes shooting ’em feel less satisfying.”

“Tomaszewski,” M!Y/n said without looking back.

A hand rose from the gloom to the northeast. Silent. Sharp. Pointing to a high outcropping veiled in pine.

The Polish sniper never spoke when he didn’t need to. Ghosts didn’t waste words.

“Ten minutes,” M!Y/n murmured. “Eyes on them. Quiet.”

Tomaszewski didn’t reply. He simply dissolved into the fog. One moment he was crouched, present. The next—gone.

Callahan blinked. “I swear that man is part fern.”

“Ferns don’t shoot from two klicks with perfect headshots,” Stanley replied.

“I dunno,” Callahan muttered, squinting after Tomaszewski. “There’s one in my backyard with a real attitude problem.”

Stanley snorted—just a whisper of it. Enough to crack the ice of the moment. M!Y/n felt the corner of his mouth twitch, then flattened it before it could rise too far. There wasn’t room for that kind of softness right now. Not yet.

But still… Stanley was close. Closer than necessary. Like always.

M!Y/n glanced sidelong at him. He was scanning again, but his body was relaxed. Fluid. One knee bent, one elbow resting lazily on it. But beneath that calm, M!Y/n could see the tension, coiled and waiting. Stanley always did that—hid the fight beneath the calm. Like he was listening to something no one else could hear.

“You with me?” M!Y/n asked quietly.

Stanley turned, eyes meeting his.

“Always.”

It was simple. Honest. But something in the way he said it lingered between them, thick as the fog. Something more than camaraderie. More than a promise.

And then—he smiled. Just a ghost of one. “Besides, without me, you’d forget to eat.”

“I ate yesterday.”

“You licked an old coffee ration.”

“Still counts.”

Stanley shook his head, the laugh caught in his throat, but the moment broke the tension. Briefly. And in that break, their shoulders brushed again. This time, the contact stayed a little longer.

Then—movement.

They shifted without words.

04:07 hours

The squad lay prone along the frosted ledge of a rocky bluff overlooking the winding pass. Frost had crept into their gloves, their bones, their breath. They didn’t move. Didn’t blink. The only thing alive was the pulse in their ears and the slow drag of breath against the cold.

Below, headlights emerged—faint at first, cutting narrow paths through the pine forest. Then brighter. Yellow and crooked.

Two trucks. One armored half-track.

And something else.

The last vehicle lumbered forward like a monster built in someone’s fever dream. It looked welded together by madness—steel plating uneven, armor slapped on in patches, thick wheels grinding like bone. Wires looped across its flanks, veins on metal flesh. From the roof jutted a thick, crooked antenna—black, curved, ugly like a stinger.

Stanley squinted through his scope. “That ain’t factory issue.”

“Neither’s that uniform,” Callahan whispered.

They were a Frankenstein's mess—patched gear from every side of the war. SS tunics with American belts, Soviet greatcoats, French boots, even a Luftwaffe cap with the insignia half-burned off. One had a swastika tattooed into his jaw.

Others wore black leather armbands, marked with a pale, curling sigil.

A white root.

M!Y/n’s gut tightened.

Behind the convoy, something moved. Covered cages, bolted to the second truck.

Callahan’s breath hissed. “Jesus…”

“Command didn’t say anything about cages,” Stanley murmured, lowering his rifle an inch.

“They didn’t say a lot of things,” M!Y/n replied.

He didn’t turn to look at Stanley—but he could feel his presence like a second shadow. That heat. That tension that had grown, wordless, between them over the last months. It lived in glances held too long, in the quiet way Stanley touched his arm during triage. In the way he never called him “Sarge” anymore when they were alone.

M!Y/n closed his eyes for half a second.

And saw them again.

Normandy. Davis’s eyes, unblinking. Morales, still gasping, whispering prayers with his ribs shattered. Carter, cracking a joke with his jaw half-hanging off. 

So many names.

So many he couldn’t lose again.

Tomaszewski’s voice cracked through the earpieces, calm as ever: “Sniper position secured. Visual on all targets. Standing by.”

M!Y/n exhaled through his nose.

He opened his eyes. The ghosts stepped back.

“Wolves,” he whispered. “We hunt.”

Stanley didn’t nod immediately. He reached out, slow, almost cautious—like he wasn’t sure he had permission—and tapped the side of M!Y/n’s glove once with his own. Just once.

It was barely a touch.

But M!Y/n felt it all the way to his chest.

“Try not to get shot,” Stanley murmured, voice low. “I’m getting tired of stitching you up.”

“I’d rather you stitch me up than Callahan. He uses dental floss.”

Callahan, without looking, muttered, “Don’t knock the floss, man. It’s mint-flavored.”

“Remind me never to bleed near you again,” Stanley groaned.

Tomaszewski’s voice: “Two guards dismounting. Dogs out. Fifteen meters to treeline.”

And the mood snapped back.

Steel settled over M!Y/n again. Cold. Ready.

He raised his hand, flexed his fingers twice.

Stanley raised his rifle, cheek against the stock.

They were quiet.

Deadly.

Together.

And as they moved into position—shoulders brushing once more—M!Y/n felt it again. That pull. That heartbeat stretched between them.

It wasn’t just war that bound them anymore.

It was something more dangerous.

Something that might not survive what came next.

Chapter Text

Bavarian Alps, near Berchtesgaden – Operation Shatterglass

October 12th, 1946 – 04:08 hours

The assault began not with a scream, but with a breath held on the wind — sharp, cold, final.

No war cry split the dark. No bugle sounded. No countdown ticked away the seconds. Only the mountain’s silence shattered by the precision of death.

It began like an avalanche: fast, ruthless, and utterly consuming. One moment, the alpine woods lay cloaked in pre-dawn stillness, every pine branch heavy with snow, every boulder wreathed in frozen fog. The next, that silence fractured — and the mission, months in the making, unfurled like a blade.

Tomaszewski’s rifle cracked first — a single, thunderous punctuation that rang through the brittle air like God had snapped his fingers. The suppressor softened it only marginally. The muzzle flash blinked like a second star. Through his scope, the Polish marksman watched the mercenary atop the lead half-track jolt once and then crumple, limbs collapsing like a marionette whose strings had been abruptly severed. The man’s body tumbled forward, a smear of crimson marring the snow-dusted metal. His submachine gun slipped from his slackened hands and clattered off the vehicle’s hood, skidding across gravel and snow before disappearing into the ravine below — the sound already gone, devoured by the night.

Still no alarm. No screams. No shouts of warning. Just that eerie pause, like the world was holding its breath — that razor-thin moment before anyone knew they were under siege.

Then came movement.

M!Y/n and Stanley ghosted through the tree line — two specters dressed in winter camouflage and war-born silence. Their breath clouded pale against the darkness, but their steps were sure, practiced, deadly. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. They’d long passed the point of verbal coordination. Fieldwork had shaped them into something beyond brothers-in-arms. Every step was echoed, every flicker of movement mirrored, every motion anticipated as though their bodies spoke a language built from war.

They moved through the pines like shadows skimming the edge of a nightmare.

Stanley was the first to spot the sentry, half-hidden behind the twisted remnants of a fallen spruce. "Target left. Trench line, near the front axle," he murmured, voice barely audible — a thread of smoke curling into the dark.

"I see him," M!Y/n replied, so quiet it was more breath than sound.

His fingers adjusted the scope, cold steel biting through the gloves. The crosshairs hovered — a brief pause, a stillness inside the chaos — and then the trigger eased beneath his touch, a gentle exhale.

The rifle barked, and another figure dropped, collapsing backward into the frost as if yanked by unseen hands. Limbs twitched, then went still. The body vanished into the snow.

Above them, the stars watched — ancient and unmoved. Their silver light spilled across the mountainside in brittle constellations, illuminating blood and breath and gunmetal. The slope had become a kill zone, but the heavens remained indifferent.

To the west, hunched behind the cragged edge of a granite outcrop that had once been a military emplacement, Callahan worked silently. His hands were bare despite the cold — he needed dexterity, not comfort. Every movement was exacting, methodical. He wasn't laying a minefield. He was performing surgery on a battlefield. The charge he buried was directional, small enough to be precise, but brutal if placed correctly. This wasn’t about annihilation. This was scalpel work. The objective wasn’t to erase the convoy — it was to take the heart of it alive.

He tapped the comm twice, signaling readiness. Then he raised two fingers into the dark — ready to light it.

"Stanley, clear the right. Callahan," M!Y/n murmured into his throat mic, voice all steel and ice. "Light it."

For a heartbeat, the world held still.

Then the mountains roared.

The first explosion split the silence like a scream. The sound echoed and bounced off the ridgelines, crashing back in waves. Fire surged from beneath the front axle of the lead truck — a bloom of orange and black that shattered the ice and rock in a shower of smoking debris. Metal shrieked as the vehicle jerked violently to one side, its tires shearing off under the force. The engine sputtered once, then coughed out a plume of oily smoke and died.

The truck listed, slid sideways into a frozen ditch, and stopped. Not with a final groan — but with a whimper.

The spell was broken.

Gunfire erupted from the tree line in wild bursts, uncoordinated, panicked. Muzzle flashes lit the undergrowth like lightning bugs. Bullets chewed into bark and rock, biting at the dark with teeth of steel.

M!Y/n ducked low, diving behind a glacier-smoothed boulder just as the snow around him exploded into a spray of powder and shrapnel. Rounds pinged against stone. Chips of granite and ice stung his cheeks. He rolled to the side, pressed his back against the freezing rock, steadied his rifle, and returned fire.

He fired once. A second figure dropped — flailing against a pine before slumping in a crimson arc.

"CONTACT LEFT!" Tomaszewski’s voice crackled over the comms, sharp as broken glass. "Two down! More incoming, tree line—ten o'clock!"

"Got 'em," Stanley answered coolly, already gone. He moved like wind over ice, his coat whipping as he disappeared behind a tree. Two muffled pops — then silence. When he reappeared, there was blood on his boots and none on his hands.

The half-track jolted forward in a last-ditch effort to reverse, treads spinning against the slick ice.

It didn’t get far.

Callahan’s second charge detonated beneath the rear axle.

The blast lifted the vehicle like a toy, hurling flame and twisted steel into the air. A wheel flew off and spun, shrieking, into the dark. Shrapnel screamed past M!Y/n’s shoulder, hot and fast. The blast knocked the wind from his lungs, but he was already moving, already charging downhill.

The third vehicle was the key. The heart of the operation.

"M!Y/n!" Stanley’s voice surged through the comms. "Back of the third truck — they’re moving something. Heavy."

"On me," M!Y/n snapped.

He sprinted through the snow, boots carving deep lines through the powder. Smoke billowed in sheets around him, thick with the scent of scorched rubber and diesel. The cold bit at his face, tearing at his lungs. But he didn’t stop.

Never stop. Forward — always forward.

They crested the back of the final truck together, emerging on opposite flanks.

There, in the swirling snow, two figures wrestled with a large, iron-gray crate. The thing was the size of a coffin, stamped with German markings and reinforced at every edge. The men were panicked — barking orders at each other in clipped, frightened German. They wore long, black coats. Not standard Wehrmacht — cleaner. Tailored. SS? Or worse.

"Drop it!" M!Y/n shouted in German, voice honed sharp as a blade.

One man froze. He glanced up, eyes wide, caught in the beam of M!Y/n’s rifle. His hand twitched toward his sidearm — but hesitation robbed him of speed.

Then Stanley emerged on the other side, rifle already raised. His expression didn’t shift. It didn’t need to.

"Do it," he said softly. Like the voice of inevitability.

The crate thudded to the snow, heavy and final.

"Callahan," M!Y/n said. "We’ve got the package. Secure it — now. Photos, documents. Everything. Lock it down."

"Moving," Callahan replied, already sprinting down the slope, his satchel flapping behind him.

M!Y/n grabbed the taller of the two prisoners and slammed him face-first into the snow. The man gasped, gagging on the ice, but didn’t resist. There was no fight left. Only fear. His eyes flicked toward the crate — and in them, M!Y/n saw something more than fear.

He saw dread.

Stanley remained motionless. His rifle trained on the second man’s temple. His finger never even trembled.

"They weren’t guarding supplies," M!Y/n murmured. "They were guarding this."

Callahan knelt beside the crate, snapped the latches with a flick of his blade, and swung it open.

What lay inside wasn’t ammunition. Not weapons. Not gold.

It was technology.

Spools of fine copper wire. Wax-sealed documents written in tight, formal German. Compact metal components, each labeled with cryptic codenames and part numbers. And at the very bottom — a schematic. Folded with surgical precision, its edges burned from age and haste. The paper was covered in angles and digits. Frequency bands. Calibration points.

Stanley leaned in, frowning. "That’s no bomb."

"No," Callahan muttered. "It's signal disruption. Maybe radar jamming? It's decades ahead. This isn't field tech. It's research. Classified."

"And the cages?" M!Y/n asked grimly. "No livestock. No civilians. Just crates. And this?"

Callahan’s gloved fingers sifted through the documents. Some were code sheets. Others, instructions. Frequency matrices. Formulas etched in ink and graphite.

"It’s not just parts," he confirmed. "It’s intelligence. A network. Something they didn’t want left behind."

M!Y/n stood slowly, scanning the blood-smeared valley. His rifle lowered, but his muscles stayed taut. Always alert. Always ready.

Two trucks burned. Flames licked the sky. The mountains watched in silence, snow falling again now, as though trying to bury the truth before it could be seen.

"Tomaszewski," M!Y/n called into the comm.

"North secured," came the reply. "Three confirmed dead. No more movement."

"Copy. Hold position. Package is tier one. Expect counterforce. We’re prepping exfil."

Stanley moved beside him. His jaw was clenched tight, eyes still on the crate. "This wasn’t a rogue op," he said quietly. "Too clean. Too calculated."

M!Y/n nodded, eyes narrowing.

"Which means they’ll come looking for it."

He looked up at the mountains — and for a moment, the world went quiet again. Not peaceful. Not safe.

Just silent.

As if the storm had only just begun.

Later That Day – FOB Ashfall, Debriefing Room B2

October 12th, 1946 – 14:25 hours

There was no triumph in this room.

No medals waiting in velvet-lined boxes. No congratulatory handshakes or banners. No brass bands playing to drown out the ringing in their ears. The war had ended on paper more than a year ago, but here, in this buried corner of the world, this was what victory looked like — and it reeked of diesel, mildew, and blood.

FOB Ashfall had been carved into the bones of an old Wehrmacht fortification deep in the Bavarian Alps, repurposed with sandbags, steel panels, and U.S. field canvas stretched taut over concrete. It wasn’t meant for comfort. It was meant to disappear when it was no longer needed — like the men who walked its corridors. There were no windows in Room B2. No clocks. Just a single humming fluorescent tube overhead, sputtering faintly, bleeding pale green light across the scuffed floor and leaving everyone looking just a little more ghostly than they already felt.

The debriefing room smelled like old gun oil and wet wool. The canvas walls sweated from condensation, droplets trailing down in sluggish rivers, soaking into the seams of the floorboards. Somewhere nearby, a generator coughed fitfully, the hiccuping sound rhythmically echoing through the pipes like a heart with arrhythmia.

They sat at the long steel table, silent.

Not because they had been ordered to.

But because none of them had anything left to say.

M!Y/n leaned forward at the edge of the table, his arms braced, fingers splayed wide across the cold metal. His gloves were still damp — not just from melted snow, but from blood, half-frozen and beginning to stiffen the fabric at the fingertips. His shoulders were tight, jaw locked, but it was his eyes that betrayed him. They weren’t focused on anything in the room. Not the schematics strewn across the table, not the officer across from them, not even his teammates beside him. His gaze had tunneled inward, locked somewhere in the space between the last trigger pull and the sound of that second explosion — the one that had sent shrapnel inches from his face.

There was still screaming in his ears.

Phantom screams, maybe. Maybe not.

To his left, Callahan sat with one arm folded across his chest, his other hand absently adjusting the dial on his prosthetic boot. A slow, rhythmic drip... drip... drip pattered from its heel to the cracked tile floor below, pooling next to a crushed cigarette someone had stubbed out with their boot. He didn’t react to the noise. Barely blinked. His eyes were heavy, dark-rimmed, but clear — the look of a man who’d been up too long and had made peace with it.

Next down the line, Tomaszewski sat with a kind of stillness that bordered on unnatural. Not rigid. Not tense. Just… deliberate. Hands folded neatly in his lap, spine perfectly straight. His uniform was splattered with dried blood across the right sleeve, flakes of it crusting at the elbow. The smell still clung faintly to him — rust and iron, copper and snow. His gaze wasn’t fixed on anything physical. Not the officer. Not the schematics. Not even the floor.

He stared into something past it all. Something memory-shaped.

At the far end, Stanley looked like he was barely holding himself together — though anyone who didn’t know him might have thought otherwise. Arms crossed tight over his chest, head lowered slightly. His eyes were twin points of ice, narrowed beneath a furrowed brow. His right leg bounced under the table in a slow, controlled rhythm. Not nervousness. Restraint. His fingers flexed occasionally, knuckles cracking in the silence.

He was a grenade with the pin half-pulled.

Across from them, seated in a folding chair that looked about two decades past its prime, was a young intelligence officer with clean fatigues and an expression that screamed greenhorn. His hair was neat, but his eyes were tired — not with the weight of war, but with bureaucracy. He looked like someone who had read a great deal about combat, studied maps and files and post-action reports, but had never felt the heat of a barrel or the wet thud of a body hitting the ground.

He kept flipping through the sheaf of papers in front of him, clearly stalling.

They weren’t really papers, not in the normal sense. These were scorched and soggy, the corners singed from fire, the ink warped where snowmelt had leaked into the crate before it was recovered. Pages from another world. Each bore the faded insignia of a Reich that was supposed to be dead and gone. Supposed to be.

"This schematic," the officer said at last, tapping a partially charred blueprint with one clean finger, "matches early prototypes recovered from Peenemünde in ’44. You probably don’t recognize it — it never made it into public records. Most of the research was destroyed before Allied forces got there."

His voice was soft, brittle against the iron-walled stillness.

He cleared his throat.

"This… this isn’t battlefield salvage. This was preserved. Protected. Archived."

He slid a few more sheets toward the center of the table — blueprints, cipher logs, correspondence half-destroyed. Even in their damaged state, they pulsed with dangerous intent. The room seemed to tighten around them.

"Signal jamming arrays. EMP-based field dampeners. Even early anti-air interference systems. Components we haven’t finished reverse engineering. Components that shouldn’t exist in the field, let alone in a rogue transport convoy."

He looked up from the papers, his expression caught somewhere between awe and dread.

"Whatever Black Root is doing," he said, voice lowering instinctively as if saying the name aloud might summon something, "they have access to material classified beyond even OSS clearance. This isn’t just leftover Nazi tech. This is ghost tech. Deep black. Buried. Forgotten — or meant to be."

M!Y/n slowly sat back, his fingers curling off the cold table with a soft creak of leather. His voice was hoarse, scraped raw by smoke and silence.

"They’re not just hoarding relics."

He finally looked at the officer — and his stare was sharp now. Focused. Cutting.

"They’re building a future."

That landed like a body drop.

Stanley unfolded his arms, leaning in slightly. His posture was coiled, less guarded now, more like a knife about to be thrown.

"They’ve been poaching personnel," he said, voice low and tight. "Not just scientists. Codebreakers. Cryptographers. Engineers. Anyone who ever built anything the Reich classified as ‘advanced threat protocol.’ They’re disappearing off the record. No exit visas. No graves."

He tapped the edge of one of the documents with a gloved finger.

"That cargo wasn’t just schematics. It was correspondence. Names. Requests. Logistics. Some of it was still being decoded in transit. But it’s all part of something bigger. Organized."

Callahan finally stirred. His voice was quiet, but every word landed like a hammer.

"One of the decrypted fragments mentioned relocation to Zone Weiss."

He paused.

"No coordinates. No location match in any Allied database. No mention in Axis archives either. Just… the name. Zone Weiss."

The officer frowned, scribbling the word in his notebook, as if writing it down might somehow make it real.

"You don’t run ops that tight, that surgical, without high-level help," Tomaszewski added, his voice quiet — almost reverent in the way priests whisper to the dead.

"This isn’t a fringe cell. This isn’t leftover fanatics. This is something else. Something old, and well-fed."

The officer sat back slowly, expression unreadable now. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, exhaling into the cold air. The room seemed to chill further.

"I’m not the authority for this. I’ll escalate it to Command. They’ll likely pass it to Strategic Intelligence, maybe White Group, maybe one of the OSS holdovers still running post-war cleanups. Either way..." he trailed off, then leaned forward.

"You’re all on enforced downtime. Seventy-two hours. Ashfall Protocol."

Nobody moved.

No one even flinched.

Downtime didn’t mean anything when your hands still shook. When the weight of something unsaid still coiled in your chest. When the fire hadn’t gone out — just been buried.

Stanley gave a single nod, but said nothing.

Callahan exhaled, breath fogging faintly, and offered a lopsided shrug.

Tomaszewski rose first, graceful in a way that seemed too deliberate for a man who’d spent the morning taking lives. He made no sound, even as the chair scraped lightly behind him. No words. Just motion.

M!Y/n stood last.

His legs resisted at first. The weight in them was more than fatigue — it was the gravity of knowing this wasn’t over. This wasn’t even close.

He paused by the table, eyes trailing over the documents again — the names, the frequencies, the letters in careful German cursive. Then he looked up.

The officer’s gaze met his one final time. There was something softer there now. Not pity. Not gratitude. Something heavier.

"You saved lives today," the officer said, quietly. "That matters."

Tomaszewski stopped at the doorway. Turned just slightly, enough for his profile to catch the flickering light.

His voice was a whisper, but it was sharper than any bullet.

"Did we?"

The room fell silent.

The officer didn’t answer.

And by the time he looked up, they were already gone — swallowed back into the steel veins of Ashfall, into the ghost war no one would ever officially acknowledge. Where there were no heroes. No parades.

Just men.

And ghosts.

And the question that never stopped asking itself.

Barracks – That Night

October 12th, 1946 – 22:17 hours

The fire had burned out. All that remained was the cold.

Not the sharp bite of mountain air—though that, too, crept through the barracks’ cracked seams—but a colder thing. Heavier. One that seeped inward from marrow and memory both, refusing to be scrubbed clean. The kind of chill that came only after the adrenaline had faded, after the smoke had cleared, and all that was left were four men and what they had done.

Outside, the Alpine wind howled softly through the frozen valley. It rattled the metal siding and tugged at the corners of stretched canvas overhead, singing through torn seams like a breath drawn through teeth. Inside, the barracks room was dimly lit, dimly heated, dimly lived-in—its four narrow cots lined in a row like scars across the concrete floor.

The radiator in the corner coughed and groaned like a dying animal, its rusted coils pulsing with heat that barely reached past its immediate vicinity. Still, someone had wrapped an extra pair of socks around the base—superstition, perhaps, or desperation.

M!Y/n lay on the second cot from the door, boots off and tucked neatly beneath his frame, toes pointed out like he expected to march again at any second. His body was stretched out in a long, lean sprawl—one arm beneath his head, the other resting on his chest, fingers curled slightly into the coarse wool of his blanket. He stared at the ceiling as though it might open up and explain something.

His fatigues still smelled like battle—gunpowder residue, pine sap, sweat, and scorched diesel. The scent of fire lingered, fused into the fibers like it had claimed some permanent tenancy. He hadn’t showered. No time. No willpower. And in truth, part of him felt that to strip off his gear would be to admit that the op was over—that the blood beneath his nails had dried.

Across the room, Callahan had wrapped himself up like a corpse in his wool blanket, only a tuft of red hair visible from under the folds. Every so often, a string of words leaked from the cocoon—half a Belfast song, maybe, or garbled mutterings from the edge of sleep. He shifted now and then, his prosthetic leg making soft clunk-thump sounds as it struck against the cot’s frame, but he never seemed to wake.

At the far end, Tomaszewski sat upright beside his cot, rifle scope in his lap, hands moving with the slow, almost reverent rhythm of ritual. He disassembled the scope piece by piece, laid each component on a handkerchief, wiped it clean, inspected, reassembled. Cloth, twist, polish, breath. His face bore no expression. He didn’t blink often. Didn't speak at all.

He was still at war, even in stillness.

By the window, Stanley stood with the kind of posture one doesn’t learn so much as survive into—loose in the limbs but tight around the edges. A cigarette burned slow between two fingers, the ember flaring briefly with each draw. The tip glowed orange in the dark, illuminating the sharp line of his cheek, the dark stubble tracing his jaw, the furrow between his brows.

His other arm rested on the windowsill, elbow propped, fingers curled just over the edge as if holding back the weight of the night.

The glass was frosted over. Ice veins curled in delicate spirals across the pane like spiderwebs spun by ghosts. Moonlight spilled across the snow-draped slopes outside, thin and pale, as if the sky itself were exhausted.

The silence hung for a long time. Not tense. Just... settled. A silence born not from discomfort but from knowing each other's breathing patterns too well. The kind of silence that grew between soldiers when there were no lies left to tell.

Then, from the cot behind him, M!Y/n’s voice broke the stillness.

Soft. Steady. Worn like gravel.

“You think we’ll ever get a clean op again?”

The question wasn’t aimed at anyone in particular. It floated into the dark like smoke, curling around each man in turn.

Stanley took another long drag from his cigarette. The ember pulsed, brightened, then dulled. He didn’t look away from the window.

“Not for us,” he said at last.

There was no bitterness in his tone. Just truth. Simple and unvarnished.

Another beat of silence passed. Then—

“Maybe one day... for someone else.”

He said it with a softness that sounded like memory. Or regret. Or hope that hadn’t quite died yet.

M!Y/n turned his head, the stiff pillow rustling beneath him. He couldn’t see Stanley’s face from his angle—not fully—but he didn’t need to. He could read him in the weight of the words, in the way his shoulders lifted slightly with each breath. That voice, low and rumbling, always said more in absence than in presence.

He wanted to say something back. Something real. But nothing came.

From across the room, Tomaszewski’s cleaning cloth slowed. He fitted the last piece of the scope with a soft click and stared at it for a long moment before murmuring—

“Only thing clean about this war... is the snow.”

No one argued.

Callahan snorted quietly in his blanket but didn’t emerge.

The wind outside whistled again, louder this time, rattling the barracks door like a fist against hollow wood. The cold pressed in, sharper now, but none of them reached for more warmth. Not yet.

M!Y/n exhaled, slow. He closed his eyes, but the darkness behind them brought no peace.

Images stirred too easily: The crates dragged through the snow; The German’s eyes as the rifle was trained on him; The sound the body made when it hit the ground; The silence afterward.

He opened his eyes again.

“We should’ve burned it,” he muttered.

Stanley turned slowly from the window, cigarette now a glowing stub. He flicked the ash into a battered tin on the sill.

“The crate?”

M!Y/n nodded. “The tech. The files. All of it. We should’ve lit a match and watched it burn to hell.”

Callahan groaned, voice muffled by his blanket. “Jesus, you don’t burn intelligence, mate. We pass it up the chain. Let people smarter than us make sense of it.”

M!Y/n shifted, sitting up slightly now, blanket pooling at his waist.

“And if they build something worse with it?”

No answer.

The silence this time was different.

He saw Stanley’s face now—half-shadowed, lit by the dying ember of the cigarette—and there was something in his eyes. Not fear. But something like... ache. Deep and buried.

He moved toward his cot.

Their cots were side by side, not by accident. Always had been, ever since the unit first formed. No one said it aloud, but they'd arranged it that way. Like muscle memory. Like instinct.

He dropped onto the mattress with a grunt, resting back with a mirrored motion—arms folded behind his head, eyes on the ceiling.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Then Stanley murmured, voice barely above a whisper—

“Guess that’s who we are now.”

Callahan chuckled dryly from his blanket. “Now?”

Another pause.

Tomaszewski stood, crossed the room like a ghost, and settled onto his cot with robotic fluidity. He lay down facing the wall.

“Then we break it again,” he said, eyes still open. “If they build something worse... we break it again.”

The way he said it made M!Y/n’s skin crawl. Not because it was wrong. But because it was true.

He swallowed.

Turned his head slightly on the pillow. Stanley’s profile was just a few feet away, framed in darkness. The flicker of something stirred in his chest—not new, but sharp.

“You ever think,” M!Y/n asked quietly, “what we’ll be when this ends?”

Stanley didn’t answer at first. He let the question hang. Then, he rolled onto his side, facing M!Y/n fully now.

“Don’t think it ends for us.”

His voice was too close. Too quiet. And M!Y/n felt it settle behind his ribs.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Me neither.”

Their eyes met in the dark, just for a moment. Just enough.

There was something in the space between them. An unspoken thing. Not fragile, but untested. Pressed flat beneath years of dirt and ash. War didn't leave room for softness. But sometimes—on nights like this—there was almost room.

Stanley’s voice came again, even softer—

“You warm enough?”

M!Y/n blinked.

The question wasn’t casual. Not really.

He hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah.”

A pause.

“You sure?”

M!Y/n turned toward him fully now. Just enough to see him clearer. The hardened lines of his face. The small furrow between his brows. The concern, not spoken, but there.

“Yeah,” he said again. But softer. “I’m sure.”

Stanley looked at him a second longer. Then nodded. Settled back onto his cot.

“Alright.”

M!Y/n watched the rise and fall of his chest.

“Thanks,” he murmured, voice barely audible.

He wasn’t sure what he meant by it.

Stanley didn’t reply. But the way his breathing slowed—intentionally—was answer enough.

And M!Y/n, strangely, found his eyes closing again.

This time, the images didn’t press quite so hard.

The wind still howled outside, but it sounded farther away.

Somewhere, quietly, something in him had thawed. Just a little. Just enough.

Chapter Text

Location: Southern Germany, near Salzburg – October 22nd, 1946

Operation SHATTERGLASS – Follow-up Directive

The dawn crept into the Bavarian woods like an unwelcome guest, sluggish and gray, pressing its pale hands against the frost-slicked earth. Above, the sky hung low, bruised with the color of old storm wounds. Shrouded in a thick veil of mist, the jagged silhouettes of the Alps loomed over the forest like ancient sentinels, silent and unmoved. Pines stood rigid beneath the weight of hoarfrost, their branches etched in lacework ice, while the air itself carried a brittle hush, disturbed only by the occasional croak of a raven or the scurry of unseen claws threading through underbrush.

In the far distance, from somewhere beyond the dense copse of fir and ash, the cry of a locomotive echoed through the hills. It was a low, drawn-out wail, mournful and alien, as though the land itself were remembering something it longed to forget. It cut clean through the silence of the valley—a relic in motion, the steel ghost of a war that had supposedly ended.

Echo Squad had been moving through this terrain for ten days now. Ten days of cold beds, colder meals, and the ceaseless awareness that though the maps said otherwise, the war hadn’t ended. Not really. Not for them. And not for the remnants of the Black Root.

What was left of the once-fractured Nazi resistance had reformed under new shadows, quieter now, deadlier in its silence. Black Root, as intelligence had dubbed it, was no longer a name shouted across war rooms. It was whispered. Ominous, ghostly. And it had led Echo Squad into the mountains, into the rot and ruin of a conflict that refused to die.

Corporal Callahan exhaled a sigh through gritted teeth, breath fogging in front of him before dissipating into the frozen air. He crouched low in a shallow depression near the railbed, brush and frost clinging to the shoulders of his jacket like persistent fingers. His fingers, pale and scarred, brushed snow off the receiver of his Sten gun. The metal glistened slick with condensation, cold enough to numb his knuckles.

"Why the hell would anyone move matériel by train in postwar Bavaria?" he muttered to no one in particular, his voice half-buried in the folds of his wool scarf. "Feels like strapping a red flare to your ass and praying the Allies are taking a nap."

Perched above the tracks on a natural ridge of rock and root, Stanley didn’t look away from the world beyond his binoculars. Recon man. Pathfinder. The quietest of them, and maybe the deadliest. He adjusted the dials with gloved fingers, squinting against the distant haze.

"Unless they’ve got someone who knows how to keep the flare hidden," he said evenly, "or worse, someone who knows where we aren’t looking."

The valley below lay in partial shadow, nestled between steep inclines and the ragged skeletons of dead trees. At its heart, nestled like a tumor in the landscape, squatted an old switching station. Prewar construction. German Imperial Rail. The kind of place that should've rotted into irrelevance. And yet—

The building sagged under decades of wear. Wooden beams bent under the weight of snow and neglect. Stone foundations were mottled with moss and grime. Its roof dipped to one side, and several windows had long ago surrendered to age or vandalism. But within those fractured walls, life still flickered.

A soft orange glow pulsed from a window at the side—steady, unnatural, unmistakably artificial. Not firelight. Not candle.

Generator.

Tomaszewski confirmed it all from his overwatch post halfway up a southern knoll, nestled between frost-coated rocks and a fallen pine. His rifle rested on a makeshift platform, scope steady.

"Two confirmed. Possibly a third behind cover. One smokes on the platform—regular intervals, nervous tells. Another inside. I see movement through the slit on the north side. Gaslight’s steady. Generator’s operational, but it’s isolated. Not grid-fed," he reported calmly into the field radio strapped to his chest. "No insignias. Civilian-cut coats. But they’re armed. And not in a way that says self-defense."

Down in the scrub a few meters back, M!Y/n crouched beside a crumpled satchel, the squad's topographic map spread open across his knees. The corners were pinned with stones, his gloved hands pressing gently along the old, yellowed creases. He wasn’t the oldest in the unit, but he moved like he carried twice their weight. That was the price of command earned by circumstance.

He followed the snaking path of the rail line with a calloused finger, tracing it east. Salzburg lay just beyond the range. American-controlled territory.

"They’re pushing toward Salzburg," he said, his voice low, shaped by tension. Not panic. Calculation. "If their schedule holds, they’ll cross the zone perimeter in forty-eight hours. Maybe less."

Stanley turned slightly, brushing pine needles from his shoulder, never lowering the binoculars. "Unless we intercept."

Callahan snorted, more a bark than a laugh. "So what, we’re train robbers now? Robin Hood with SMGs?"

M!Y/n gave the barest hint of a smile. It never reached his eyes. "We’re not hitting the train. Not yet."

He leaned closer to the map, eyes flicking from line to mark, then toward the railbed below.

"Tomaszewski," he called softly into the radio, "I want scopes on both approaches. Two hundred meters out, both directions. If a fox limps across that railbed, I want to know."

"Understood. Adjusting position."

Already Tomaszewski was on the move, ghosting through the slope like smoke.

M!Y/n turned to Callahan. "Rig the staircase at the station. Nothing heavy. Just enough to collapse it once we’re done. We need them alive long enough to talk. After that..."

Callahan raised a brow. "Soft touch, huh?"

M!Y/n didn’t flinch. "We’re not here for kills. We’re here for trails."

Stanley finally lowered his binoculars, narrowing his eyes. "And what if they don’t talk?"

The quiet that followed wasn’t accidental. It was heavy. Expectant. The cold seemed to sink a little deeper into the soil.

M!Y/n glanced toward the station again. His jaw was tight, the line of his mouth sharp as cut steel.

"They always talk. It’s just a question of how much they care about keeping their teeth."

17:12 hours – Switching Station, Southern Germany

The world had grown old and cold by the time twilight spilled its final breath across the Bavarian wilderness. The snow-tipped treetops glistened like frozen fire beneath the last gasps of the sun, streaks of orange and crimson caught in the needles of black firs and pines. The light died slowly over the horizon, not with a blaze but with the quiet, stubborn glow of embers refusing to admit defeat. A chill that carried the memory of death crept through the woods, the kind of cold that seeped through flesh and wool and sinew to lodge itself deep in bone, whispering of things lost and things buried.

Nestled beneath the eaves of the crumbling switchhouse, M!Y/n crouched low, breath feathering into the air in short, controlled puffs. Frost clung to his collar and to the cracked timbers above him. The scent of old soot and machine oil clung to the walls, faint even through the sharp bite of winter. He remained still, his form molded against the warped siding, though his eyes danced—sharp, ever-moving, tracking every flicker of movement and shadow beyond the narrow slits of broken windows.

Beside him, Stanley hovered with the tension of a blade drawn halfway from its sheath. His fingers twitched near his belt, brushing the handle of the knife sheathed there. He didn’t need orders. He didn’t need prompts. His body was tuned to danger like a wire waiting to snap.

Inside, a dim lantern swayed with a sickly rhythm, casting light the color of old teeth onto soot-blackened walls. Shadows drifted across the rotted interior like spirits with unfinished stories, flickering and stretching in unnatural shapes.

Then, the static.

A crackle. A stutter. Words, clipped and sharp. The harsh rasp of German code-speech, spat into the stale air.

Stanley’s eyes sharpened like drawn steel. He leaned in, angling his head toward the narrow split in the timber where the sound slithered through. "They’re transmitting," he whispered, voice taut as wire.

M!Y/n shifted, just enough to hear better. "Morse?"

Stanley shook his head once, short and grim. "No. Ciphered. Numeric pattern. Phrasebook protocol. Wehrmacht style. Military. And practiced."

M!Y/n clenched his jaw. "Shit."

Movement inside caught their eyes. Four men now, shadows stepping into place as the light turned slower, steadier. One was young—too young. Slender and uncertain, barely more than a boy. His shoulders carried no weight yet, his hands unsure. The other three—older, harder—bore that haunted stillness particular to men who’d long since crossed a threshold and burned the bridge behind them. There was no remorse in them. Just survival.

One of the older men hauled a canvas-draped crate across the room, boots thudding on creaking planks. The crate sagged with unseen weight. Not wires. Not transmitters. Something denser. Paper? Steel?

Something meant to last.

Then came the whistle—a short, shrill interruption that split the air from outside the switchhouse. Not alarmed. Not alert. Casual. Routine. A signal. A guard on patrol.

Stanley caught the direction instantly. His body tensed, but his eyes never blinked.

M!Y/n nodded once. "Stanley."

That was all it took.

The recon specialist moved like smoke—one moment there, the next gone. Swallowed by snow and dusk. A whisper leaving the world.

Seconds ticked by. The cold deepened.

Then—a sound.

Crack.

Low. Muffled. The unmistakable cough of a suppressed shot. Efficient. Final.

A body hit the snow beyond the edge of the building, a silent ruin collapsing into the frost. No shout. No second call. Just the return of that long-held hush, deeper now. Hungrier.

M!Y/n stood, silent as a blade drawn in the dark, and surged forward.

He hit the front door with his shoulder, rifle raised, breath steady. The interior exploded into view—a world of shadow and firelight and startled faces.

The man at the radio spun, hand halfway to his sidearm.

Too slow.

The barrel of M!Y/n's rifle caught him center mass, the steel gaze of judgment staring down his hesitation.

Behind him, the rear door exploded open with a booted kick. Callahan swept in like a storm with his sidearm raised.

"DOWN! HANDS ON YOUR FUCKING HEADS! MOVE!"

The young one staggered, eyes jerking from crate to door, confusion bleeding into terror. He hesitated.

A mistake.

Stanley returned through the front, spectral and wrathful. He fired into the ceiling with a bang that shook the beams and shed cracked plaster in a dusty rain.

"That wasn’t a suggestion."

It broke them.

Three of the four dropped like marionettes with clipped strings. Arms raised. Eyes wide. The youngest trembled, his lips working over soundless words.

The room stank of sweat, gun oil, fear.

Outside, the field radio hissed. Tomaszewski’s voice cut through, calm and final.

"Rails are clear. No movement. You’re alone."

M!Y/n strode across the ruined floor, wrenched the transmitter from its mount and hurled it into the wall. It shattered, the voice within snuffed like a candle beneath glass.

He dropped to one knee before the crate and drew back the heavy canvas.

Not weapons.

Documents.

Pages. Reams. Folders brittle with age but deadly in content. The red eagle of the Reich stamped across every sheet, though time and blood had faded it to a brown rust.

GEHEIME REICHSSACHE.

Secret Reich Matter.

Blueprints. Engineering diagrams. Transit routes. Train schedules. Schematics for bridge points, chemical depots, fuel silos. Names. Numbers. Codes.

Austria. Hungary. The Sudetenland.

Maps and manifests and plans for a world that should have died with the Reich, but hadn’t. It had merely gone underground.

M!Y/n’s breath stilled as he flipped through them. Not relics. Instructions.

Stanley crouched beside him, his eyes scanning one document, then another. His voice came quiet.

"This wasn’t just survival. They planned for the collapse."

M!Y/n nodded slowly, the pieces knitting together like scar tissue. "This is infrastructure. Coordination. Not desperation."

Callahan moved in, settling beside the youngest prisoner, who had pressed himself against the wall as though trying to vanish into the grain.

"What is this?" Callahan demanded.

Silence.

He leaned closer, letting his voice drop to something cold and mean. "You understand me. I saw your eyes when we came in. Don’t pretend."

Still nothing. The kid stared at the floor, face blank but hands shaking.

M!Y/n stood slowly, the document still clutched in his hand.

"We need to know where this leads. These aren’t the only ones. There’s an entire network buried in these hills."

He turned to Callahan. "Take him outside. Separate. Give him a minute. The cold’ll do some of the talking."

Callahan nodded and hauled the boy up by the collar, dragging him toward the door.

Stanley lingered behind, watching the others with unreadable eyes. "What about the rest?"

M!Y/n looked at the remaining two—older, emptier.

"We hold them. Overnight if we have to. Tomaszewski can rotate watch."

Stanley stepped over the scattered fragments of the broken radio. "They won’t all break."

M!Y/n nodded. "They don’t have to. Just one."

The snow outside had begun to fall again. Soft. Relentless. The kind that buries.

And beneath that falling hush, Echo Squad prepared for the next chapter of a war that refused to end.

Operation SHATTERGLASS was no longer a mission.

It was a warning.

Later That Night – Woods Near the Station

22:51 hours

The forest breathed like an old beast curled tight under a tattered blanket of snow and moonlight. Cold exhaled from the roots, settling deep into the earth, curling in the spaces between trees like smoke. A sharp wind whispered through the canopy of alpine pine, brushing across skeletal branches and brittle leaves, rustling secrets in a tongue too old to name.

Under this fractured ceiling of stars and frost, a small fire flickered low to the ground, sheltered within a crude circle of scavenged iron and half-buried stones. The flame was a deliberate thing—a nervous breath more than a blaze, meant to give warmth without giving them away. It cast long shadows over the snow-covered ground, each one dancing between blackened trunks and soldier-worn boots, slipping like ghosts between the roots.

Echo Squad sat in silence around the flickering core, huddled against the cold with the kind of practiced stillness that only came from exhaustion wrapped in discipline. Words had become sparse these past few days. The kind of silence that blanketed them now wasn’t born from fear or even discretion. It had become something deeper. A language unto itself. One built in shared trauma, unspoken resolve, and the growing weight of what they were uncovering in these woods.

A few meters away, three prisoners knelt in the snow, each one bound with canvas straps torn from their own gear. Their knees were soaked through with melt and blood, their shoulders hunched against a night that offered no warmth. Blindfolds fashioned from oil-stained linen obscured their eyes, stiff with dried sweat and crusted crimson. Two of them—the elder, hardened ones—remained upright, unmoving. They bore the rigid posture of old soldiers or devout fanatics: men who believed in something crueler than death. Their jaws clenched tight, their breath slow and steady.

But the third...

The third was something else entirely.

He was young. Too young to have grown the callus of fanaticism. Nineteen, perhaps twenty. His frame was thin, not yet filled out by war or muscle. There was dirt caked beneath his fingernails, one tooth chipped and stained, and a shaking in his shoulders that had nothing to do with the cold. He flinched when pinecones dropped nearby, jumped when a branch cracked beneath a boot.

His fear wasn’t hidden. It bled through every breath.

And fear, M!Y/n knew, could be shaped.

The squad leader sat across from the youngest prisoner on a crate once filled with .303 rounds, now repurposed into a makeshift stool. He had wrapped his legs in an extra blanket against the creeping frost and held in his gloved hands a grease-stained triangle of oiled paper. Inside, a biscuit—dry, crumbly, old enough to be ration stock from another campaign. He set it carefully in the snow between them.

A gesture.

"What’s your name?" M!Y/n asked. His voice was low. Measured. A sound designed not to startle, but to coax.

There was no reply.

The prisoner’s blindfold twitched slightly as he exhaled. No defiance. Just the edge of uncertainty. M!Y/n studied him in silence. The cracked leather of his boots. The grease-streaked collar of his coat. The unraveling thread on one sleeve. This wasn’t a soldier. Not in any real sense. Not yet.

"You know what happens if you stay quiet," M!Y/n continued. Still calm. Still steady. A truth, not a threat. "We’re not here to play games. And you're not here by mistake. But you don’t strike me as a believer. Not like the others. You haven’t had time to become hollow. That comes later."

He leaned forward slightly, firelight catching in the hard lines of his face.

"Maybe you were recruited. Pressured. Maybe someone convinced you that there was safety in uniform and purpose. But that uniform you're wearing? That purpose? It ends here."

Still no answer. But the boy was listening now. M!Y/n could see the shift—a flicker of attention beneath the blindfold. It was in the way he stilled his breath. The way his chin lifted slightly.

From the treeline, Callahan leaned against a tall pine, arms crossed and sidearm resting easy on his thigh. His breath came out in steady plumes.

"Want me to handle this?" he asked, voice like a saw through old timber. "They always talk once the gloves come off."

"No," M!Y/n said, never taking his eyes off the prisoner. "He needs to talk. Not bleed."

A raven cawed above them, its voice harsh and out of place in the quiet night. The trees held their breath.

M!Y/n motioned. Stanley stepped forward from the darkness and removed the blindfold with the same precision he applied to everything else. The boy blinked rapidly against the sudden light, irises flickering in the fire’s glow. Ice-pale blue, rimmed in red.

"Look at me," M!Y/n said.

The boy's eyes settled, wary, but locked on his.

"You ever hear of Lidice?" M!Y/n asked, voice soft.

The boy said nothing.

"Or Oradour-sur-Glane?"

Still no reply.

"Probably not. You're too young. But those names? They mean something to men like us. Something ugly. Something unforgettable. The men you ride with? They made those names echo through the ashes."

M!Y/n took the biscuit and broke it in half. The scent was stale, but strong. Grease and oats and survival.

"I know what it’s like," he said. "To be pulled into something you don’t understand. You think loyalty will save you. That if you follow long enough, you’ll find answers. But that path doesn’t end where you think it does."

The boy's eyes didn’t waver. But his breathing had changed. Slower now. Deeper.

"What’s your name?" M!Y/n asked again.

There was silence.

Then, finally—a word. Barely audible.

"Erich."

M!Y/n nodded once. It was a new name. Not one they had heard before. That made it interesting.

He offered the broken biscuit across the snow. Erich hesitated. Then, with bound hands, reached and took it gently.

"Erich," M!Y/n said. "We know about the crates. We know what was in the station. But we don’t know what comes next. You do. And you know what they’ll do if they think you talked."

Erich glanced at the other two prisoners. Still kneeling. Still blindfolded. But listening.

"They’ll kill me," he whispered.

"They won’t get the chance," Callahan said, stepping closer. The firelight caught on his sidearm.

M!Y/n nodded. "You talk to us, I keep you breathing. You vanish somewhere safe. You don’t talk, and this thing rolls right over you."

Erich looked down. Swallowed. His lips parted.

"Tulln," he said. "Four days. An old rail junction. Just outside town. They're moving more than crates."

M!Y/n leaned in. "What else?"

Erich hesitated. His voice cracked.

"People."

Silence fell like a guillotine.

Even the wind seemed to hush.

Callahan muttered something sharp under his breath. Stanley tensed.

"How many?" M!Y/n asked.

"I don’t know," Erich said. "Dozens. Maybe more. They come at night. Women. Children. They don’t leave."

M!Y/n closed his eyes briefly. The tightness in his chest wasn’t rage. Not yet. It was worse. It was understanding. It was knowing the pattern, the machinery, the old echo rising again in a new shell.

"They’re not rebuilding for war," Stanley said darkly. "They’re rebuilding for slavery."

Callahan kicked snow into the fire, sending sparks into the night.

"Goddamn lunatics."

M!Y/n stood slowly, his breath steaming in the cold.

He turned toward the woods beyond the fire—toward the dark line of trees and the deeper dark beyond them.

This wasn’t postwar fallout anymore. This wasn’t just scraps and ghosts.

They had found something worse.

Operation SHATTERGLASS was no longer a cleanup. It was a reckoning.

Chapter Text

Location: Tulln, Austria – October 26th, 1946

Operation SHATTERGLASS, Phase II – Codename “Kestrel”

Tulln reeked of riverwater, rust, and coal dust—an old industrial stench baked into the bones of the town. The Danube moved sluggishly nearby, black as oil and cold as the silence that gripped the streets. Tulln wasn’t just quiet; it was hollow. It had the look of something left behind, like an empty shell where something used to live. A town caught between memory and erasure, hunched against the riverbank like a dying thing.

The facades were pockmarked, crumbling, half-heartedly patched with wartime cement. Buildings leaned on each other as though too weary to stand alone. Windows yawned open in dark sockets, and doors hung loose on rusted hinges. The tracks into the town were silent. No trains. No sirens. No barking dogs. The quiet wasn’t peace—it was aftermath.

M!Y/n felt it first. That prickle under the skin. The kind of quiet that meant something had happened here. Something that never truly left.

"Eyes up," he muttered, adjusting the sling of his rifle. The muzzle tapped against his chest as he took point behind Stanley, whose steps were precise, predatory. Stanley never moved like a man—he moved like a threat. All coiled muscle and silent purpose, scanning every angle from beneath the rim of his dull green helmet.

Callahan was in the center, toothpick working between his teeth like a metronome. His sidearm was close to hand, holster unlatched. He had a habit of talking when the nerves hit, but not tonight. Tonight, even Callahan was quiet.

Tomaszewski brought up the rear, radio pack strapped tight to his shoulders. He murmured to himself in Polish, low like a prayer or a curse. Maybe both. Boots crunching damp gravel, gear cinched down, no wasted noise. Just the sound of breath and the distant, ancient whisper of the Danube.

They moved through what had once been a street. A bakery loomed to the left, its sign scorched black, windows spiderwebbed and dusted with soot. On the doorstep: a child’s doll, naked, headless, weather-eaten. One arm outstretched like it had tried to crawl away.

Farther on, a church with no roof. The bell tower sheared off. Only the rusted husk of the bell remained, half-submerged in rubble.

Then a railway depot board, still bearing the schedule from 1944.

"I don’t like this," Callahan said under his breath.

"You never do," Tomaszewski replied. "That’s why you’re still breathing."

Stanley raised his fist. Halt.

Ahead, the depot. It squatted at the edge of the town like a sleeping animal—low and mean. Corrugated walls streaked with old shrapnel damage. Fence line twisted in places like something had crawled through. Watchtowers barely stood anymore, one leaning to the east like it had been too drunk to fight the wind.

But there was light.

Pale. Sickly. Electric.

Not from a generator.

From the grid.

"Confirmed connection," Stanley whispered, barely audible. His voice was always clipped, always dry. "Someone’s running logistics."

M!Y/n opened his jacket and unfolded the recon map with a gloved hand. His thumb traced the layout—edges inked by Allied recon planes, the contours old but usable.

"East approach. Through the drainage gully. We hit the pump station and split. Tomaszewski up top for overwatch. Callahan, take the left wing. Stanley, you’re with me."

"What about exfil?" Tomaszewski asked.

"Same way. Unless it goes loud. Then we torch it and fall back to the southern treeline."

They all nodded. A shared language spoken with glances.

The wind shifted. The Danube hissed behind them, dragging along debris.

The gully was thick with mold and the sour stench of oil. Concrete wept moisture. A film of muck coated the shallow trickle of water, which lapped at M!Y/n’s boots as he crouched low. The east wall loomed above them, rusted metal panels groaning with wind.

Stanley worked fast. Two charges, expertly placed beneath a rusted grate. He checked his watch, then tapped twice.

A breath.

Then the pop of the grate lifting.

They slipped inside.

The interior swallowed them. Machinery slept in the gloom—hulking, monstrous shapes. Metal presses. Welders. Conveyor lines. But everything was too clean. Oiled. Maintained. The workbenches bore recent stains. The belts still whispered softly, idle but powered. A half-lit control panel blinked green.

Paperwork was sorted neatly. Clipboards. Logbooks. Typewriters still loaded with inked ribbon.

Then came the crates.

Dozens. Lined in perfect order. Painted labels in crisp German: INDUSTRIEBEDARF.

But M!Y/n knew that lie.

He pried one open with a crowbar. The wax seal cracked. Inside: straw, damp and sour. Beneath that, gray cloth. Then flesh.

A girl.

Pale as milk. Skin too clean. Eyes open, staring through him. Not panicked. Not pleading.

Just empty.

Stanley looked away, jaw working. "Mother of God."

The comm in M!Y/n’s ear buzzed.

"North wing's clear," Callahan said. "But I got blood. Dried. Not old. Trail heads west."

"Follow it. If there's a command node, we need it."

"Copy."

Then Tomaszewski, calm but quick: "Movement in the tower. Single target. Binos, no weapon. Watching the river."

"Scout or spotter?"

"Doesn’t look trained. Could be local. Could be a runner."

"Hold fire unless he bolts."

Stanley nudged another crate. The lid was cracked.

Inside, more bodies. Smaller.

Three children, asleep or unconscious. No blood. No bruises. Just too still.

"Not transfers," Stanley whispered. "They're being stored."

M!Y/n swallowed bile. "It's a holding facility."

A desk. A cot. A cracked porcelain washbasin.

The map pinned to the wall showed more than Austria. Hungary. Romania. Pins marked junctions, arrows branching outward. Not converging. Spreading.

On the desk: a folder.

Pages of names. Ethnicity. Age. Occupation. Notes in German, meticulous.

A drawer slid open. Syringes. Labels: Sedativum, Barbiturat.

He took photos, every page. Then keyed his mic. "Command node located. Pulling now."

"Copy," came M!Y/n’s voice.

That was when the depot stirred.

Bootsteps. Laughter. Male voices. French, not German. Slurred, cruel.

Stanley and M!Y/n ducked behind a press machine.

Three men entered, rifles swinging casually. Mercenaries, not soldiers. Loose gear, wrong postures.

Stanley signaled. Wait.

Then Callahan moved.

Silencer. One shot. A second. A third.

The mercs dropped like marionettes with cut strings.

"Ground floor clear," Callahan said. "But there’s movement upstairs. Radio room."

Tomaszewski: "Two heat sigs. One's pacing. Other hasn’t moved."

"Let’s finish it."

Second floor smelled of ozone and cordite. A long hallway led to a locked door.

M!Y/n kicked it open.

Two men inside. One older, hair slicked back, eyes sunken. The other barely twenty.

The elder lunged for the radio.

M!Y/n fired.

The shot took his hand. He screamed, crumpling to the ground, blood fountaining.

"Next move costs you the other."

The younger fell to his knees, hands high, face white.

Tomaszewski arrived, breathing hard. "River patrol. Five minutes out. East bank."

"Then we burn it."

M!Y/n grabbed the older man by the collar. "You understand English?"

A nod. Barely.

He hauled him down the stairs, across the depot floor. To the crates.

"You see this? Look at them. Children. Starved. Drugged. Left in boxes."

No reply.

But the tremble in the man's body betrayed him. Fear radiated off him like heat.

M!Y/n released him. Let him drop.

"Tomaszewski, light it. All of it. We leave nothing."

Stanley moved without a word, prepping thermite.

They would disappear into the river's shadow.

But Tulln would burn.

October 26th – 21:47 hours

Abandoned Orchard Outside Tulln

The orchard had long since surrendered to time and rot.

What had once been orderly rows of fruit-bearing trees was now a graveyard of limbs—skeletal, brittle, twisted with age and neglect. Each tree reached skyward like a supplicant with shattered wrists, their bark cracked open like old scars. The wind moved through the branches with a hollow sound, rustling the dead leaves that clung stubbornly to life, even in decay. The smell of sweet, fermenting apples hung low to the ground, mingling with the sharper, metallic tang of the Danube just east of their position. The air was cold. Damp. And still.

Beneath the crooked silhouette of a half-dead apple tree, M!Y/n lay in a shallow depression, elbows buried in the cold soil, binoculars pressed to his face with gloved hands. The metal rims bit into his cheek with quiet cruelty, but he didn’t flinch. He hadn’t flinched in hours. His whole body was a single wire pulled tight, every breath controlled, measured—fogging faintly against the lenses.

They'd been watching the rail depot for twenty-seven minutes.

And in all that time, M!Y/n hadn’t seen anything he liked.

Beyond the orchard’s ruined edge, just past the thorny tangle of overgrown underbrush, the depot stretched outward like a wound—old Reich steel and stone half-swallowed by weeds and silence. A network of rust-choked tracks divided the landscape like scars. Three boxcars—silent, inert—sat hunched on the main line, their corroded frames catching the jaundiced flicker of a single overhead lamp. That light buzzed in a pattern that didn’t match the wind, almost like it was trying to speak.

A flatbed truck idled at the platform. Its engine purred low and steady, like something alive in the dark, exhaling slow streams of exhaust that curled and dissipated into the cold night like smoke from a dying fire.

The depot wasn’t abandoned. Not tonight.

Figures moved along the edge of the light—guards, maybe eight total, drifting in casual arcs, their movements sluggish and unhurried. Some wore the shredded remains of Wehrmacht uniforms; others were bundled in mismatched coats, scarves, leather belts cinched over fatigue trousers two sizes too large. Post-war scavengers. Leftovers. Armed, but sloppy. Not the men who worried M!Y/n most.

His eyes shifted—away from the patrol routes, the guards, the truck—to the shadows just beyond the outer chain-link fence.

There, half-concealed behind a listing cargo container, a cluster of human shapes huddled together in the dark. Shapes too thin. Too still. Arms held close to narrow torsos, heads down, some kneeling.

Prisoners.

M!Y/n’s lips barely moved as he exhaled, voice low as he keyed his comm.
“Visual confirmation. Ten to twelve noncombatants outside. Possibly more inside. Civilians. Prisoners.”

A beat, then Callahan’s voice crackled over the channel, sharp and efficient:
“Copy that. Same from my angle on the east ridge. I’ve got crates marked Industriebedarf. Standard cover loadout.”

M!Y/n’s jaw tensed.

Beside him, Stanley lay prone, rifle nestled into the hollow of his shoulder. He was as silent as the orchard—still, composed, calculating. His breath didn’t fog. His trigger hand barely twitched. But his presence was unmistakable. Tangible.

There was something in the way Stanley existed beside him that steadied M!Y/n more than he would ever admit. It wasn’t just competence. It wasn’t just loyalty. It was him—the way Stanley moved, the way he breathed, the way he never had to ask what came next. He was a constant, in a world made entirely of fractures.

“You’re tensing your grip again,” Stanley murmured, voice just above the wind.

M!Y/n blinked. He looked down at his hands. The leather of his gloves stretched tight across his knuckles, pale and bloodless beneath.

He forced his fingers to relax. “I’m fine.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t,” Stanley said. A pause, soft and unreadable. “Just noticed.”

M!Y/n turned his head slightly, enough to catch the profile of Stanley’s face in the moonlight—hard angles softened by night. He hadn’t shaved. A line of stubble traced his jaw, and his mouth was pressed into that calm, unreadable line M!Y/n had come to know too well. The man was impossible to read, even in moments like this. Especially in moments like this.

Their eyes met. Just for a moment. And in that narrow window of silence, something passed between them—something neither of them had ever spoken aloud. A tether. A shared memory. A wound.

Then it was gone.

M!Y/n looked away first, adjusting his binoculars.

Stanley shifted slightly, sliding the bolt on his rifle with practiced ease, eyes never leaving the depot. “We’re running short on moonlight.”

“We move at 22:00,” M!Y/n said, voice lower now, quieter. “Infil point’s the north drainage gully. Same route we mapped earlier.”

“I know.” Stanley’s voice was low. Measured. “I just like hearing you say it.”

M!Y/n’s heart skipped—just once. And it pissed him off.

He cleared his throat, masked it with a muttered curse. “Don’t get cute on me, Stanley. Not tonight.”

Stanley didn’t smile. But he didn’t need to. It was in the way his eyes lingered.

“You need someone to watch your blind side,” he said. “I’m just reminding you I’m still here.”

“You’re always here.”

A beat passed. The kind that stretches too long to be casual.

Then Stanley looked back to his rifle. “Damn right I am.”

21:59 hours

The silo tower loomed over the depot like a sentinel long past its prime—flaking paint, wind-whipped metal creaking in the dark—but it still offered the best view for nearly a kilometer in any direction. Tomaszewski lay flat on his belly at the very top, his coat darkened with oil stains, his breath white in the October air as it hissed through clenched teeth. The chill gnawed at the tip of his nose and fingers, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t afford to.

“Two on the catwalk,” he said finally, the words crackling in M!Y/n’s ear, dry and mechanical. “Sniper nest west tower. Rest are inside. No rotation pattern. Minimal readiness.”

M!Y/n didn’t answer right away. He stood in the shadow of a buckled warehouse wall, the faint glow of his watch face reflecting off the interior of his sleeve. A quiet click echoed off the inside of his skull as he pressed the button once. Time synced. Breathing shallow. Focus absolute.

“Window?” he asked, voice low, almost bored—but not really.

“Six minutes between outer patrol passes,” Tomaszewski replied. “First just cleared. You’re in the gap.”

“Copy.” M!Y/n unfolded the schematic, drawn in pencil and charcoal, and spread it across his thigh with a gloved hand. A crude map of the depot’s internal layout: fuel lines, drainage channels, fuseboxes. Every inch of it memorized, but he checked anyway. Old habits.

“Stanley, with me. We breach through the northeast conduit. Callahan, you’re on lights. Hit the fusebox on signal.”

A pause crackled in his earpiece before Callahan’s voice slid in like the edge of a knife. “Been waiting to black out this circus all damn night.”

M!Y/n rolled his shoulder, adjusting the rifle strap against his chest. “No dead if we can help it. Some of them might be pressed into it.”

“And if they shoot first?” Stanley asked from behind him, his voice low, even—like he wasn’t asking a question but naming a condition.

M!Y/n turned slightly, just enough to meet Stanley’s eyes in the pale light filtering through the rusted gaps in the siding. Their gazes held—quiet, tight, knowing.

“Then,” M!Y/n said, “we end it.”

Stanley gave the smallest nod. His mouth tightened, not quite a smile, not quite anything else. There was something in the way he held M!Y/n’s gaze for that extra second, like he was anchoring him. Like he had to.

Then he turned, and they vanished into the dark.

The blackout came on a whisper and vanished like breath.

A single bright flash blinked out from the eastern ridge—the signal—and then the depot fell into suffocating blackness, as though someone had snuffed the world out one bulb at a time. The yard’s floodlights, old and overworked, didn’t flicker—they died. A stuttering hiss of resistance, then nothing. Darkness reclaimed the space in heavy waves.

Shadows came alive.

Echo Squad moved like phantoms, gliding across frost-crusted gravel, their boots barely making sound. The moon was little more than a sliver behind thick clouds, but it was enough. Their movements were coordinated, practiced—drilled so deep that they didn’t need to see each other to know where everyone was.

M!Y/n led the breach.

He slipped between two rusted boxcars, breath controlled, rifle close, every step deliberate. Cold metal kissed his fingers through worn gloves. He was the first through the station house door, the hinges groaning with ancient protest as it opened just wide enough to admit him. He ducked low, sweeping the interior with his weapon, his senses tuned to vibration, to breath, to the press of time in his ears.

No sound but the river coughing softly in the distance.

Then—movement. A figure lunged from the dark, mid-thirties, military jacket zipped up to the chin, patches long since peeled away. Eyes wide, mouth open, scrambling toward a radio that spat static like it was choking.

“Don’t,” M!Y/n said, voice flat but hard.

The man froze mid-step, hand raised.

Outside, from somewhere above, the rifle crack rang out—one clean shot, sharp as a tuning fork. Then silence again.

M!Y/n didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. Tomaszewski never missed.

By the time Stanley joined him, the station house had already been swept. Callahan’s second flash lit the eastern fence line like lightning, and within minutes, the dock was locked down. The depot was sealed. Comms jammed. Escape impossible.

All that remained was the holding shed.

The door was heavy, reinforced steel warped from age and heat, maybe fire. M!Y/n pressed his shoulder to it, tested the hinges, then kicked low—once, twice. It groaned, then gave. The hinges shrieked. The smell hit them before the light did.

Oil. Piss. Old rot. Something like burnt rubber under it all.

The shed’s interior was no bigger than a grain silo—metal-sided, windowless, airless. The light from M!Y/n’s flashlight swept over the inside in thin arcs, catching faces, limbs, motionless forms.

Seventeen people. Maybe more. Huddled on the concrete floor in nests of filthy blankets. No beds. No padding. Some were lying down. Others were curled against the walls. All silent. All still.

Striped uniforms. Hollow cheeks. Blank eyes.

A woman sat closest to the door, back braced against the wall. She clutched a child to her chest, arms locked so tightly that her skin had gone white beneath the pressure. Her mouth hung open slightly. No sound came out.

An older man sat nearby, legs bent awkwardly beneath him, a faint blue number still tattooed into the parchment of his arm.

M!Y/n lowered his weapon. Slowly. As if drawing it had been an insult.

He spoke in slow, precise German, his voice pitched soft and low. “Wir bringen euch hier raus. Ihr seid jetzt sicher.”
(We’re here to get you out. You’re safe now.)

Nobody moved.

Behind him, Stanley stood just inside the threshold, his silhouette hard against the pale spill of light. His eyes swept the room, fast but careful. Not judgmental. Not cold. Just… registering. Measuring how long they had before fear became panic. Before the room collapsed under its own weight.

“We need to move,” Stanley said quietly. “We’re exposed here.”

Callahan stepped in next, hauling a half-shredded sack full of ration bars. He knelt near the woman and set them down without ceremony.

“They can’t walk far,” he said, softer than usual. “Not like this. We’ll need wheels.”

M!Y/n keyed his comm. “Tomaszewski. Transport?”

“Small train crew coming in. Two cars. Forty minutes.”

He turned to Stanley again, and this time, he didn’t mask the question in his face.

“Can we hold the yard that long?”

Stanley’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. “We’ve held worse.”

By 23:00, the cold had become a knife—thin and persistent, sliding between layers of clothing and slicing at the skin with every breath. Frost began to cling to the metal siding of the admin building they’d repurposed into a shelter. Someone had managed to scavenge a rusted-out stove from a side shack and get it running off soaked wood and industrial alcohol. The fire hissed and smoked, but it gave heat.

Blankets were passed out. Thin, olive-drab things that barely covered the knees of the grown men and women they were handed to. Still, they were taken with shaking hands.

Callahan distributed ration bars like they were rations of gold. His jokes came quieter now, more muttered. “Chocolate field bricks. Break a tooth, win a prize.”

His hand trembled when he offered one to the old man.

Tomaszewski stayed in the silo, a distant shape in the dark, watching the east line.

M!Y/n walked the perimeter alone.

Each step on gravel crunched like glass underfoot. His breath came visible, short bursts rising and curling over his shoulder. He checked every charge, every exit, every shadow. He wasn’t looking for threats—he was making sure he hadn’t missed any.

When he crouched by the north fence, double-checking the wiring on a remote charge, he heard boots behind him.

He didn’t need to look.

“Stanley,” he said, more exhale than voice.

The other man stopped a step behind him. The silence stretched for a beat. Then another.

Something brushed M!Y/n’s shoulder.

A flask.

He turned. Frowned. “Where the hell did you—?”

“Station chief’s desk drawer.”

M!Y/n took it. Unscrewed the cap. Sniffed.

Cheap. Brutal. Real.

He drank.

It burned the whole way down. Settled like memory in his gut.

Then Stanley spoke, softer than before. “You’re still thinking about the church, aren’t you?”

M!Y/n didn’t answer right away. He stared out at the dark, at the river’s faint glint beyond the wire. His breath ghosted in front of him.

“Every time we hit one of these places…” He closed his eyes. “I think about Morales. I think about the boy in the bell tower. I think about the look in his eyes when we told him we couldn’t stay.”

Stanley didn’t interrupt.

“And I wonder if we missed someone again. If there’s another kid in another room, praying to a god he doesn’t believe in that we show up.”

He looked over.

Stanley’s gaze didn’t falter.

“You sure we didn’t?” M!Y/n asked.

A pause. The world held its breath.

Then: “Yeah. I’m sure.”

M!Y/n didn’t nod. Didn’t move.

But something in him loosened.

The wind bit at them both, and they stood there together—silent, close, warm in spite of it all.

He passed the flask back. Their fingers brushed.

It lingered.

And for the first time in hours, it felt like there was something after the mission. Something real. Something human.

October 27th – 01:12 hours

The trucks came like ghosts.

No headlights. No fanfare. Just the low growl of engines crawling up the frostbitten road, headlights dimmed to slits against the stillness. The fog—thick and pearlescent—coiled around their wheels, creeping up like a thing alive, dragging its fingers over rubber and steel, pooling in the ruts of the yard like breath caught in a chest too long held.

M!Y/n stood at the edge of it all, just beyond the last line of rusted boxcars, boots crunching against brittle gravel rimed in silver. The depot behind him was coming apart at the seams. He could feel it happening even before he turned to look—the shift in the air, in the rhythm of movement. Things were unraveling. Systems dismantled. A place that had been a machine of suffering only hours ago now peeled open, its insides gutted by the slow, clinical hands of men in long coats and state-issued boots.

Allied medics moved with silent efficiency, pouring out of the first three trucks like blood from a reopened wound. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Each one carried the weight of a thousand ghosts on their shoulders and still moved like they had another thousand yet to tend to. Bandages were unpacked. Blankets unfurled. Names were asked in clipped tones and scribbled in notepads with hands that shook just a little too much to hide it.

The civilians emerged like smoke.

Some limped. Some were half-carried by Echo Squad and the medics who met them in the frost. Some had to be lifted outright—too weak to walk, too hollowed out by what had been done to them behind locked shed doors and under steel roofs. There was no weeping, no panic. Just silence. A thick, graveyard silence that pressed down on everything like snow waiting to fall. It was the silence of survival. The silence of people who had learned the cost of being heard.

They moved in groups of twos and threes, sometimes less, wrapped in salvaged blankets and military coats too large for their frames. Children clung to thin arms. Elderly men shuffled behind wide, unblinking eyes. And all of them were quiet. Even the smallest among them.

As if any sound at all might wake the depot’s ghosts.

M!Y/n kept watching.

The horizon behind them had begun to bruise—deep purples giving way to the first hints of iron grey. The faintest sliver of color bled across the clouds, painting the sky with the thinnest wash of pre-dawn. Cold seeped into his bones like old sorrow, settling behind the ribs and under his skin. The kind of cold that didn’t leave with movement. The kind that stayed.

His gloves were stiff with blood. Not fresh. Not quite dry either. He could still feel the tack of it in the seams, the way it had soaked through fabric and leather and flesh. Some of it wasn’t his. He didn’t look down to check. Didn’t need to. He remembered where it came from.

From the man who wouldn’t drop his rifle.
From the boy with the shaking hands.
From the silence that always followed gunfire.

Behind him, the depot groaned beneath the slow churn of dismantlement. The orders had come hard and fast—Top Brass had no interest in letting Black Root’s logistical heart keep beating, not even for a moment. Dismantle. Destroy. Document and disappear. The sidings were already being ripped up, steel rails pulled from ancient concrete like teeth from a corpse. Storage sheds were flattened one by one under the mechanical crush of tracked bulldozers, their wooden walls giving in with brittle snaps. Files—names, numbers, routes, photographs—were boxed and loaded under heavy watch. Not a single scrap left behind.

By sunrise, the only thing that would remain of Tulln’s depot was gravel and memory.

And frost. Always frost.

A presence moved beside him—quiet, unhurried. M!Y/n didn’t turn. Didn’t have to. The weight of it, the familiarity, sank into him before he even registered the shape of a shoulder next to his. Stanley. Solid. Still.

They stood like that for a long time.

No words. No movement. Just the slow collapse of something enormous behind them and the low hush of fog licking at their boots.

Stanley didn’t speak. M!Y/n didn’t either.

In that silence, there was an intimacy no words could match.

It was in the way their shadows stretched together under the pale watch of the halogen towers—long, twin outlines etched into frozen gravel. It was in the way their breaths rose in rhythm, clouds blooming side by side in the still air. The world felt impossibly vast around them, yet they were close enough that M!Y/n could feel the soft heat of Stanley’s arm through both their coats, could smell the faint trace of metal and sweat and smoke that clung to him in a way nothing ever seemed to wash away.

There was comfort in it. But also danger.

A warmth that wasn’t just from body heat. A tether pulled too taut.

He didn’t speak, because if he did—if he acknowledged it aloud, even to himself—it would become real. And in this world, in this mission, real things broke.

Stanley shifted slightly. Just enough to close the distance.

Their shoulders touched.

The contact was light, accidental in the way that wasn’t. Deliberate, measured. M!Y/n’s breath hitched, just for a second. But he didn’t pull away. Didn’t lean in either.

They remained there—shoulder to shoulder, spine to steel—with the silence between them not empty but full.

Full of things unsaid:
The ghosts they hadn’t saved.
The weight of every life traded to get here.
The names they didn’t know but would never forget.
And somewhere beneath all that, buried like an ember in ash—
The hum of something unspoken.
Something tender. And dangerous. And waiting.

Stanley was the one who finally broke the quiet.

"They’ll wipe it clean." His voice was low, rough with cold and something else. "Like it was never here."

M!Y/n didn’t answer for a long time. Just stared out at the trucks, their backs open like metal mouths, swallowing up history one crate at a time.

"That’s the point," he said at last.

"And when they do?" Stanley asked. His tone wasn’t bitter, but it was close. "What happens to us?"

The question lodged somewhere behind M!Y/n’s breastbone.

He didn’t have an answer.

Didn’t want to lie, either.

Instead, he tilted his head toward Stanley. Just enough to see the other man in the grey light. His jaw was tight. Eyes tired but sharp. There was frost at the edge of his lashes, catching in the crease of his brow. He looked like hell.

And he looked like home.

"Same thing that happens every time," M!Y/n said softly. "We move on. We don’t stop. We don’t let it be for nothing."

Stanley’s eyes didn’t leave his.

There was a flicker there—something old and aching and alive. Something that had nothing to do with orders or protocol or the mission. It settled in the space between them, as palpable as breath. M!Y/n felt his pulse skip. Not out of fear. Not out of adrenaline. But something far more dangerous.

Hope.

Stanley looked away first. Down the road, toward the tail end of the convoy disappearing into the thickening fog.

"They’ll forget us, too," he muttered. "Eventually."

"Maybe." M!Y/n’s voice was quieter now, rough with frost and memory. "But not each other."

He didn’t know why he said it. Maybe it was the hour. Maybe it was the way the light stretched out between them like it was trying to hold something together. Or maybe it was because it was true.

Stanley turned back slowly.

And for a moment, M!Y/n thought he might say something—something real, something irreversible. But he didn’t.

Instead, he just reached up and placed a gloved hand on M!Y/n’s shoulder. Firm. Solid. Warm, despite the chill.

A gesture that said everything words couldn’t carry.

They stood like that as the final truck pulled away, its taillights dimming into a smear of red swallowed by the fog.

Until the depot was empty.

Until the sounds died.

Until it was just them.

The silence wasn’t empty now. Not anymore.

And still, they didn’t move.

Chapter Text

Location: Allied Command Outpost "Kestrel," Vienna Sector — October 30th, 1946

The wind prowled along the edges of the outpost, a cold, knife-edged thing that worked its way beneath canvas seams and rattled the metal poles holding the command tent upright. It smelled faintly of rain and something older—old brick, cold stone, maybe the echo of Vienna’s bombed-out streets miles away.

Inside, the air was warmer but stale, the heat from a small oil stove making the damp canvas walls sweat faintly in the early hours. The faint tang of coal smoke seeped in through the tent’s seams, mixing with the omnipresent musk of old paper, oiled weapons, and human weariness.

The report sat in the center of the steel desk like an unwanted guest.

Thirteen stapled pages, stapled poorly—slightly crooked in the top-left corner, the way you could tell the clerk hadn’t been thinking about neatness so much as getting the damn thing onto the major’s desk before his coffee went cold. The typewritten lines leaned slightly forward where the "e" key stuck, some letters darker where the ribbon caught, others faded where the pressure had dropped. Oil stains smudged the paper along the edges, the fingerprints of men who had carried it in through the rain, maybe pausing to shake out their hands before setting it down.

Bold black letters stamped across the top glared like a sentence:

AFTER-ACTION: TULLN DEPOT RAID

CLASSIFIED — SHATTERGLASS PHASE II

M!Y/n didn’t need to read the first word to know what was inside. Reports had a smell. A weight. This one was no exception. It breathed on the desk, alive with what it carried—every typed line a pulse of the mission’s aftermath.

It held casualties in its spine. Coordinates that marked ground already turned over by shovels. Names cut off mid-sentence, never to be finished. Fragments of timelines that didn’t connect anymore. In those pages lay echoes of frosted trainyards and black-clad figures dissolving into fog. The silence of civilians too terrified to scream, their breaths clouding the air like ghosts.

M!Y/n kept his eyes on the report, but his mind was already back there—boots crunching over frost and ballast, the metallic reek of the rails, the stillness just before the shouting started. And then the rush, the exchange of fire, the smell of cordite and fear, and the knowledge that this—this right here—wasn’t in the directive.

Behind him, the tent flap stirred against the wind. He didn’t turn.

Across from him, Major Wexler hunched slightly over the desk, his elbows resting on the metal edge. The man was all edges himself—a frame so lean and drawn it seemed as though the war had carved him down to essentials. His hair was thinning but stubbornly slicked back, his cheekbones sharp enough to cast their own shadows in the lamplight. The lines on his face weren’t the kind earned by laughter.

And the smell—God, the smell—tobacco that had gone stale but never quite left his fingers, his uniform, or the papers he touched. It clung to him like the faint ash-grey of his eyes, like the rumple of his jacket that was somehow still perfectly regulation.

When Wexler spoke, his voice was the scrape of steel dragged across stone.

"Directive Three. Subsection Twelve. No engagement unless confirmation of high-value assets in transport."

The words weren’t a reprimand so much as a recitation, the kind an officer could say without thinking—because the regulations lived in him like bone.

M!Y/n’s fingers curled against his knee under the table. He kept his voice level, but it came out low, rough. "They were moving civilians. Not on any list. But they were there."

That made Wexler look up. The major’s eyes had the glassy fracture of a winter pond—reflecting light, hiding depth, cold all the way through. There was no anger in them, not really. Just a fatigue so deep it had soaked into the marrow, the kind of exhaustion that made a man stop asking the right questions because he already knew the answers.

"No confirmation," Wexler said, and there was a shadow of something—regret, maybe—slipping beneath his tone. "Transfer orders could’ve been forged. What you did could have compromised broader operations—our signals teams are still tracing the fallout."

The words fell into the air like spent shells.

M!Y/n’s jaw tightened. He didn’t raise his voice—never gave them the satisfaction—but there was weight in it, heavy enough to make the desk feel smaller between them. "So what—next time we watch them load the train and do nothing?"

It wasn’t a question so much as an accusation.

Wexler’s sigh was audible, tired in a way that didn’t come from lack of sleep. He folded the report closed like a man who’d just decided he didn’t want to open it again, then leaned back in his chair, fingers steepling in front of him. His thumbs tapped together without rhythm.

"You’re not wrong, Sergeant," he said slowly. "But you’re not right, either. You’re out of bounds. And that makes people nervous."

There it was—that careful balance officers liked to strike, the one that said I see you without ever actually saying I agree with you.

M!Y/n met his gaze. His eyes were steady, the cold kind of steady that didn’t waver, didn’t blink. "Then the right ones should be nervous."

The wind flexed against the canvas, a hollow groan rolling along the seams. Somewhere outside, metal clinked against metal, followed by the low murmur of men’s voices—maintenance or a late convoy coming in. Farther off, a generator coughed and then roared to life, its vibration faint through the frozen ground. The outpost never really slept; it only changed shifts.

Wexler reached for a manila folder, its surface smooth and unmarked save for a black wax seal pressed deep with the sigil of Allied Command Europe. He slid it across the desk with the same deliberate slowness one might use when setting a loaded pistol in front of someone.

The label was clean, typed in block capitals:

OPERATION GLASS HOUND

Sector: Sudetenland — Czechoslovakia Border

"You’re being reassigned. Effective immediately."

The wax cracked softly under M!Y/n’s thumb as he broke the seal. The papers inside were crisp, smelling faintly of ink and starch—new orders, fresh from the machine, still carrying the warmth of the typist’s hands. His eyes moved over the first lines.

Objective: Identify and intercept former Abwehr operatives coordinating post-war insurgency through rural paramilitary networks. High probability of Black Root affiliation.

The name hit like a cold slap. Black Root. The kind of ghost you hoped stayed buried in the rubble, the kind of enemy that didn’t fight for nations anymore—just for the shadow of a cause.

Wexler’s voice came quieter now, but no softer. "We’ve already lost a Czech recon unit in the area. They were supposed to sweep an old depot near Liberec. All we recovered was a single boot and the shattered stock of a Karabiner rifle."

The image bloomed unbidden—snow crusted along an empty boot, the leather cracked, the laces stiff with ice. A rifle stock splintered where a hand had gripped it hard in the last moment. No bodies. Just absence.

"And I’m leading this?"

"You and Echo Squad."

The sound of the generator outside filled the silence that followed.

M!Y/n closed the folder with a slow, deliberate motion.

Somewhere deep inside, the decision had already been made.

November 1st, 1946 – Borderlands, Sudeten Territory

Coordinates Redacted – 06:13 hours

The fog was alive.

It didn’t just hang in the air—it moved, curling in tendrils that licked at the underbrush and coiled low around the roots of the birch trees. It seeped over the forest floor like smoke rolling downriver, pooling in the hollows between frost-coated rocks. Each tendril felt deliberate, purposeful, as if the fog itself was creeping forward to scout ahead of them.

M!Y/n’s boots sank just enough into the frost-hardened earth to let out that faint crunch that only came from ground frozen shallow overnight. He kept his steps measured and low, making each one match the tempo of the men to either side of him. Even the sound of their breathing was in sync—short bursts that turned to pale clouds before vanishing into the mist.

There was a kind of performance to the silence here. It didn’t feel natural. It felt like the whole forest was holding its breath for something it already knew was coming.

They were deep enough into the Sudetenland border that Vienna was just a memory now—weeks of border security reports, smuggler trails, and whispered rumors had brought them here. The maps called this patch of woodland “disputed rural territory.” But every man in Echo Squad knew that was the polite term for a place where no one cared who you killed, so long as you buried them deep enough.

Callahan’s voice came low, barely above the rasp of his breath. “Pre-war Czechoslovak,” he murmured, brushing frost and dirt from the face of a moss-covered milestone half-sunk in the ground. The block’s engraved script was nearly illegible. “Before the annexation. Feels like we’re walking through ghosts.”

M!Y/n knelt beside him, rifle slung low, scanning the narrow trail ahead. “The place may not have changed,” he said, his voice almost swallowed by the fog. “But the people have. Trust out here’s thinner than ice.”

It wasn’t just a remark. It was a warning.

The squad pushed forward. The path widened and spat them into a clearing that felt wrong the moment they stepped into it. No birds. No wind. Just the looming skeleton of what had once been a farmhouse, its charred timbers reaching up like blackened ribs toward the pale sky.

Wexler’s intelligence packet had called it “Relay Station 4-B.” In the war’s peak, it had been an SS forward post. Now it was just another ruin left to rot—except M!Y/n knew better. The war might have stripped it of flags and men, but he could feel purpose still clinging to it, like heat trapped in old stones.

Tomaszewski’s voice broke over the comms from his overwatch perch high in the treeline. Static crackled softly before his Polish-accented words came through. “Movement. North field. Two men. One rifle. Pattern’s militia, but sloppy.”

“Uniforms?” Stanley asked from the rear, his rifle at the ready but muzzle down.

“None,” Tomaszewski replied.

M!Y/n slid binoculars from his chest rig, the cold metal biting against his gloves. The lenses fogged on his first breath, forcing him to adjust the rubber seals. Through the shifting mist, he found them—two figures moving slow, heads turning too often, eyes searching the tree line instead of their footing. Patchwork coats, boots worn down to the heel. Amateurs.

But they weren’t alone.

The hum of engines cut through the stillness—low, guttural, and close. M!Y/n tracked the sound toward the treeline until three trucks emerged like beasts from myth. Dull green, unmarked, civilian chassis on military-grade tires.

Fresh paint. Fresh purpose.

Men began to disembark—six in all, not counting the driver. Two cradled rifles with the lazy confidence of men who’d used them before. Two more hefted crates from the flatbeds. One lingered, stepping down last from the front passenger seat.

He didn’t belong to them.

Tall, lean, moving with a deliberate slowness that wasn’t weakness but control. His coat was tailored, shoulders squared, the cut of it military even without insignia. A cane tipped in polished brass touched the frost lightly as he walked. The men around him shifted without realizing they did it—gravitating toward him, their attention caught like iron on a magnet.

Even the fog seemed to shift for him.

Stanley’s voice was a whisper. “That man’s not militia.”

Callahan leaned closer to M!Y/n, his eyes narrowing behind the misted glass of his own binoculars. “See his collar? Pin’s there. Golden eagle. Old Abwehr. That’s your Hound.”

07:32 hours — Infiltration

The fog had thickened into something you could almost touch. Every movement pushed it aside like gauze only for it to settle back in place behind you.

Echo Squad moved like they’d been born in mist—slipping under the sagging strands of an old wire fence, skirting black puddles that smelled faintly of fuel, stepping where dead leaves would break quiet least.

The farmhouse swelled in the fog as they approached. From this distance, it didn’t look ruined. It looked like something waiting.

Tomaszewski scaled a rotting tool shed at the rear, boots finding purchase on half-splintered beams. He settled into position, his rifle resting on the lip of the roof where the wood hadn’t given way yet.

Callahan knelt by the comms cable running from the trucks toward the farmhouse. He clipped a small interference module to the line. A soft green blink answered him. “Jammed,” he whispered.

Inside was colder than out. The air smelled of mildew and men who’d been living in their clothes too long—sweat and damp wool, old coffee and gun oil.

The floor creaked but didn’t betray them.

M!Y/n led the sweep.

First room: empty, save for a collapsed cot and a rusted stove in the corner.

Second: storage. Crates stacked against the wall, their markings stenciled in three different languages—German, Czech, Polish—each one crossed out in thick black paint.

Third: occupied.

M!Y/n froze at the closed door. Movement inside. The soft complaint of a cot’s springs. A cough, wet and unguarded.

His hand lifted in the universal hold signal. Stanley moved up, steps noiseless. His hand found the latch, twisted it slow.

The door creaked open just wide enough for them to see a man inside—hair matted, eyes blinking toward the light, hand reaching for something under his pillow.

The crack of Tomaszewski’s rifle from above was almost gentle in its finality. The man sagged back against the cot without sound.

The squad moved on.

The last room was different. You could feel it before you stepped inside.

A table dominated the center—scarred wood worn smooth where elbows had leaned for hours. Maps spread across it like spilled blood. Typed orders. Handwritten lists. Pages smudged with fingerprints and something darker.

Stanley began sweeping through the documents, his gloved fingers turning them like cards. “Polish schedules. Trains. Cracow. Katowice. Even Lublin.”

Callahan cracked open a crate in the corner. Inside: ammunition, field radios, fragments of uniforms with their insignia stripped clean. Beneath it all, folded cloth. He pulled it free and let it fall open.

A black root sewn into red.

M!Y/n scanned the table. Names. Some he knew. Some marked with lines. Others blotted out in crude swathes of ink.

“They’re not just moving weapons,” he said, voice low. “They’re moving people. Names on this list—some of them were declared KIA last year. But they’re alive. Being shuffled.”

Stanley’s voice was tight. “They’re rebuilding.”

Callahan’s eyes stayed on the black root insignia in his hands. “And this? This is just one link in the chain.”

M!Y/n’s gaze caught on a name in the margin. Circled three times.

A name he knew.

A name that was supposed to be dead.

Later That Night – Campfire Perimeter, Forest Northeast of Liberec

November 1st – 23:04 hours

The forest at night had a way of pressing in, like the world beyond the tree line had been erased.

The tall black pines loomed above, their trunks lined like the pillars of a cathedral, their swaying branches whispering in voices too low to make out. The wind moved among them like an old priest pacing the aisles—slow, measured, knowing. It carried the smell of wet bark and distant snow, a clean but biting scent that slid straight into your lungs and sat there like frost.

The sky was a dark weight overhead, the moon hidden somewhere behind heavy cloud. Only thin veins of pale silver light bled through gaps in the canopy, falling in narrow strips onto the forest floor. Snow drifted lazily in that light—small, silent flakes that caught for a heartbeat on black wool or leather before melting away. It was the kind of cold that didn’t just nip at the skin—it seeped, inch by inch, until it made its home in your bones.

At the center of their temporary camp, the fire burned low.

It wasn’t a friendly flame. It was stubborn, crackling with damp wood and the faint hiss of melting snow. The smoke clung low before slipping up through the branches, its smell sharp and acrid in the back of the throat. Every so often, a log shifted and spat out a shower of sparks that vanished almost instantly into the dark. It was a soldier’s fire—meant for function, not comfort.

Callahan had claimed the flattest patch of ground near the stone fire ring. He lay on his side, knees drawn in, arms tight over his chest beneath a thin wool blanket that had seen better years. His breathing was slow but shallow, the rhythm of someone who’d learned how to rest lightly even in sleep. A gloved hand rested near the butt of his sidearm, fingers curled around nothing—muscle memory ready to close on steel if needed. In the fire’s flicker, his face looked older, the lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes deepened into the kind of wear that no amount of sleep could mend.

Tomaszewski was just a shadow at the clearing’s edge, his silhouette moving in patient arcs. He patrolled without sound, his boots barely disturbing the snow-dusted ground. Even with his rifle slung casually over one shoulder, there was a readiness in his posture that was almost feral. He didn’t glance at the fire, didn’t look at the others. His focus was outward, into the black wall of trees, as if daring anything to cross that invisible line.

M!Y/n sat apart, on a blackened log half-buried in the frost. The wood was slick with old resin and ash, its surface scarred from countless previous fires. He leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees, hands dangling loosely between them. The flames reflected in his eyes as he stared into the heart of the fire—not because the heat mattered much, but because it gave him something to anchor to.

The fire was chaotic in its own way—tongues of orange and gold twisting around each other, shifting with each breath of wind. Sometimes it roared for a moment, only to retreat into itself with a sullen crackle. It was unpredictable, but at least it was honest about it.

The day’s weight was still heavy on his shoulders.

Not in the usual way—fatigue was an old companion. But tonight it pressed deeper, like a slow bruise blooming somewhere he couldn’t reach. Every image from the mission replayed in perfect, unwanted clarity: the hollow-eyed militia in the clearing, the brass-capped cane tapping frost, the crack of Tomaszewski’s rifle upstairs in the farmhouse.

The smell hadn’t left him either. Beneath the woodsmoke and snow, it lingered—gunpowder, sweat, mildew, and something else. Something that clung to the inside of the nose like oil. The smell of rot. Not of flesh, but of history.

On paper, the op would read as clean. Mission successful. Assets recovered. Enemy personnel neutralized.

But paper didn’t remember the sound of boots dragging across warped floorboards. Paper didn’t keep the way the man in the third room had blinked—once—before the bullet hit. Paper didn’t bleed.

He heard Stanley before he saw him.

A slow, deliberate crunch of boots over frozen pine needles. The faint metallic tch of a holster brushing against a belt buckle. Stanley always walked like that—not silent, not loud, just… precise. As if every step had already been measured in his head before he took it.

He didn’t speak when he arrived. Just lowered himself onto the log beside M!Y/n, close enough that the faint heat from his side bled across the cold space between them, but not close enough for their shoulders to touch.

For a long while, neither said anything. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. They’d both lived in enough close quarters, under enough tension, to know that talking wasn’t the only way to be present. The night filled in the gaps for them—the hiss of the fire, the groan of a pine shifting in the wind, the faint whisper of snow landing on fabric.

When M!Y/n finally spoke, his voice was low, like it belonged to the night itself. “Something’s changing.”

Stanley didn’t turn his head. “What?”

M!Y/n shook his head faintly, eyes still on the fire. “They’re getting bolder. Smarter. We take one out, two more step up. Same eyes, different names.”

There was a soft grunt from Stanley. “That’s how roots work. You can’t kill them by pulling the leaves.”

A humorless sound left M!Y/n’s throat—half chuckle, half exhale. “Black Root… we should’ve burned the whole damn forest when we had the chance.”

“And then what?” Stanley’s tone was quiet, but there was a weight to it. “Replant it with what?”

A spark from the fire landed on M!Y/n’s knee, flaring briefly before dying. He didn’t brush it off.

The quiet returned, but it was different now. Denser. Almost… personal. The kind of silence where the air between two people starts to hum with everything they’re not saying.

“You think we make it out of this?” M!Y/n asked at last. The question wasn’t dramatic. It was almost casual, like asking if there’d be coffee in the morning. But under it was something heavier—something that didn’t want an answer, but needed one.

Stanley didn’t answer right away. He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and pulled out a dented flask, its metal dulled and worn smooth from years of being handled. The initials stamped into its side were almost gone, the letters just ghosts now. He unscrewed the cap, took a slow drink, then held it out wordlessly.

The flask was warm from his body heat. M!Y/n’s gloved fingers brushed against Stanley’s as he took it, the touch brief but enough to draw his attention away from the fire for the first time.

The liquor burned a path straight down, blooming heat in his chest that had nothing to do with the fire. He coughed once, wiped his mouth with the back of his glove, and handed it back.

“I don’t think about that anymore,” Stanley said after a beat.

M!Y/n studied his profile in the firelight. “You used to.”

Stanley nodded. His breath fogged between them, dissolving slowly into the cold. “Yeah. Used to think I didn’t care if I made it out.”

“And now?”

The pause that followed stretched long enough for the fire to hiss twice.

Stanley turned his head then, meeting M!Y/n’s gaze fully for the first time that night. His eyes were steady, but there was something in them—a flicker, a soft fracture in the usual iron.

“Now I care more if you do.”

The words landed harder than M!Y/n expected. He felt them in his chest, in the way the heat from the fire suddenly seemed less important than the warmth between them. He opened his mouth, but whatever he’d been about to say caught in his throat.

Stanley looked away first. Stood, brushed ash from his trousers. Without another word, he stepped back toward the dark edge of the clearing, his shape swallowed by the trees and the steady rhythm of his patrol.

M!Y/n sat there a while longer, watching the place where he’d vanished, feeling the ghost of that brief touch still lingering in his hands.

The fire spat once more, then settled into a low, steady burn.

Chapter Text

Location: Katowice, Poland – November 5th, 1946

Operation GLASS HOUND – Phase II

Katowice was a city caught between the memory of its past and the wounds of its present. The smoke-hazed skyline was a graveyard of industry, a skeleton of chimneys and cranes standing vigil over streets slick with soot and rain. Every brick, every twisted girder, seemed to hold a story of fire, fear, and survival. Even the wind carried a whisper of ash, rust, and coal dust that clung stubbornly to skin, lungs, and conscience alike.

Once a proud center of steel and coal, the city now resembled a battlefield frozen in mid-collapse. Factories with shattered windows stared blankly at the heavens, their interiors dark caverns where shadows played over rusting machinery like memories of better times. The streets below were cluttered with detritus—broken carts, abandoned bicycles, scattered newspapers with headlines fading into obscurity. In some alleys, the remnants of homes leaned precariously, as if mourning their own decay. The city exhaled a quiet despair, punctuated by the distant clang of metal on metal, the solitary whistle of a train navigating treacherous rails, and the low rumble of trucks hauling their burdens to unseen destinations.

Coal towers, blackened and proud despite everything, punctuated the skyline. Their iron ribs, warped and rusted, rose like the jagged teeth of some industrial leviathan. Smoke poured from their stacks in thick, choking plumes that the November wind struggled to disperse. Below, rail yards sprawled like arteries, a labyrinth of tracks gleaming wetly under the feeble light of an overcast morning. A few locomotives hissed, releasing steam that blended with the mist, masking the movements of those who would rather not be seen.

Officially, Katowice belonged to the Allied administration—a name on a map, a stamp on a paper—but in reality, it was a city without ownership. Its shadows were claimed by those who dared to inhabit them: smugglers, opportunists, rogue ex-soldiers, and remnants of the Black Root, whose influence still lurked in the unlit corners of the city’s industrial underbelly. Every alleyway held potential danger; every closed door could conceal a gun barrel.

In this kingdom of shadows, Echo Squad moved like ghosts.

November 5th – 03:12 hours

Perimeter Slums – South Katowice Rail Sector

The night clung to the South Katowice rail sector like a wet blanket. Shadows pooled in every corner, thick and impenetrable, stretching across streets choked with debris and industrial decay. Echoes of distant train whistles rattled through the skeletal frameworks of derelict factories, carrying the low, mournful pulse of a city that had outlived its purpose.

Stanley crouched beneath the remnants of a collapsed stone awning, the cold biting through his uniform, settling into his bones. Around him, the brick skeletons of old textile mills loomed like silent sentinels, their empty window frames staring down like glassless eyes that witnessed everything but revealed nothing. He adjusted the scarf drawn tight around his jaw, the fabric soaked with dampness and coal dust, and exhaled slowly, the mist curling and vanishing into the darkness.

The wind was sharp, greasy, carrying with it the odor of the slums: burned rubber, rusted metal, mold, oil—and something different, worse than decay, an undercurrent of rot that made the hair on his neck rise. Every inhale reminded him that this place was alive with danger, that the city itself could suffocate the unprepared.

“Three floors,” he whispered, the words rasping against the wind, almost lost in the hiss of movement somewhere in the alley. “One main stairwell. Windows are bricked, but there’s movement behind the west wall.”

Stanley’s voice was flat, measured, but the gravity behind it pressed against the silence like a physical weight. The tight set of his eyes, the subtle clench of his jaw, said more than words ever could. This wasn’t reconnaissance. Not tonight. There was a pulse here, a difference that made the familiar machinery of war feel suddenly fragile.

Across the refuse-strewn alley, their target crouched in shadow—a defunct textile mill that had survived war, neglect, and time itself. Its chimney leaned like a broken backbone, an eternal grimace against the night sky, while the boarded windows hinted at vacancy. But nothing about this building spoke of emptiness. Inside, men waited. Dangerous, precise men who had learned to kill quietly, and efficiently.

Callahan shifted his weight, the metal clink of thermite charges in his satchel echoing faintly against the stone. His gloved fingers checked straps and locks, a ritual born of training, habit, and fear.

“You think they’re keeping the transit logs inside?” he asked, voice low but edged with cautious curiosity.

“If we’re lucky,” M!Y/n murmured, raising his battered field glasses to peer at the upper floors. The lenses were fogged, scratched, and worn—but reliable, like him.

Through the grimy glass, faint silhouettes drifted between stacks of crates, ghostly and deliberate. The dim reflection of a lantern flickered across peeling paint, drawing their attention to motion that was precise, almost rehearsed.

“If we’re unlucky,” he added, voice dry, carrying a weight that made the others glance at him, “it’s just another breadcrumb in a trail that ends with all of us vanishing into the snow.”

Beside them, Tomaszewski remained silent, a ghost in the shadows. His breath fogged in the frigid air, a pale cloud that drifted and dissipated almost before it formed. He watched, always watching, absorbing the city, the wind, the creaking timbers of abandoned sheds. Then, without the preamble of debate or hesitation, he spoke:

“I’ll take the fire escape. Clean line to the eastern windows.”

No one stopped him. He moved like a shadow peeling itself off the wall, and within seconds he was gone, swallowed by the darkness.

03:27 hours – Breach

Stanley was the first to move, silent and deliberate. Knife in hand, he was a predator in the night. The first guard—a broad-shouldered man in the tattered remnants of a Red Army coat—stepped into the corridor like an uninvited guest. It didn’t matter. In the dim light, the glint of Stanley’s blade was the last thing the man saw. A breath, a flash, and then silence swallowed him. His body collapsed against the wall, a sack of flesh and regrets. Stanley didn’t pause, didn’t flinch.

Callahan followed, carbine low and ready. He moved like smoke, steps soft over rotting floorboards, melding with the shadows. The generator room smelled of oil and copper, the heat faint but noticeable against the chill of the night. Thermite charges were positioned with clinical precision, timers set, ignition wires in place. Twelve minutes—that was all the window they had before the factory became a crucible of fire.

M!Y/n ascended the stairs carefully, each step a whisper, each breath a controlled rhythm. His revolver leveled as he scanned the darkness, every corner and doorway cataloged in his mind. Fear had become a constant companion, louder than the creaking beams, but he had learned long ago to harness it, to let it sharpen his senses rather than paralyze him.

The second floor was a different kind of battlefield. It was organized chaos—a clandestine archive of war’s detritus. Metal cabinets lined the walls, stacks of ledgers pressed against one another, crates marked in German, Polish, and Russian. This was not a warehouse of goods. This was a ledger of lives, each entry a whisper of suffering, each label a cruel euphemism.

Stanley appeared beside him, flashlight muted with a rag to limit exposure. He gestured toward a bundle of ledgers, his expression unreadable.

“Here.”

M!Y/n’s gloved hands lifted one of the thick tomes. Inventory codes were meticulously recorded: livestock, tools, engine parts. And buried in the dry language, the unmistakable truth. People. They were cataloged like commodities, stripped of dignity, and reduced to numbers in a ledger.

His voice trembled despite his efforts to contain it. “They’re calling people… livestock.”

A click shattered the moment. A pistol hammer against its spring.

They turned. Slowly. Deliberately.

A man stood in the doorway, older than war had aged him. Fifty, maybe more, with a heavy mustache and eyes that had seen too much, but smiled too little. His coat was immaculate, boots polished. Out of place here, and therefore, exactly the kind of man who orchestrated horrors.

“Too late,” he said, clipped English cutting through the silence like a knife.

His gun remained steady, aimed at them with the calm of inevitability.

M!Y/n’s fingers tightened around his revolver. “What do you mean?” he asked, voice steady despite the surge of adrenaline.

The man’s lips twitched, almost a smile. “There are trains. Still moving. Always moving. You cut one line, we build two more.”

Stanley shifted, subtle, preparing for a strike—but it wasn’t him who fired.

A single, precise shot rang out.

The officer jerked, blood blooming across his chest like spilled ink on a ledger. He fell, silent but for the faint rasp of breath leaving his lungs.

Behind them, Tomaszewski lowered his rifle without ceremony, expression unchanged.

“I had a clear shot,” he said simply, as if the statement alone absolved the act of necessity.

04:18 hours – Safehouse – Zabrze Sector, West of Katowice

The safehouse sat like a secret in the bones of Zabrze, a frail monument to survival in a country still bleeding from its wounds. An abandoned miner’s cottage had been claimed by time and the elements: its timber skeleton groaned beneath frost, rusted nails clinging to splintered beams like fragile teeth. Snow pressed against cracked windowpanes, scratching and whispering secrets in a language older than the war. The wind clawed at the eaves, a frozen hand seeking entry, rattling the boards and rattling nerves alike.

Inside, the cottage smelled of despair and endurance. The wood stove sputtered and hissed, spitting red embers into the cold air as if warning intruders away. It ate scrap wood and torn pages from Soviet manifestos, curling and blackening them in the flames. The room smelled of burnt paper, slag, gun oil, and sweat—the peculiar perfume of men who had survived too much to bother with comfort.

M!Y/n sat at a narrow desk, more sawhorse than table, hunched over the ledger they had recovered in Katowice. Each page was a funeral; each name a stone in the pit of his stomach. He traced lines of ink with trembling fingers, cataloging cruelty disguised as bureaucracy. Soldiers and civilians, children and mothers, all reduced to codes and destinations, stripped of humanity.

The firelight flickered across his face, carving shadows under his eyes and tracing the fatigue etched into his features. His jaw clenched, and though his hands shook, he could not—would not—stop. Something in him had sharpened with the horrors he had seen, a feral instinct demanding witness, demanding justice, demanding that he understand fully the depth of what had been done.

Behind him, Stanley stood like a sentinel. His arms folded across his chest, silhouette stark against frost-laced glass. For fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, he had said nothing, listening to the wind’s keening as though it carried messages only he could decode. He watched M!Y/n’s fingers move over the ledger as though they might conjure the dead back to life, and for the first time in hours, the room felt alive with unspoken words.

“They’re moving people into Germany,” M!Y/n finally said, voice rough and low, breaking the quiet. His throat ached from swallowing back anger and horror. “Through convoys meant for reconstruction. Fuel tankers. Cement trucks. Refugee trains. They’ve even got forged Allied credentials.”

The words hung like smoke, heavy and suffocating. Stanley didn’t move. Didn’t even glance at him.

“Say something,” M!Y/n pressed, throat tightening. “You can’t just—”

Stanley’s gaze flicked toward the frost-blurred shadows outside, and he spoke, low and clipped: “What do you want me to say? That it tracks? That it makes me sick?”

M!Y/n snapped upright, the wooden chair scraping against the warped floorboards with a sound that made them both flinch. He began pacing, boots thudding like distant drums, erratic as his mind raced. “This isn’t desperation. This isn’t scattered cells and broken pride. This is architecture. It’s infrastructure. It’s calculated.”

“You think they ever stopped building?” Stanley’s question froze him mid-step.

M!Y/n turned fully, finally seeing Stanley as more than a shadow on the wall. The firelight picked out the faint redness at the tip of his nose, the dark circles deepened by sleepless nights. His posture was taut with tension, rigid like a soldier whose armor had never been removed. Yet there was something else beneath the taut lines, a quiet vulnerability Stanley didn’t often allow to show.

Outside, the wind screamed across the cottage, rattling the fragile timbers and making the walls moan as though mourning. Inside, all that existed was the fire, the ledger, the breathing of two men, and a silence charged with the weight of history.

“We’re not fighting a war anymore,” Stanley said quietly, barely louder than the hiss of the stove. “Not like we were. This is something else.”

M!Y/n’s throat tightened. No words felt adequate. None would ever be enough. He let himself lean against the edge of the desk, fingers brushing over the rough wood as if it might anchor him to reality.

“Then what are we?”

Stanley’s jaw flexed. He looked down at the floor, eyes scanning the dust as if answers might be written there in some invisible ink. “Still figuring that out.”

Time dragged itself across the floorboards, each second a hollow echo. The stove popped and hissed, embers dancing like fireflies trapped in glass. Somewhere above, a pipe groaned and leaked, the water freezing instantly on the beams. The ledger lay open before them, a graveyard of names and codes, an autopsy of innocence.

M!Y/n leaned closer, not to the names but through them, seeing beyond the ink to the trains, the trucks, the screaming wheels spinning through snow and ice, carrying human cargo in the guise of freight.

“How many do you think made it out?” he asked suddenly, voice low, distant, as if addressing both the room and the ghosts lurking in it.

Stanley exhaled through his nose, a sound more thought than breath. “Of the ones listed? Maybe a third. If we’re generous.”

The wind slammed against the broken chimney, moaning like the last breath of some ancient spirit.

“They had children in that manifest,” M!Y/n whispered, voice cracking. “Infants. Pregnant women. Marked with tags like they were livestock.”

Stanley stepped away from the window, boots thudding softly across the floor, each step a statement of measured intent. He stopped beside M!Y/n, shoulder brushing against his as he glanced down at the open page.

“This isn’t just about chasing shadows anymore,” he murmured. “This is about making sure no one forgets what those shadows looked like.”

The brush of their shoulders sent a small, electric awareness through M!Y/n. He turned slightly, close enough to feel warmth radiating from Stanley, and found his own heartbeat hammering in his chest.

“Is that why you’re still here?” he asked softly, barely a whisper. Not about the mission. Not about the ledger. About the nights, the silence, the bond between them.

Stanley’s eyes stayed on the paper for a heartbeat too long, then softened. A fraction of frost cracked in his expression. “I’m here because if I left, you’d run yourself into the ground chasing ghosts.”

The words landed like both a blow and a balm. M!Y/n’s throat tightened; his chest felt constricted. “And if I did? Would it matter to you?”

Stanley finally looked at him. Not the measured, guarded Stanley. Not the soldier always holding something back. But something raw, unshielded. “Yeah. It would.”

A silence thickened around them, heavy with words unspoken. Their foreheads nearly touched; the stove hissed and spat embers. The wind outside howled like the past reaching in. Inside, for a moment, the world ceased to exist beyond the walls of the cottage.

M!Y/n let himself look—truly look—at Stanley. The sharp line of his jaw, the faint scar near his left eyebrow, the perpetual furrow between his brows that suggested he had forgotten how to breathe without tension.

“You always act like nothing touches you,” M!Y/n said softly, voice trembling with something he didn’t name. “Like this is just another mission. Another thing to survive.”

Stanley shrugged, though it was hollow. “Some of us don’t have the luxury of breaking down.”

“And some of us are just good at pretending,” M!Y/n said, letting his words hang like smoke between them.

A taut silence followed, pregnant with confessions and fear.

M!Y/n turned toward the desk, but Stanley’s hand caught his wrist, firm yet gentle, an anchor in a storm.

“You scare me sometimes,” Stanley said, voice low. “The way you carry this… weight. Like you don’t care if it crushes you.”

M!Y/n felt the fire’s warmth and Stanley’s presence simultaneously. He did not pull away. “It only scares you because you care,” he murmured, his breath mingling with Stanley’s, heavy with smoke and snow-damp air.

The words hung, fragile and unguarded. Stanley’s eyes searched his, lingering, refusing to look away. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I do.”

Step by step, M!Y/n inched closer, closing the last distance. Stanley remained, unwavering. Their foreheads nearly met, breaths mingling, the firelight dancing across tense features.

“We can’t afford to be soft out there,” M!Y/n whispered, almost an incantation against the world beyond the walls.

“Then don’t be,” Stanley replied, low and deliberate. “But in here? Maybe just for a minute?”

And so they stood. Shoulder to shoulder. Foreheads almost touching. In a cottage of dust, splinters, and names inked onto pages. Outside, the wind howled. Inside, they existed only for each other, and for the ghosts they refused to forget.

Later That Night – Upper Floor of the Safehouse

The attic was a coffin of wood and shadow. Beams, warped and gnarled with age, arched overhead like the ribs of some long-dead creature, groaning faintly whenever the wind shifted outside. Dust motes drifted in the pale light of a single oil lamp, stirred by drafts that slipped beneath the eaves and whispered through every crack and splinter. The space smelled of cold timber, oil, and the faint metallic tang of iron that lingered in M!Y/n’s clothes from the day’s fight.

He sat on the cot, a thin, metal-framed relic that sagged under years of forgotten soldiers, hunched over a scrap of linen that served as his makeshift workbench. His sidearm lay disassembled before him: the barrel gleaming faintly, the slides and springs cold in his palms. The metal clicked as he manipulated the parts with methodical precision, small, sharp sounds that punctuated the hush of the attic. Oil smudged his fingertips, carbon dust darkened his nails, and yet the ritual grounded him. Each careful motion kept the chaos of thought at bay—the names in the ledger, the men they’d killed, the one Tomaszewski had shot without hesitation, the weight of every life they were trying to save.

From below, the creak of floorboards spoke of movement. It was not hurried, not loud. Familiar. M!Y/n did not look up, letting the sound fold into the silence.

“Can’t sleep?” Stanley’s voice was low, roughened by the cold, carrying a gravelly edge that seemed to vibrate through the beams. It was quiet, intimate, like a hand brushing over the back of a neck.

“No.”

The word was simple, flat, but it carried the weight of exhaustion, grief, and the residue of adrenaline still clinging to his nerves. Words were unnecessary—too heavy, too easily twisted into grief.

Stanley leaned against the doorway, one shoulder brushing the frame, silhouette softened by the dim hallway light. His arms were folded casually, sleeves rolled back to reveal sinewy forearms, but there was no casualness in the way his gaze lingered on M!Y/n. It was watchful, quiet, threaded with something unspoken. M!Y/n could feel it even without meeting his eyes, a warmth at his back that had nothing to do with the fire below.

“Tomaszewski’s different since Liberec,” Stanley murmured, breaking the silence.

M!Y/n gave a small, almost imperceptible nod, shoulders tightening.

“I noticed,” Stanley said, voice lower now, almost reluctant.

“He watched that guy die tonight,” M!Y/n whispered, the words tasting like ash on his tongue. “The one who surrendered. Didn’t even blink.”

The gun was clean now, assembled, and resting in his lap. His fingers lingered on the cold metal, tracing the familiar contours with a rhythm born of habit.

“He used to hesitate,” Stanley said.

“Not anymore,” M!Y/n replied.

The attic fell into silence again. Heavy, expectant, thick as fog. The kind of silence that pressed against skin and bones.

The mattress shifted.

Stanley had moved closer, sliding onto the cot beside him. The air between them changed immediately; the space was no longer empty. Their knees brushed lightly once—brief, accidental, and yet it sent a pulse through both of them. Neither pulled away.

“You remember our first week in training?” Stanley asked, voice gentler now, softened by memory.

M!Y/n allowed a small smile to curl at the corner of his mouth. “I wouldn’t shut up.”

Stanley laughed softly, a sound that seemed almost foreign in the cold, shadowed room. “You wouldn’t. You talked so damn much I thought you were going to get us both kicked out.”

M!Y/n turned just slightly, catching the profile of Stanley’s face in the lamplight—the curve of his jaw, the faint shadow under his cheekbones.

“You didn’t say a word,” M!Y/n said.

“Didn’t know how,” Stanley admitted, voice quieter now. “I was… frozen. Scared shitless, honestly. But you? You just kept going. Would’ve filled the whole damn barracks with your voice if they’d let you.”

His tone dipped, almost breaking. “If you hadn’t kept talking… I wouldn’t have made it.”

M!Y/n froze, the weight of the confession anchoring him in the cot. The gun was safe in his lap, reassembled, yet his hands trembled, not from fear, but from the nearness of Stanley and the vulnerability threaded in his words. One hand rested near Stanley’s, close enough to brush, almost touching, prickling with a tension neither dared name.

“You never told me that,” M!Y/n said softly.

Stanley turned his head, shadow lines etching his expression into hard angles softened by warmth. His eyes—dark, unreadable, yet raw—locked on M!Y/n. “Never had to.”

M!Y/n swallowed, words failing him. The air was cold, his breath a faint cloud between them, but it did nothing to dull the heat rising in his chest.

His fingers moved slowly, deliberately. One brushed Stanley’s. Barely. Almost nothing. But Stanley did not recoil. He let the contact linger, a silent acknowledgment, a tether in the otherwise frozen night.

They sat like that for a long time, the silence wrapping around them like a shared secret. The lamp flickered, shadows dancing across walls, across faces, across two men standing on the edge of a truth neither had fully admitted.

November 6th – Command Update – Forward HQ Vienna

TO: CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE, OPERATIONAL WARDEN DESK

FROM: ASSET: ECHO SQUAD

SUBJECT: SIGHTINGS CONFIRMED, MOVEMENT TOWARD RUHR CORRIDOR

• New supply corridor confirmed.

• Suspected escape route through western Germany via Black Forest.

• Civilian transports compromised.

• Echo Squad pursuing leads west.

• Request permission for autonomous movement into French-occupied Baden sector.

SIGNATURE: Sgt. M!Y/N

DATE: NOV. 6, 1946

Chapter Text

Location: Schwarzwald (Black Forest), French Occupation Zone – November 10th, 1946

Operation GLASS HOUND – Phase III

There was a silence in the Schwarzwald that seemed louder than the war itself. Not the kind of silence that follows a shouted command or the hush that falls over a startled village. This silence was deeper. Denser. A living thing, curling like smoke through the trees and crawling into every fold of the forest. It had weight. It had memory. It had hunger.

M!Y/n felt it first. Low in his stomach, a tight coil that made him aware of each breath and each heartbeat. It wasn’t fear—not the jittery, stomach-turning fear of being spotted by enemy patrols—but a slow, patient kind of unease, like walking across the ribcage of some sleeping giant. Every step, every twig that threatened to snap under his boot, felt amplified, as if the forest itself were counting them, weighing them, waiting for them to falter.

The undergrowth was dense, thick with moss that clung to the base of the pines like a damp, living carpet. Each tree loomed high, its bark dark and slick, veins of green creeping across its surface. The canopy pressed down, blotting out the pale November sky, leaving the forest in a shadow that felt too heavy, too permanent. Branches intertwined overhead, skeletal fingers that seemed to reach out in warning, clawing at the thinning light.

M!Y/n’s rifle strap dug into his shoulder. He adjusted his grip, not from tension but from instinct, letting the weight of it anchor him. Beside him, Stanley’s presence was a steadying force. He moved with the precision of a man trained to notice everything and trust nothing. His eyes flicked across the tree line, scanning gaps in the foliage, cataloging shadows that shifted with the wind—though the air itself was still, unnervingly so.

Tomaszewski moved like a ghost along the left flank, his boots silent, body low, every movement deliberate. The man had been through too much to waste energy on unnecessary noise; his eyes never stopped scanning, never stopping to blink. Callahan, usually a voice full of nervous humor, had swallowed his words, lips pressed into a thin line. Even his usual fidgeting had gone slack, drained away by the oppressive weight of the forest.

M!Y/n stole a glance at the others. Echo Squad had faced death more times than they could count, in the ruins of cities and across frostbitten fields. Yet here, in the Schwarzwald, the air itself felt like a trap. It seeped into your lungs, pressing against your chest, nudging at the edges of your sanity. The forest didn’t move; it waited. And waiting, it had all the patience in the world.

Every bootfall was swallowed by decades of fallen leaves and decomposed needles. The smell of damp wood, decaying matter, and moss hung in the air, thick and clinging. M!Y/n’s senses sharpened involuntarily, catching the faintest shift in shadow or sound. He could hear the distant scrape of bark under unseen weight, the almost imperceptible rustle of something brushing against the undergrowth—but when he turned, there was nothing. Nothing but the eternal, black-green mass of the forest pressing in.

A crow cawed far in the distance. The sound bounced off the trunks, a harsh, mocking note, then vanished. M!Y/n swallowed, tasting iron in his mouth. He could feel the tension radiating from Stanley, from Tomaszewski, from Callahan—a taut wire running through the squad. And yet, none of them spoke. Words here were heavier than bullets, more dangerous than a mine hidden beneath leaves.

The forest was ancient, but it was not indifferent. Every tree seemed to lean in, every root and rock set to trip them if they faltered. It was as if the Schwarzwald remembered the footsteps of soldiers long gone, the blood spilled on its soil, the screams that had echoed between these trunks. Echoes of the past lingered here like a ghost army, and every step M!Y/n took felt like intrusion, an offense against some primordial order that had existed before the world was divided into Allied zones and conquered territories.

M!Y/n’s thoughts drifted unbidden to the stories the locals had whispered—rumors of disappearances, of soldiers vanishing into the trees, never to be seen again. He didn’t tell the stories to Stanley or the others; there was no need. The forest itself reminded them, in every silent glance and shadowed corner, that these were not just myths to scare children. They were warnings, written in the very air, in the cold bite of November, in the way the mist seemed to gather like a cloak at the forest floor.

November 10th – 05:42 hours

Outskirts of Lichtenbrunn, Baden Sector

The village of Lichtenbrunn didn’t sit atop the ridge—it clung to it, like a stubborn scar refusing to heal. Even at dawn, the place seemed to sag under the weight of its own history. Stone cottages with timber frames leaned against one another as if seeking comfort from the neighbors that remained. Roofs, blackened by soot and moss, sloped precariously, threatening to cave in under the morning’s chill. Fog crawled between the trees like a wounded animal, curling into the village streets, licking at the stones, hiding secrets in its cold breath.

M!Y/n crouched behind a crumbling stone wall just off the main trail. His knees pressed into damp moss, and frost soaked through his gloves, but he hardly noticed. The forest beyond the ridge seemed alive, patient, and sinister all at once, holding its breath along with him. Stanley was beside him, half-hidden, half-pinned against the wall like a shadow. He adjusted the brim of his cap and squinted down the ridge, the steel of his rifle scope catching the pale light in a fleeting gleam.

"Too quiet," Stanley murmured, voice low, almost swallowed by the fog.

M!Y/n didn’t need to look to know what he meant. Even the wind had given up, leaving the village suspended in an almost sacred stillness. Behind them, Callahan chewed on the end of a twig. It was the third stick he’d found and ruined that morning, a nervous ritual he hadn’t dropped since the French had first moved in.

"A village that hasn’t seen an Allied supply truck in half a year, and they’ve still got laundry on the lines?" Callahan whispered, sarcasm laced with disbelief. "Either heaven’s got a ration line or someone’s funding the upkeep."

"Black Root’s paying them off," Tomaszewski’s voice cut in from the far end of their overlook, calm and dry. He wiped the condensation off his scope with a threadbare cloth. "Or threatening them. Could be both. They’re nothing if not… consistent."

M!Y/n lowered his binoculars and let his eyes linger on the rooftops, the flicker of candlelight behind shuttered windows. No smoke from chimneys. No movement in the streets. No children laughing or playing. The village was empty, yet not lifeless—it watched them as much as they watched it.

"No civilians in the streets," he said evenly. "Intel pegged the pre-war population at thirty-four. Post-war estimates twenty. We’re seeing maybe a dozen—and all behind glass."

Callahan spat out the twig in frustration. "You think they took the rest?"

"Maybe," M!Y/n answered, voice low. "Or they left. Either way, this place doesn’t look like it’s surviving. It looks like it’s cooperating."

A long silence fell over them, punctuated only by the distant drip of condensation from the eaves. Fog curled around broken fences and mossed-over stones, shifting like smoke from a slow-burning fire.

Finally, Stanley’s voice broke the tension, low and deliberate. "Time to move."

06:18 hours – South Edge of Lichtenbrunn

The village swallowed them like smoke through cracks—silent, slow, searching.

Tomaszewski drifted to the left with surgical precision. Rifle up, cheek welded to stock, he scanned second-floor windows and doorways, patience etched into every measured step. Years in ambushes had taught him to see not just the obvious threats but the ones that hid in plain sight.

Stanley moved at the rear, silent as a shadow, every movement calculated. He carried the weight of anticipation, the premonition of betrayal, of violence that could strike at any second. M!Y/n and Callahan walked the center, fingers brushing against weapon grips, breath misting in the frigid air. Their uniforms blended with the fog and trees, patched French armbands a token to appearances, but the weapons they carried betrayed the truth of their mission.

The first house yielded nothing. Neither did the second. On the third, a hinge groaned—a whisper of metal against wood—and a child appeared. A girl, maybe ten, thin as a scarecrow, hair tangled, eyes dark-rimmed with hunger. She stared at them like ghosts, the kind that linger after tragedy has moved on.

Then came a man’s voice. Deep. Angry. German. It barked from inside, sharp enough to make the girl flinch and slam the door closed instinctively.

Callahan’s jaw tightened. "That seem normal to you?"

M!Y/n shook his head. "No."

They fell back to the street. M!Y/n raised a closed fist. Stanley closed in with barely a whisper of motion, all professional focus. Tomaszewski’s voice crackled through the radio, sharp and alert.

"Found something. South barn. You’ll want to see it."

06:39 hours – South Barn, Village Perimeter

The barn was a ruin of its former self. Half the roof had caved in, doors hung off rusted hinges, and the air was thick with the smell of mildew, oil, and rotting hay. The place looked like it could collapse if someone so much as sneezed inside. But the smell wasn’t just decay—it was history. A long, dark history hiding beneath dust and broken wood.

Inside, Tomaszewski crouched near a pile of rotted crates. He had shoved aside the debris to reveal a false wall, roughly nailed wooden slats, expertly camouflaged.

Behind it: a tunnel.

Crude, yes, but functional. Iron beams braced the walls, and old lanterns mounted on hooks cast flickering shadows. Narrow-gauge tracks ran down the center like veins feeding something living underground. The air smelled of damp earth, oil, and faint, unidentifiable chemicals.

Callahan swore, a whisper sharp enough to cut the silence. "Jesus Christ. This is a supply line. A rail line. They’re running gear."

M!Y/n knelt, fingertips brushing against the steel of the track. It was faintly warm—recent. The tunnel wasn’t just hiding supplies. It was active.

"This isn’t just hiding," he said, voice low, reverent, almost afraid. "It’s organized."

Stanley moved to join him, eyes sweeping every inch of the structure. "Engineered. Military-grade work. Someone oversaw this. Funded it. Not slapped together by farmers."

Tomaszewski dropped something onto a crate. A torn scrap of cloth. A coiled viper printed in faded black ink. The unmistakable sigil of Black Root.

Callahan paled, hand trembling. "We report this, the French will torch the village."

Stanley’s voice was ice. "They might anyway."

M!Y/n stared into the dark mouth of the tunnel. He felt the weight of history pressing down on him. Beneath the village. Beneath the war’s official end. Beneath everything they had known about survival and peace.

"We’re not done here," he said, standing and unslinging his rifle. Motioning to the others, he led the way deeper into the barn.

The tunnel was narrower than M!Y/n expected, the lantern light throwing shadows like hands clawing at the walls. The faint warmth of the rails spoke of life, movement, danger. Somewhere in the black, the machinery of a hidden war still hummed softly, threatening, patient.

Callahan muttered under his breath, trying to break the tension. "I knew I hated barns for a reason. Always smells like someone died in a haystack."

M!Y/n allowed himself a small smirk. Even Stanley’s raised eyebrow counted as acknowledgment of the humor. It was dangerous to laugh, but human, necessary.

The tunnel curved downward, the rails carrying them beneath the village like veins. M!Y/n ran a hand along the wall. The wood was rough, cold, and smelled faintly of oil. It had been built with care, built to last. Someone wanted this network to survive. Someone had to know it would be discovered eventually. And yet, they had planned for everything.

The faint creak of the tunnel settled into a rhythm, almost like a heartbeat. A pulse echoing through stone, wood, and iron. And the deeper they went, the heavier the air became, as though the earth itself were pressing down, warning them to turn back.

"This isn’t just a village," M!Y/n whispered, more to himself than the others. "It’s a wound. And someone’s still bleeding it dry."

Callahan glanced around, voice low. "I’d say we’re about to find out who’s doing the bleeding. And I’m not packing bandages."

M!Y/n chuckled quietly. Only quietly. Humor in a place like this wasn’t for relief—it was for sanity.

They pressed on.

07:12 hours – The Confessional

The church sat like a relic abandoned to the fog, a shadowed monument clutching stubbornly to the edge of Lichtenbrunn. Its stones, slick with moss and decades of rain, seemed to absorb the mist rather than reflect it. Every corner groaned with the weight of unspoken sins, of secrets pressed into its walls long before the war had begun. The modest steeple leaned to the left, awkward, almost embarrassed, like a man trying to apologize to the forest beyond for all that had been done beneath it. Its bell no longer rang, leaving the village with only the wind and the sighing of old trees to mark the hours.

M!Y/n approached the entrance slowly, boots crunching over frost-coated gravel. Each step was deliberate, as if the church itself might judge him for haste. One gloved hand rested against the scarred wood of the heavy door, feeling the grooves and splinters that spoke of decades of parishioners’ hands. When he pushed it open, the hinges cried out—a long, drawn-out moan that ricocheted through the nave like a rifle shot fired into empty halls.

The scent hit him immediately. It was layered, complex, and unpleasant in its familiarity. Incense, old and acrid, clung to every corner, attempting to mask the deeper rot of wet stone and mildew. Beneath it all was something more human: despair. It was a living thing in the air, thick and unyielding. It pressed at the back of M!Y/n’s throat, pulling at his chest with invisible fingers.

The sanctuary was dim. The fractured dawn filtered weakly through narrow, stained-glass windows. One depicted Saint George locked in battle with a dragon. A jagged crack ran through the saint’s face, splitting his gaze down the center, giving the holy figure a look of ghostly indifference. Sunlight fractured across the floorboards, catching dust motes that danced in slow spirals, like spirits reluctant to move on.

A solitary figure swept ash and debris from the stone floor. The broom was crude, fashioned from bound twigs, and scraped against the stones in uneven arcs. His robes were frayed at the hems, brown and gray like the forest soil outside. Mid-forties, clean nails, hands uncalloused—he looked out of place in this village that scraped survival from the dirt itself. His eyes lifted slowly, wary.

“Not many soldiers come here,” the priest said in cautious French, his voice dry and cracked, like old parchment.

M!Y/n stepped deeper, boots echoing against the flagstones. He ignored the broom entirely. “We’re not here for confession.”

The priest gave a weak, hollow smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I imagine not,” he murmured.

The words hung in the damp air like cobwebs. The tension was a living thing, stretching between them, pregnant with the weight of things unspoken.

M!Y/n moved closer, boots clicking softly on the stone. His coat brushed the edge of a pew, disturbing a thin layer of dust. “Tell me about the tunnel under the barn,” he said. There was no anger in his voice, only the steel of resolve.

The priest froze, broom still in hand, eyes flicking to the crucifix above the altar as though seeking absolution there. Then back to the soldier, trembling ever so slightly. His breath hitched. “There are things I did not choose,” he said slowly, almost reverently, “but I could not stop them.”

M!Y/n’s fingers tightened around the stock of his rifle, though it hung at his side. “You let Black Root operate here. Through this village. Through this church.”

The priest’s voice cracked, dry as firewood. “I let children live. You want me to say I’m a coward? Then I am. But you didn’t see… you didn’t see what they did to those who said no.”

He looked past M!Y/n, his gaze distant, as if looking beyond the walls of the chapel, beyond the village, beyond time itself. Shadows seemed to flicker behind him, the corners of the room pulling in, making the air heavier, thick with memory.

“They came at night,” he said. “The first time, it was just food. Then space… then names… then people. I thought if I gave them what they wanted, I could… protect the rest. Maybe buy time.”

M!Y/n felt a shiver crawl up his spine. There was something in the rhythm of the priest’s words, the cadence of guilt and fear, that made the church feel alive in its despair. Dust swirled at their feet, stirred by the tension, and the smell of wet stone and incense seemed to deepen.

From the back of the chapel, Stanley’s voice floated forward, low and precise, slicing through the stillness like a scalpel. “Time for what?”

The priest didn’t answer. His silence carried more weight than any confession could. He shifted slightly, the broom clattering to the floor, wood striking stone. He pressed a hand to his chest, fingers trembling. “They… they came for obedience,” he murmured. “And they took it. All of it.”

Callahan, leaning against a pew and trying not to inhale too deeply, muttered under his breath, “Obedience, huh? I’d have just written a strongly worded letter and called it a day.” His attempt at humor landed somewhere between inappropriate and necessary, a small human spark in the midst of the suffocating dread.

M!Y/n didn’t flinch. He could feel the weight of history, of despair, pressing against his ribs. He stepped closer, lowering his voice, letting it blend with the echoes of the nave. “Children. Innocent lives. Do you know how many?”

The priest’s hands clenched over the broom handle, knuckles white beneath the frayed sleeves. “Enough to haunt me until I die. Enough to… make every prayer feel like ash in my mouth. I protected them by letting the rest be taken. If I resisted… I would have been the one burned first.”

M!Y/n stared at him. His mind raced with questions, with the friction of moral certainty against the practical reality of survival. The priest was not a monster, not by intent—just a man trapped in the machinery of evil, trying to protect what he could, sacrificing what he could not.

And yet… the tunnel existed.

A small, jagged grin tugged at Callahan’s lips. “Well, I guess it’s not exactly the holy confessional I imagined. No wonder the saints look so pissed—probably tired of hearing about how everyone bends over for the bad guys.”

Stanley shot him a look, eyebrows raised, but didn’t speak. M!Y/n allowed the corner of his mouth to twitch slightly. Humor wasn’t a luxury—they all knew that—but it was a reminder that they were still alive. Still human. Still able to notice the absurdity in the horrors surrounding them.

The priest let out a slow breath, the weight of confession—or perhaps accusation—hanging between them. “I have done what I could,” he said finally. “And I live with it. Black Root… they will not stop. They will take what they want. I am a shield, no more.”

M!Y/n’s eyes narrowed. “And the tunnel? How deep does it go?”

The priest shook his head, shadows in his eyes deepening. “Farther than you want to know. Beneath the barn, beneath the village… it connects places even we cannot see. I pray that it will never be used again. But… men are greedy, and evil… it is patient.”

Callahan made a low whistle. “Yeah, greedy evil. My favorite combo.”

M!Y/n let his eyes scan the church again. Dust-coated pews, cracked windows, an altar cloth mottled with mold. Even here, a place meant to sanctify, the scars of survival and compromise were visible. He could feel the weight of the village’s history pressing into him, the collective suffering of those who had lived and died in silence.

“We’re not here to pray,” he said quietly, letting the words carry through the empty nave. “We’re here to make sure that evil doesn’t keep moving forward.”

The priest’s lips pressed into a thin line, almost a sigh. “Then do what you must. But know this: the earth remembers, and so do I.”

Stanley’s voice, calm and measured, floated from the back. “Let’s see how far that tunnel goes.”

M!Y/n turned, gloves tight on the rifle. The shadows seemed to follow him, and for a moment, he felt the weight of every secret, every compromise, every life sacrificed for survival. The church was not just stone and timber. It was memory. It was pain. It was a confession without absolution.

And yet, somewhere beneath the village, the tunnel waited.

08:27 hours – Village Square

Fog clung stubbornly to the village square, hanging low like a damp shroud. It swirled around sagging rooftops, twisted chimneys, and the skeletal frames of abandoned carts, seeping into the cracks of cobblestone like it belonged there. The fountain in the center—once probably a centerpiece of pride or devotion—had been drained long ago. Its basin was cracked, pitted with frost and time, while the statue above, once a noble or saint, now stood headless, a silent accusation frozen in stone.

Crows wheeled overhead, black against the gray sky, circling but never daring to land. Their caws were absent, replaced by the muted whisper of fog through the warped eaves. The air carried a bitter bite sharper than the morning chill. M!Y/n could taste it, metallic and unyielding, like a promise that something was waiting just beyond perception.

Tomaszewski paced along the stone lip of the fountain, boots crunching on frost-bitten gravel. His gloved hands twitched with the unspent adrenaline of discovery, his eyes hard as flint. He looked at the tunnel they had just uncovered as if he could burn it all down with sheer will.

“We destroy everything,” he said, clipped and cold. Each word sounded like a command to the universe itself. “Burn the records. Send the report. Let the French level the place. Clean it all out.”

Callahan hunched near a rusted lamppost, the metal slick with frost. Arms crossed tightly over his chest, he spoke softly, the uncertainty in his tone barely contained. “Some of them are just afraid,” he said, voice low, almost pleading. “They’re not all… not all Black Root. Some are just… scared.”

Tomaszewski whirled on him, the muscles in his neck taut. “Fear makes you complicit,” he snapped, the words rattling off like rounds fired from a gun. “You hesitate, you let them live—and that makes you as guilty as the rest!”

Callahan flinched, but M!Y/n stepped between them, coat brushing against the fountain’s frost-bitten stone. He did not raise his voice, but when he spoke, it cut through the fog like a bayonet, sharp and undeniable.

“Then we may as well burn every town between here and the Rhine. Every widow. Every child. This isn’t just a tunnel—it’s a thread. We pull it, we find the whole web.”

Tomaszewski froze, jaw tightening. His eyes narrowed, the words landing like a physical blow. “You’re getting soft,” he said, low, venomous.

Soft. The word slammed into M!Y/n harder than any bullet ever could. He felt the weight of it press against his chest, heavy, uncomfortable, intimate. Soft. The soldiers in Echo Squad weren’t soft. They couldn’t be.

Before he could respond, Stanley moved. Almost imperceptibly at first, then with a precision that made the fog itself seem to part around him. He stepped forward, the air around him suddenly charged, a tension like static climbing the skin. “Say that again.”

Tomaszewski froze. For a heartbeat, the village square held its breath. Even the crows seemed to hover mid-flight, their wings cutting through fog-laden light. The silence stretched, taut and dangerous, before the older soldier swallowed the words back down.

He didn’t repeat them.

M!Y/n exhaled slowly, feeling the shift ripple through the group. It wasn’t just discipline or fear keeping them in line anymore. They weren’t simply soldiers patrolling a burned-out village. They were reckoning with ghosts—echoes of the past, the weight of survival, the choices made in dark rooms, cold hallways, and shadowed chapels. Every decision, every compromise pressed down harder than the forest ever could.

Stanley lingered by M!Y/n’s side. He didn’t need to touch him. His presence was enough—a quiet anchor in the thick fog of tension. Their eyes met for a heartbeat, and in that brief exchange, no words were necessary. The gaze said more than dialogue ever could. Not soft. Steady. Implacable.

M!Y/n looked away first, forcing his attention to the cracked fountain, the frost biting his cheeks. The village square, empty and accusatory, seemed to mirror the fractured state of the squad.

Callahan, ever the comic relief in the apocalypse of their lives, shifted uncomfortably and muttered, “Well… I’d offer to polish the statue, but I don’t think ghost Saint George is taking requests.” His attempt at humor barely broke through the fog, but it did something: a small, human crack in the heavy tension.

“You want humor?” Tomaszewski shot back, voice tight, “Go polish a shoe. Or better yet, go scare the crows yourself. They’re the only things left brave enough to fly here.”

Callahan grinned wryly, hands raised in mock surrender. “Bravery is overrated anyway.”

M!Y/n shook his head subtly, suppressing a smile. Humor was dangerous here—it could make them careless. Yet it was also necessary.

The squad fell silent again. M!Y/n scanned the perimeter, noting the sagging rooftops, the frost-slicked cobblestones, the abandoned carts that were little more than skeletons. Every window was shuttered. Every alleyway empty. The village seemed to watch them, not out of fear, but out of curiosity, like it was alive and aware of their intrusion.

A crow cawed in the distance, startling M!Y/n’s nerves just enough to remind him that danger never rested. The fog twisted around his boots, wrapping them in cold and damp, as though the village itself were trying to tether them.

“We can’t stay,” M!Y/n said finally, voice low, carrying through the square without rising. “We make our move now, or we risk losing the thread entirely. Black Root won’t wait for us to finish moral debates. Threads unravel. And then we find ourselves in the dark, chasing the wrong ghosts.”

Tomaszewski’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue. His gloved hands rested on the butt of his rifle, knuckles white. Callahan exhaled audibly, the small sound of a man acknowledging the gravity of what lay beneath the cracked stones.

Stanley stepped closer to M!Y/n, just enough to share the heat of his body in the frosty morning. His presence was a calm certainty, steadying the nerves of everyone within its orbit. His gaze swept the village, noting exits, vantage points, and the edges of danger. M!Y/n followed the silent calculation in those steel eyes, feeling the unspoken message: steady. Focus. Not soft.

They weren’t just soldiers anymore. They were inheritors of choice and consequence, bound together by more than duty. The square, the frost, the cracked fountain, the headless statue—all of it was now part of their reckoning.

Callahan, trying once more to pierce the tension, muttered from the side, “I feel like this is the sort of square where someone should be handing out hot cocoa. You know, like a village holiday festival. Only… with fewer Nazis.”

M!Y/n couldn’t help a small, dry chuckle, muffled against his scarf.

Stanley’s eyes flicked to him briefly, acknowledging the sound without comment. Silent camaraderie, heavier than words.

M!Y/n exhaled again, letting the cold bite at his lungs. He looked around one last time: the empty streets, the sagging rooftops, the frost cracking beneath their boots. They were about to descend into what lay beneath, into the tunnel, into the web that Black Root had woven. And this square—quiet, bitter, accusing—would remain as witness.

They moved.

Boots crunching, rifles at the ready, breath misting in the cold morning air. The thread was there. They would pull it.

And the web would unravel.

Later – Edge of the Forest, Observation Post

Night came heavy and early, folding the world into itself as though the sun had retreated not just behind the horizon but deep into the earth, unwilling to witness the horrors yet to come. The Black Forest swallowed the last traces of daylight with an ancient hunger, leaving only shadows and the hollow groan of wind through twisted branches. Trees stood like sentinels, black and unmoving, their jagged silhouettes stabbing against the deepening sky. The air was damp, thick with the scent of pine, rotting leaves, and something faintly metallic that M!Y/n couldn’t name. Fog curled low, coiling around the forest floor like smoke from a dying fire.

M!Y/n perched on the incline just above Lichtenbrunn, his back pressed to the roots of a fallen tree, coat cinched tight against the creeping chill. Frost had already begun to lace the grass, and the cold bit not just at his skin but into his lungs, seeping into his bones like a quiet accusation. He inhaled slowly, tasting the iron tang in the air, feeling it mingle with the weight of what they’d seen that day—the tunnels, the children, the raw edge of survival.

Below, the crude railway track glinted faintly where it disappeared beneath the village barn, an iron tongue sliding into the earth. Moonlight caught the rails in uneven flashes, and for a moment, M!Y/n thought it moved, alive and breathing, waiting for someone—or something—to come back. He couldn’t stop looking at it.

The quiet was broken only by the soft crunch of boots in frost-bitten grass. Stanley slid down beside him, careful not to disturb the frozen earth more than necessary. He sat close—not quite touching, but near enough that M!Y/n could feel the warmth radiating from him, a stark contrast to the cold that had seeped into everything else. For a while, they sat in silence, the kind of silence that wasn’t empty but charged—full of all the things neither had said, all the choices left unmade, the moments of hesitation that had carried them through Normandy, through Ardennes, and now here, on the edge of a post-war nightmare.

“You were right,” Stanley said finally, voice quiet but firm. “About not burning it.”

M!Y/n didn’t look at him, eyes fixed on the glinting tunnel. “I don’t know if I was,” he murmured. “I just knew we couldn’t become what we’re trying to stop.”

Stanley nodded slowly, drawing a knee up and resting his forearm across it. His eyes, lightened by the moonlight, met M!Y/n’s only fleetingly before flicking back to the shadowed forest below. “You’re not getting soft,” he said quietly, as if speaking it aloud would somehow make it true.

M!Y/n let out a brittle laugh, the sound carrying a note of frost. “Don’t tell Tomaszewski,” he said, half teasing, half warning.

Stanley chuckled softly, the sound low and genuine, a small flicker of warmth in the oppressive cold. “I won’t. But I’ll shoot him if he says it again.”

That earned a genuine laugh from M!Y/n, short, dry, but honest. It unfurled something tight in his chest, a knot of tension he hadn’t realized he was carrying. For a moment, just a moment, the weight of the day lifted, and he could breathe again.

He finally turned toward Stanley. Moonlight traced his profile: jaw set with stubborn determination, cheekbones sharp beneath the dirt and frost, a hint of shadow beneath his eyes from the weeks of unending vigilance. The scar along his jawline caught the silver light, a thin white line from Metz that M!Y/n remembered treating with bandages and antiseptic under impossible conditions. The hair escaping his helmet curled slightly damp, mist from the forest clinging in restless strands. And then there were his eyes—quiet, steady, unflinching.

They looked at each other for a beat too long. Too long for propriety, too long for war, and yet not long enough to name what was hanging between them.

“You ever think,” Stanley’s voice broke the silence, hesitant as if testing the fragile air between them, “that we might be too late? That this… this Black Root thing is already ten steps ahead of us, and we’re just chasing shadows?”

M!Y/n didn’t answer immediately. The question felt too heavy for the cold night, too heavy for the iron tongue of the tunnel below, for the weight of every life stolen or nearly lost.

“All the time,” he admitted finally, voice low, letting the confession hang in the space between them. “But it doesn’t matter. We follow the thread. Even if it leads into hell.”

Stanley’s hand rested lightly on his knee, thumb brushing absent-mindedly against the fabric of his coat. “I’d follow you,” he said.

The words hit M!Y/n like a pulse, sudden and impossible to ignore. Not because they were unexpected, but because they were closer than any acknowledgment he allowed himself. Closer than trust, closer than camaraderie. Closer than he dared to admit in his own heart.

He turned his gaze downward, hands gripping his gloves, the leather stiff and cold under his fingers. “Don’t say stuff like that, Stan,” he said softly, almost more to himself than to the man beside him.

“Why not?” Stanley’s voice was careful, teasing just enough to break the tension without shattering it.

M!Y/n exhaled, jaw tight. “Because… if I let myself believe it means something more than just loyalty… then I have to admit I don’t want to lose you. Not just as a soldier. As… you.”

The silence that followed was heavier than the cold, heavier than the fog curling around them, heavier than the threat of Black Root itself. It pressed into their bones, binding them to the moment in ways words never could.

Stanley turned slowly, and for the first time, really looked at him. His knuckles brushed lightly against the sleeve of M!Y/n’s coat, a tentative, careful contact that said everything their words could not. “You won’t,” he said softly.

The moon broke through the clouds then, bathing the forest in pale light. The village below remained dark, save for a single flickering lantern in the church window. Somewhere deeper in the woods, a branch snapped—a distant, insignificant noise, yet real enough to remind them of the world outside their fragile bubble. Still, neither moved.

M!Y/n tilted his head back against the fallen tree, exhaling slowly. He let the quiet settle again, letting the warmth from Stanley bleed subtly into his own awareness. They didn’t speak. Words had become inadequate. The tension between them had shifted—it was no longer solely the loaded, dangerous kind bred from war and fear. It was something older, human, intimate. A longing threaded through each glance, each pause, each deliberate silence.

Stanley shifted, brushing his shoulder lightly against M!Y/n’s. Not enough to be invasive, but enough to confirm presence. He didn’t pull away.

“We should get some rest,” he murmured.

“Yeah,” M!Y/n replied, voice low, almost hesitant.

But neither stood. They remained there longer, watching the fog swirl and catch in the skeletal branches, watching the cold wind comb through the forest. The world might be unraveling just beyond the edge of their rifles, but here—on this incline, under the gaze of an indifferent moon—they could exist, if only for a moment, suspended between the war, the danger, and the feelings neither dared to fully name.

Callahan would have called it “a bro-moment with frost,” M!Y/n thought wryly, but he didn’t share it. He didn’t need to. Stanley’s presence was proof enough.

Eventually, M!Y/n let a hand rest closer to Stanley’s, though not quite reaching. The warmth was enough. The nearness enough. And for once, he could almost believe they’d survive the night, the operation, and the weight of everything that came after.

November 11th – 03:46 hours

The tunnel breathed like a grave.

The air was thick and wet, every inhalation dragging rust and stone down into the lungs. Each breath tasted like old iron rails left too long to rot, like the inside of a locked munitions crate. Somewhere deeper in the black, water dripped in steady intervals—sharp plinks echoing like the measured ticks of a clock, marking time not in seconds but in heartbeats. The walls were damp to the touch, sweating with condensation, the cold bleeding straight into skin. Gravel shifted under boots with the faintest crunch, and even that sound seemed too loud, too risky.

Echo Squad moved like shades through a world of shadows, rifles raised, shoulders brushing slick stone. Their silhouettes stretched long and warped against the lantern-lit damp. The silence between them wasn’t empty—it was taut, wired, a silence strung tight by nerves and experience.

At the point, M!Y/n dropped into a crouch, one gloved hand lifted, halting the column. He narrowed his eyes, focusing on the faint light blooming ahead. Not much—dim lanterns swaying, distorted by distance and the curve of the tunnel—but enough to know what waited: men. Cargo. Black Root business.

The kind of business Echo Squad had learned to bleed for.

M!Y/n glanced back. Stanley stood directly behind, rifle steady, his face pale in the thin light. Their eyes caught—just a flicker, a half-second in the dark—but the weight in it pressed like a hand on the chest. Trust. Readiness. Something unspoken that went deeper than orders or survival.

M!Y/n gave a tight nod.

Stanley nodded back.

It was time.

They surged forward. Silent. Efficient. Ghosts sliding into the living world.

Callahan and Tomaszewski split off to the flanks, rifles cutting arcs through the dark. Stanley fell into step beside M!Y/n, their strides almost synchronized, like a rhythm long practiced and never forgotten.

The lantern light resolved into shapes—crates stacked along the railway spur, nailed shut and stenciled with Wehrmacht markings. Three of them. All large. All heavy. A briefcase rested on a crate’s lid, papers spilling from its edge like it had been rifled through in haste.

Four men guarded the cargo.

One sat perched on a crate, cigarette glowing faintly between two fingers, smoke rising into the stagnant air. Two more stood idly with rifles slung across their shoulders, posture loose. The last lingered near the briefcase, scarf wrapped high around his face, eyes watchful in the shadows.

They didn’t see it coming.

M!Y/n was on the smoker first. The rifle stock cracked against his skull with a wet thud before the man even drew breath to shout. He crumpled sideways, cigarette hissing as it struck damp stone.

Tomaszewski moved with brutal speed—two shots, precise and clinical, dropping the sentries before they even shifted their grips. Callahan tackled the last of them, wrestling him to the gravel and pinning him with a knee across the throat. The man thrashed, boots scraping, before going still under the chokehold.

That left one.

Stanley’s.

The scarfed man didn’t flinch when Stanley’s barrel leveled at him. Didn’t even twitch when his own weapon was kicked away. He stood tall, taller than most, eyes locked steady on Stanley’s. He smiled.

And that smile—too calm, too knowing—slid ice down M!Y/n’s spine.

“On your knees,” Stanley barked, voice steel-edged.

The man obeyed, almost politely. Callahan jerked his wrists back and zip-tied them, shoving him down onto the gravel. He didn’t resist. Just sat there, blood trickling from a split lip, chin lifted like a man in church refusing to bow his head.

M!Y/n stepped closer, boots crunching softly. Steam curled from his breath, the cold biting deep. He studied the prisoner. Dusty coat, rough trousers, scarf stained with soot. Could’ve been a villager, a freight hauler, anyone—but no villager stared down four armed men with a smirk carved across his face.

The man spoke, German crisp and clean. Not Bavarian. North, maybe Berlin. Scholarly. “You know what this is.” His smile didn’t falter. “But you don’t know what it means.”

M!Y/n said nothing, expression unreadable. His eyes, though, stayed locked on the prisoner’s.

The man coughed a laugh—short, humorless. “Three crates. A briefcase. A handful of men. You think you’ve stopped something.” He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice as if sharing something intimate. “You haven’t even found the beginning.”

The words lingered, heavier than the air, sinking into the damp stone like poison.

Tomaszewski’s rifle twitched up a notch. Callahan’s grip tightened on the prisoner’s shoulder.

Stanley didn’t move. Didn’t blink. His barrel stayed fixed, his jaw tight.

M!Y/n finally spoke. His voice was quiet, but it carried, low and resolute. “We found enough.”

He lifted his hand.

Callahan yanked the ignition cord.

The fuse flared alive, spitting sparks, hissing down into the tunnel’s black throat. The sound filled the silence like a venomous whisper, echoing against the damp stone. The charges were already set farther back—carefully planted earlier in the night when Echo Squad ghosted through the dark. There were no standing orders to interrogate, no time for intelligence games.

Destruction was the mission.

The prisoner tilted his head, watching the fuse snake away. That calm smile widened, blood streaking his teeth.

“It’s not over,” he whispered.

And then the tunnel roared.

The blast ripped the earth apart.

Sound swallowed everything—an eruption of fire and rock, steel shrieking against stone, air being sucked out and slammed back in all at once. The tunnel shook as if some monstrous hand had grabbed it and tried to crush it shut.

Smoke and dust churned, clawing at throats and eyes. Shrapnel sprayed from the rear, jagged stones clattering like broken bones. Echo Squad hit the ground, arms raised, faces shielded from the hail.

Heat washed through the passage, scorching but brief. Then, as sudden as it came, it was gone.

Silence followed.

Not the silence of calm, or even relief.

The kind that crawls under your skin. That lives in bone marrow. That echoes long after the ringing in your ears dies out.

The kind that says: this isn’t the end.

When the dust thinned, M!Y/n pushed himself upright, lungs burning. Gravel crunched under his boots as he scanned the wreckage. The crates were splintered, the briefcase charred, the tunnel behind them sealed in a jagged wall of stone.

The prisoner knelt in the same spot, coughing blood, shoulders heaving. But that smile—goddamn that smile—remained, faint but fixed.

M!Y/n stared at him.

Stanley came up beside him, close enough their shoulders nearly brushed. He didn’t speak, but M!Y/n could feel the heat of him in the cold, the quiet strength radiating through the smoke and ruin.

Their eyes met in the flickering lantern light.

And in that look was more than trust. More than readiness. Something dangerous, something they weren’t allowed to name, not here, not now.

M!Y/n forced himself to turn back to the prisoner, to the mission, to the silence of the dead tunnel. But the weight of Stanley’s gaze stayed with him.

Even as the smoke settled.

Even as the echoes faded.

Even as he reminded himself, again and again, that war didn’t leave room for wanting anything else.

Not even this.

Chapter Text

Location: French-Occupied Zone, Baden Region, Germany – November 16th, 1946

Operation GLASS HOUND – Phase IV

The sky above Karlsruhe looked sick. A bruise stretched across the heavens, swollen purple and gray, as if the war had left its mark even on the clouds. They sagged low and heavy, gravid with unshed rain, pressing down on the city in a way that made every breath taste damp and metallic.

Silence ruled here. Not the natural kind—the kind found in winter forests or lonely mountain roads—but a silence bred from absence. No birdsong, no animals picking through garbage, not even the far-off clatter of a train. Just a void that swallowed sound, leaving only the faint hum of Echo Squad’s boots grinding through loose rubble.

Karlsruhe was a carcass, and the world had already moved on from it.

Once, the city had been the pride of Baden, a neat jewel of German efficiency. Factories had poured smoke into the air like banners of progress, electric trams sang their way down clean avenues, and entire neighborhoods had thrived under the confidence of the modern age. M!Y/n remembered the dossier photographs—sepia prints of handsome streets and a skyline crowned by chimneys.

But standing here now, it felt impossible to imagine. The city before him was nothing but the bones left behind when the fire had gone out.

Twisted girders jutted up from collapsed roofs, blackened skeletons of industry clawing at the storm-laden sky. Whole facades had collapsed inward, spilling bricks like entrails across the gutted streets. Moss had crept into the cracks, its green fingers spreading slowly over the charcoal stone, stubborn and quiet in its reclamation. What walls still stood bore scars of three different armies—faded swastikas scrawled in tar, French slogans of victory smeared in chalk, and here and there the crooked graffiti of occupying troops: crude jokes, warnings, and names of long-forgotten women. Layers of history, piled on and half-erased, like ghosts shouting over one another.

The air smelled of mildew and rust, the perfume of a city drowned in rain and time. Somewhere deeper in the ruins, water dripped in a steady rhythm, a hollow echo that tricked the ear into thinking someone was moving just out of sight.

M!Y/n stopped in the middle of what had once been a wide avenue. The cobblestones were broken, chewed apart by the tread of tanks that had rumbled through years before. Now they gaped open like broken teeth. He crouched down, fingertips brushing the edge of a pothole filled with stagnant rainwater, the reflection of the clouds rippling back at him. He could almost see the armored columns passing again, smoke rising from their wakes.

The French administration had drawn up plans for reconstruction years ago, glossy documents filed in neat stacks in Strasbourg. But here on the ground, in the mud and ash, none of it mattered. The city was left to rot. To become a scar that polite Europe pretended not to notice.

But M!Y/n noticed. He always noticed.

And in the silence of Karlsruhe, he could almost feel the eyes of those who had died here. Watching. Waiting.

The ghosts never left.

And ghosts, Echo Squad had learned, loved to hide underground.

The Lichtenbrunn tunnel job had been proof of that. Proof paid in blood and exhaustion.

They’d come out of that black pit with more questions than answers, the air of the place still choking their lungs days later. All that sacrifice, and what did they have to show for it?

A briefcase swollen with water damage. Manifests smeared into half-legibility. A handful of forged transport papers, written in a hand too neat to be honest.

And one name.

Just one word, scrawled in the corner of a manifest as if someone had meant to erase it but couldn’t quite bring themselves to:

Hammerstahl Metallwerke, Baden-Baden.

The name meant nothing to Allied records. No entries in the French industrial ledgers, no mention in reparations claims. The Americans hadn’t flagged it, the British hadn’t noticed it, and the Soviets were too busy carving their own piece of Germany to care. As far as the world was concerned, Hammerstahl had never existed.

But the map said otherwise.

M!Y/n had spent nights under the jaundiced glow of a lantern, tracing his fingers across old German blueprints salvaged from 1942 archives. There it was—marked bold and sprawling, a factory complex buried into the Baden hills, a place where steel and munitions had once poured from furnaces. Bombing raids had supposedly leveled it. Allied reports declared it “neutralized.”

Yet something in the maps whispered otherwise. A facility like that didn’t just vanish. It was too big, too well-placed, too important to be forgotten by accident.

Which made it the perfect burrow for the Black Root.

M!Y/n had memorized every elevation line, every contour of the land. He ran his hands across the maps like they were scripture, learning every blind spot, every possible fallback tunnel, every dead-end chamber where a man could be cornered. He could see the routes in his head now, even standing in the skeletal ruins of Karlsruhe.

Command had seen the same fragments of intel. They’d weighed it, judged it, and then—like bureaucrats always did—buried it under jurisdictional nonsense. Baden was French turf, they said. Out of Echo Squad’s operational reach. Any movement would need months of coordination, requests sent through layers of red tape that strangled action before it began.

But M!Y/n had seen too much to believe in red tape anymore.

He’d seen the rot that grew in the cracks of silence.

He knew what happened when they waited for permission.

Too many times, waiting had cost lives.

He stood in the ruins of Karlsruhe now, listening to the silence pressing in, and made his choice.

The rest of Echo Squad lingered nearby, half-visible in the dim light. Stanley sat on the broken edge of a fountain, rolling a cigarette between his fingers without lighting it, eyes scanning the street like a wolf watching tree lines. Callahan leaned against a wall, arms crossed tight, his jaw set in that way that meant he was trying not to grind his teeth. Tomaszewski crouched by the rubble, sketching lazy circles in the dirt with the tip of his knife, though his eyes flicked up every so often, sharp as razors.

They were waiting on him.

M!Y/n could feel it in the way they carried themselves—tired, silent, but watchful. Each man scarred in his own way by Lichtenbrunn. Each man aware that the world beyond command posts and typed reports was dirtier, sharper, more dangerous than anyone in Strasbourg wanted to admit.

The decision sat heavy on his tongue. He could almost taste the iron of it.

Official channels said no.

But the maps whispered yes.

And somewhere in the Baden hills, ghosts were gathering again.

M!Y/n straightened, letting the damp air fill his lungs until it burned. His hand found the folded map in his pocket, the edges worn soft from too many nights of study. He thought of the tunnels in Lichtenbrunn. The cold of the stone. The stench of old blood and secrets left too long in the dark. He thought of the men who hadn’t come back with them.

Someone had to answer for that.

And if command wouldn’t give the order—then he would.

He looked at his squad. Men he trusted more than anyone else in this broken country.

“Pack it in,” M!Y/n said, his voice low but steady. “We’re going to Baden-Baden.”

Stanley lit the cigarette at last, the flare briefly painting his face in firelight. He didn’t smile, but his lips curled just enough to show he’d expected nothing less.

Callahan shook his head, muttering a curse under his breath, but he pushed off the wall and adjusted his rifle strap.

Tomaszewski’s knife clicked shut, vanishing into his coat, his eyes gleaming with the sharp glint of anticipation.

The silence of Karlsruhe pressed in around them once more. But this time, it felt different.

This time, the ghosts had company.

And M!Y/n had made the call.

08:17 hours – Checkpoint 32 – French Border Authority, Baden Sector

Checkpoint 32 looked less like a border post and more like a grave marker for a country that no longer existed. A prefab shack leaned crookedly against its own shadow, patched together from mismatched boards that warped in the damp. The two barriers flanking the road—half-hearted sandbag lines topped with rusted coils of concertina wire—had been thrown together in haste and left to sag. Beyond them, the road wound east, empty and gray, disappearing into the broken husk of Baden like a vein that no longer carried blood.

A French flag clung to its pole above the shack, colors faded to bruised pastels. The cloth hung limp, tangled in its own lines, forgotten in the drizzle. Every few seconds a bead of water ran down the fabric, darkening the stain where red had once been vivid.

Lieutenant Charpentier stood at the checkpoint like a man who had been left there by mistake and simply never replaced. His uniform was wrinkled, collar undone, cap pulled low over eyes that looked too sunken for his age. He smelled faintly of cheap coffee and stale tobacco. A clipboard sagged in his grip, papers curling at the corners from the damp.

He examined Echo Squad’s forged identification papers with the weary detachment of a schoolmaster grading homework in the middle of a storm. His lips moved silently as he read, the drizzle soaking into the ink, smudging the stamps. When he finally spoke, his voice was clipped, the French consonants sharpened by fatigue.

“No Allied unit is authorized west of the twenty-eighth rail marker without French escort,” he recited. “Your documents are invalid. This zone is cleared.”

The rain hissed on the wire. Somewhere behind the shack, a generator coughed twice before sputtering back into silence.

M!Y/n said nothing at first. His scarf was pulled high over his face, the wool damp and itching against his jaw, leaving only his eyes visible. They burned beneath the shadow of his helmet, steady and stubborn, unwilling to yield. He held Charpentier’s gaze without blinking, a refusal loud enough to fill the silence.

Behind him, Callahan shifted his weight from one boot to the other, the scuff of leather against wet stone loud in the quiet. Tomaszewski tapped his foot against the ground, restless and irritated, the sound like a ticking clock. Stanley stood with his rifle slung loose across his chest, silent but radiating a tension that made the air feel thinner.

Finally, M!Y/n’s voice broke the stillness. It was rough, a low growl soaked in gravel and frost.

“It hasn’t been cleared,” he said. “It’s been covered.”

Charpentier’s brows rose, just a fraction. The corner of his mouth twitched like he might almost smile, but didn’t. “We are no longer at war, Sergeant,” he replied. “You cannot behave as though you are still behind enemy lines.”

The words were meant as a reprimand. They landed instead as a hollow echo of something every man present already knew was a lie.

Stanley stepped forward then, shoulders squared, the brim of his helmet dripping with rain. His rifle hung easy, but there was nothing casual in the sharpness of his tone. “Then why,” he asked, voice low and cutting, “are we still pulling munitions crates out from under civilian houses?”

Silence.

It was the kind of silence that throbbed, the kind that stretched too long and revealed what both sides already knew but refused to say aloud. Charpentier’s eyes flickered, just briefly, betraying recognition. His jaw tightened.

“If you proceed,” the lieutenant said finally, each word pressed hard against his teeth, “you do so alone. If your team is compromised, there will be no recovery. No acknowledgement.”

M!Y/n’s eyes narrowed. The scarf muffled his breath, but his voice came through clear, iron wrapped in frost.

“We won’t need you to.”

No one moved for a long moment. Rain tapped against steel and wire, gathering in small rivulets that dripped steadily to the mud.

Then M!Y/n turned. His boots struck the wet pavement with deliberate weight, each step the sound of defiance. Stanley followed, flicking his cigarette stub into the mud. Callahan muttered something under his breath, bitter, before falling in line. Tomaszewski lingered just long enough to give Charpentier a final, unreadable look before pulling his scarf higher and trailing after the squad.

The French lieutenant watched them vanish into the mist, his pale face unreadable. The flag above him sagged further, drenched and forgotten.

09:52 hours – Abandoned Warehouse District, Southwest Karlsruhe

The rain had thickened by the time Echo Squad reached the old warehouse district. It fell in slow, deliberate drops, as if the sky were bleeding one wound at a time, soaking the broken streets until the cobblestones gleamed slick and black.

The air here still reeked of war. Rust, mold, the acrid bite of scorched timber. And beneath it all, something harder to name: a metallic rot, the scent of old blood and iron left too long to fester. The city breathed it like a memory it couldn’t release, and every inhale seemed to carry whispers of the years that had been burned away.

Echo Squad moved like shadows. Four figures in worn fatigues, rifles pressed close, boots scuffing just enough to remind the silence that they were alive. Their eyes cut sharp through the fog and rain. They weren’t soldiers here so much as hunters—or scavengers, searching for what the war had left behind.

Karlsruhe had once been ambition cast in steel and stone. Factories had belched smoke that mingled with the sky. Trains had sung their metallic hymns through the streets. Money had flowed like blood. Now the city was a carcass.

Roofless warehouses jutted up like broken ribs, their skeletal frames groaning in the rain. Steel beams reached skyward like crucifixes, rust bleeding down their sides, the morning light too pale to offer redemption.

The walls wore their history in layers, graffiti piled upon graffiti: fresh French slogans daubed over older German commands, those scrawled atop still older Socialist symbols. The swastikas, though faded, were not gone. They lingered like stains that no rain could wash away.

Tomaszewski took the rear, steps heavy, eyes flicking from shadow to shadow with the intensity of a man convinced something was already following them. He scanned every alley twice, then again, fingers brushing the trigger guard of his rifle. His breath fogged in the damp air, faster than the rest.

Callahan noticed. He slowed, just a fraction, glancing back. His voice was low, careful. “You good back there?”

Tomaszewski didn’t answer at first. His jaw flexed beneath his scarf. The rain dripped down the line of his helmet, slid into the hollow of his collar.

Finally, he muttered, “I can’t smell it.”

Callahan frowned. “Smell what?”

“Coal,” Tomaszewski said, eyes fixed on the empty windows gaping above them. “Mines reek of it. Even decades later. The earth remembers. Always. But not here. Just rot. Mold. Like the place never breathed at all. Something’s wrong.”

The words hung in the air like a bad omen.

The squad pressed on. The sound of their boots echoed strangely, as if the ground beneath them were hollow.

Their destination revealed itself at last: a collapsed shipping facility swallowed in rust and ivy, its brick walls sagging, roof long since gutted. Cargo trucks lay scattered like dead animals, their hulks corroded into nothing more than twisted iron. Windows gaped open, glass long shattered, rain dripping through.

Near the back wall, barely visible through the ruin, stood a heavy steel gate. It looked almost like part of the wall until you noticed the seams, the thick iron bolted into place. Four welds sealed it shut, each scarred deep by torch and time, pitted with corrosion.

Stanley ran a hand over the seam, fingertips brushing rust flakes away. His voice was low, grim. “This wasn’t sealed to keep people out.”

M!Y/n stepped forward, his breath fogging against the cold metal. His eyes narrowed as he traced the welds with his gloved hand. He felt the wrongness in the weight of the air, in the silence pressing close, in the way the gate seemed to shiver beneath the rain as though it were holding its breath.

“It was sealed,” he said, voice quiet but certain, “to keep something in.”

The squad stood in silence, the rain falling harder now, the city holding its breath around them.

10:37 hours – Subterranean Access, Baden Metalworks

The descent was a prayer that never promised an answer.

Stone steps peeled away into darkness like the ribs of some great buried thing, each tread slick with centuries of damp and the slow, patient rot of neglect. Their flashlights carved islands of light—rounded, trembling—across wet tiles and scarred handrails. Where the beams didn’t touch, the world folded into itself: black, absolute, full of the small sounds that grow too loud when men go quiet. Water sang in thin threads. Rats clicked in the far distance. The stale, wet smell of mildew clung to them like a second uniform.

M!Y/n led, because he always did when the way down was a question and not a map. He kept his rifle angled low, muzzle tracing the floor as if the weapon could read the stone for traps and secrets the men’s eyes could not. The beam from his lamp slid over torn posters long since peeled from their frames, over graffiti rubbed away by hands that had passed through these corridors a dozen times and for a dozen masters. His boots were steady; each step was deliberate, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the thick air.

Behind him, Echo Squad followed without talk. They had a language that lived in the pause between orders—an economy of motion honed on missions where words would get men killed and silence could save them instead. Callahan moved with the heavy, efficient grace of the man who had spent too many years carrying more than his share of weight. Stanley’s shoulders were a taut wire; his eyes cut the dark in quick bursts, always measuring the space between shadows. Tomaszewski padded last like a diver feeling the way into cold water—alert, breathing shallow, senses wide for whatever the earth wanted to keep secret.

Every footfall found an echo and sent it down the spiral, a tiny percussion that answered them back in the same muted timbre. The echoes multiplied until the stairwell seemed to hold a conscience—another presence moving along with them, older and slower, remembering the footsteps that had come before.

At the bottom, the spiral disgorged them into an access tunnel whose concrete ribs rose like the segments of a machine’s spine. Maintenance panels hung loose; their bolts eaten by rust, their faces scored with graffiti in languages that had no business meeting one another in the same place. The hallway had given up on being whole years ago. One side sagged into a rubble-filled collapse, waterlogging the detritus into a gray, smothering mass. The other side curved away, vanishing into a mouth of darker concrete.

No lights. No active cables. No help. Just the dark, patient as a predator.

Callahan swept his scope along the far wall, letting the infrared hum through the night that wasn’t night. The display pinprick of his thermal sight made little constellations on the damp concrete—cold, human outlines caught in the slow tradewind of the underground. His breath hitched once and he swallowed it down like a man tasting fear and deciding it could be used.

“Heat sig,” he said, low. The words were small and clean. “Faint. Maybe thirty meters. Hidden.”

The sound of his scope was the only concession to optimism in the corridor. They followed the indicated angle, light braiding with light, until the beam landed on a patch of wall that seemed—on first glance—to be nothing more than history: a section tiled to match the rest, grout dark with time. But the tiles were too even, the mortar too new in places. Their surface was wrong; it caught the beam and threw it back with a little stuttering, as if the wall were keeping a secret.

M!Y/n moved to it, gloves whispering across ceramic. He ran a gloved finger over the line between tiles and felt the slightest give, a seam disguised by dirt. With a short, concentrated tug the upper tile shifted, revealing the edge of a metal plate. Behind the disguise the air smelled different for a second—less of mildew, more of iron and machine oil, the thin, clean sting of an office’s breath.

They found a thick steel door buried beneath false tiles and ash. The metal face was cold under M!Y/n’s palm and scored with old scars—blows from torches, perhaps, hammered into silence later. A keypad sat dead to one side, cracked and blackened by a life without power. One word, stamped into the metal with the mute authority of machine-made letters, stared back when the light hit: WERKSTATT. Workshop.

Stanley pressed the flat of his ear to the door as if it were the side of a patient’s chest. He inhaled once, held it, and then let his breath out in a slow rasp. Seconds like small stones fell away.

“There are voices,” he whispered finally. “Two. Male. German. Talking about movement schedules. Not just sitting—organizing.”

The word “organizing” landed in the narrow tunnel and grew teeth. Movement schedules in peacetime meant trucks and paperwork and the slow slide of bureaucracy. In a place like this, it meant convoys, compartments, the whisper of men folded into crates.

M!Y/n turned the beam on Tomaszewski. “You’re on eyes.”

Tomaszewski didn’t answer at first. He stood a moment too still, the pale shape of him outlined by the flashlight like a figure caught in a folk tale. The sniper’s mouth moved and no sound came. His hands flexed, as though reburying a memory.

“Tomasz,” M!Y/n said, softer. He was not ordering; he was asking a man he trusted to bring his eyes from the past back to the present.

The sniper finally looked up. He spoke, and the word came out pulled and ragged. “They’re still doing it,” he breathed. “Same stamps. The crest—Black Root. I saw it on a convoy in ‘44. My mother—” His throat closed, the sentence stopping short like a door slammed by wind.

Stanley’s hand came to rest on Tomaszewski’s arm, a gentle, practiced pressure. “Breathe,” he said. “You’re here.”

Tomaszewski’s whole body twitched once at the touch, a live wire settling into place. He mouthed something brief—I’m here—and when he nodded it was with the small, brittle dignity of a man who had learned to carry a grief as if it were ballast. The light over his shoulder caught the angle of his nose, the fine line of fear in his eyes. For a second something like the boy he’d been flitted across his face, then the mask snapped back into place.

M!Y/n stepped forward without asking. His voice was a low order that allowed no protest and carried a weight that had nothing to do with rank. “We do it here. Tonight.”

The sniper closed his eyes for a breath, and the squad’s world contracted down to the metal plate and the thin sound of human speech through steel.

“Ready,” Callahan said. It was a simple agreement. No bravado—just the businesslike acceptance of men who had measured the cost of choices too often.

They set the charge with the quiet mindfulness of surgeons. Stanley’s hands were steady as he placed the demolition pack against the weld seam, smoothing the adhesive with the thumb that had steadied rifles through storms. The charge was small—a measured mouthful of noise designed to open rather than to destroy. They did not want to wake the whole mountain, only the room behind the door.

M!Y/n stepped back, lamp fixed in his left hand, rifle in his right. He looked at the men—at Callahan’s tight jaw, at Tomaszewski’s pale profile, at Stanley’s calm face—then at the closed metal. For a moment the world seemed to hold its breath along with them. The smell under the door was older now, a stale draft threaded with tobacco smoke and the acid tang of old ink.

Stanley set the detonator. There was no flourish. He held the button for a second, his thumb poised like a person about to plunge into cold water, measuring the finality.

On his mark, the charge went off with a thud—a whump of pressure and smoke that bucked their boots and set their teeth rattling. The sound ate itself in the corridor, a small animal swallowed by bigger dark. Dust bloomed like a smoke flower. Light dimmed as ash fell and then cleared.

Flashlights cut through the dust. The world inside the room was revealed like a guilty truth, bright and terrible under the cone of their lamps.

It wasn’t an armory. It was an office—a bureaucracy preserved like a corpse in a glass case. Desks were arranged in the stubborn geometry of function. Maps were spread and pinned on corkboards, faded ink seeping into paper. Filing cabinets yawned with folders that had not been touched since the war drew a line. Radios sat on a shelf, hissing with static and the afterlife of shortwave signals. Ashtrays still held the last stub of someone’s cigarette, its butt half-gnawed by time. Coffee cups sat fossilized with lime-green mold. Typewriters leaned as if mid-sentence, key arms frozen in a posture of interrupted thought.

The air inside was warmer, almost human. It smelled of stale smoke, of paper, of the oily mechanical sigh of machines left idle. The contrast with the tunnel’s chill was stark enough to show them that people had been here, actively, not simply hiding. People had been working.

Two men occupied the room.

One, in the coal-black uniform that announced a membership of a thing that had no right to exist, spun as the door gave its startled groan. His uniform was neat enough to suggest a care for appearance; his face was the kind of cultivated, leashed expression men perfected in the service of cruelty. The other man was in a civilian coat, eyes blown wide in the sudden flare of light, hands raised because some reflex told him that the most immediate defense was compliance.

“DOWN!” M!Y/n barked, the word ricocheting off metal and paper. “HANDS ON THE TABLE. NOW!”

The civilian complied immediately, face folding inward as if the act of submitting could make him smaller, less visible. The uniformed officer did not.

He had the imprint of urgency in the way his hand went for his sidearm—fast and furious, practiced as a habit. Tomaszewski fired without thinking. His shot was thin and terrible, the rifle cracking the air with a sound that would live in their ears for the rest of their lives. The officer dropped forward, a broken marionette, his skull split in a bloom of red against the cheap wallpaper. The room smelled, for a second, of iron and shock and far too new death.

Callahan muttered something under his breath, a profanity stitched with the strangled word, “Jesus.”

Stanley moved quick as a blade. He seized the civilian by the collar and slammed him into a chair with an authority that left no room for argument; the man’s wrists were bound with industrial cable before he had time to blink. Stanley crouched beside him as if to meet him eye to eye and drew a small, cruel blade—more a tool than a weapon—and prodded the man to life with it. The blade flashed and the civilian flinched, the sound an involuntary prayer.

“Name,” Stanley said, his voice flat and cold. He waited as if expecting a lie and bracing for it.

The man was stubborn in his silence. His lips clamped together. He swallowed. He tried to force air around the word as if it were a stone.

M!Y/n moved in. The room smelled of coffee and damp paper and the faint persisting smoke of someone who had once thought themselves safe. He crouched down until their eyes were level. His presence was a hand tightened around a throat.

“We’ll find out either way,” M!Y/n promised, but the promise wasn’t kind.

Silence pressed back until Stanley, losing patience, dragged the razor across the man’s collarbone—a whisper, an implied threat that bled into flesh only the tiniest, reddened line. The man hissed and then birthed a name on a tremor of a voice: “Kreutz. I—Kreutz. Logistics liaison.”

The word stumbled out like an apology.

M!Y/n leaned closer. He let the beam of his lamp pick out the man’s face—the fine lines, the slight tremor at the corners of his mouth. “You’re not just shuffling crates,” M!Y/n said, and each syllable had the weight of accusation. “You’re moving people. Disguised in convoys. Hidden under mineral shipments. Specialists—scientists, technicians, officers. You think you’re history’s loophole. You think you can bury what you are in paper and coal.”

Kreutz’s mouth twisted. For a second his face was all civility and control, the trained look of a bureaucrat who had learned how to use the language of procedures as armor. He did not blink.

“You’re not a network,” M!Y/n said, harsher now. “You’re a government in waiting. A Fourth Reich with another name. You gather men, stock supplies, teach the old lessons. Why? For power? Revenge? Purpose? What do you call yourself in the mirror?”

Kreutz’s answer was a smile like a blade, polite and practiced. “We are a memory,” he said. His German was precise, the syllables rolling out with the soft cruelty of someone in love with words that hurt. “And memories don’t die. They are taught. Retaught. Reborn.”

There was a quiet, ridiculous thing about the sentence—an attempt at philosophy from a man whose hands were likely always clean. But the words landed like a challenge.

M!Y/n did not temper himself. Words were for public places; here, in the hum of fluorescents and the spatter of the officer’s blood, action was the only language left. He struck Kreutz with a punch that closed like a trap: not a flurry, not a cautionary tap, but a hard, calculating blow meant to dislodge certainty. The sound was the ugly hollow of impact. Kreutz slumped, hitting the chair with a noise like a sack of grievances. Blood speckled his lip. He coughed, and the cough tore a small, terrified laugh out of him.

No one moved to stop M!Y/n. No one said a word to scold him for letting the stick of punishment rest so heavily in his palm. Not Stanley, who watched with the same necessary stillness that had once steadied a thousand wounds. Not Callahan, who had the face of a man who had learned when to strike and when to sheath. Not Tomaszewski, whose hands trembled but whose rifle was steady in case the room’s law bent in the wrong direction.

The violence was both crucible and confession. M!Y/n’s knuckles burned, and he felt the old, bitter satisfaction of seeing a lie bruise.

Kreutz spat and swallowed, the air thick with the soundtrack of the room: radios crackling, paper rustling, the slow drip of water somewhere in the wall. His gaze was not defiant now; it was tired, like a man who had been holding himself upright for so long he had forgotten what fell felt like.

“How many?” M!Y/n demanded. He wanted names. Routes. The faces that had been folded into crates and shipped like goods. He wanted to know whose mother had been murdered in quiet, whose children had been taught hatred in secret schools, whose wives had disappeared into coal-streaked night.

Kreutz’s eyes darted, searching for a lie that might be kinder, a way to salvage himself from the grate. He coughed again. “Convoys leave on the full of the moon,” he said finally, voice ragged. “From the north pit. Mineral shipments, official manifests. Specialist manifests coded—S-3. Trucks marked with the crest. Baden routes. Two trains a month. There—there are labs further south. Underground. They test—” The words spilled faster now, as if confession might be a reprieve. “Weapons, alloys, human trials—movement. Scientists taken from University lists, recruitment—not voluntary—paid by fronts. You don’t know the half of it.”

The list came in fits and starts, the particulars like pebbles spilled from a pocket. Names slipped, dates—some coherent, some mangled by fear. M!Y/n catalogued it all in grim shorthand in the back of his skull, feeling each revelation like a notch carved into something that had thought itself safe.

When Kreutz faltered, when his breath hitched and his hands folded uselessly in his lap, Stanley leaned in with quiet, inexorable pressure and repeated the question with the patience of a professional torturer. Not a monster’s patience—no, his patience was surgical, clinical. He wanted answers that would hold up to scrutiny, not theater.

The man kept talking. He spoke of shipments marked by a crest Tomaszewski recognized that made his bones ache. He spoke of safe houses in small towns that pretended to be bakeries and laundries. He spoke of men with medals and unmarked graves. He spoke of promises made in the yellow light of basements. He spoke and they listened—because what he revealed was not just evidence; it was the history of a scar that refused to heal.

When the last names had been named; when the routes had been traced until there was nothing left to trace, M!Y/n stood with the silence pressed to his ribs like a cloak. The squad had drawn a map in the room with words and pain, and now the map burned behind his eyes.

Outside, the tunnel kept breathing. Somewhere above, the city moved on, ignorant and entitled. Underground, time had a different currency—one paid in secrets, in bones, in sleep stolen by the knowledge that the world’s promises were only as good as the men who kept them.

M!Y/n looked at the men around him. Tomaszewski’s face was a pale thing of grief and resolve. Callahan’s jaw had set into a line no one wanted to cross. Stanley’s hands were steady.

“We finish it,” M!Y/n said, and the sentence was not a question. It did not need to be. It hung in the room like a verdict.

Kreutz laughed—a small, raw sound that died quickly. “You can kill me,” he said. “You can burn these rooms. For every one of us you destroy, another will take our place.” His voice was ragged with something like triumph. “Ideas—are not killed that way. You cannot kill memory.”

M!Y/n’s answer was a look that might have been pity, or promise, or both. “Memory doesn’t have hands like yours, Kreutz. Memory doesn’t load trains at night or teach kids hatred. Memory is just a thing you use to make yourself feel right. We’re going to disarm that ‘memory’ one truck at a time.”

They bound Kreutz’s hands tighter, and for a moment his eyes were not angry, not defiant—only tired. The radios hummed and mapped a pattern of white noise against the walls. Outside, the tunnel’s breath rose and fell. Inside the sealed metal, bureaucracy lay like a carcass waiting for its scavengers.

Echo Squad packed up methodically. They took documents, crates in part, maps with routes that would take weeks to verify. Tomaszewski moved with a gentleness that belied the violence he had committed only minutes before, folding the pages with a care that felt almost like prayer. Callahan secured the room against surprises. Stanley kept eyes on the bound man until the last second, the angle of his blade a percussion of possibilities.

They left the office behind as if putting a sleeping child to bed: shut the door, make no sound, leave as if nothing had changed. But the world inside them was not the same as the world when they had entered. Truth had been pried loose from its hiding place and the price of silence had been paid in blood that now stained paper and law.

On the stairwell, the damp bit sharper as they climbed. Air from the world above tasted different—colder, cleaner. Light leaked into the tunnel from the stairwell like forgiveness that arrives late and never enough.

M!Y/n paused at the turn and looked back over his shoulder once. The room below was now only a memory, a place he had stripped of pretense. In his palm, the map of routes warmed with the heat of his body. His knuckles still ached where he had struck. He did not regret it. Regret was for those whose hands had never learned to act.

They began the climb back up into a city that pretended the war had ended, a city that would have to be reminded it was not done learning to keep secrets. The rain above had slowed to a dull mist. The flag at the checkpoint still drooped. Somewhere, distant, bells might be beginning to count the hour.

M!Y/n kept his face down, scarf against his mouth, watching the way his breath met the cold air. The words Kreutz had said—memory, rebirth—gnawed like a splinter at the edge of his thoughts. He had no interest in philosophy. He had interest in the living. In people’s faces. In the small, stubborn things that made a life worth keeping: a bowl that belonged to someone’s mother, a photograph folded into a coin’s crust.

They would follow the routes. They would break the chains. They would find the rooms beneath rooms and close them until the world above could no longer pretend ignorance was innocence.

Tomaszewski climbed, eyes raw but steady. He tasted of tears and iron. Stanley’s cigarette glow bobbed faint in the dark like a solitary star. Callahan’s boots rang out with the noise of men set to work.

At the top, the city greeted them with gray light and indifferent skies. Echo Squad stepped back into a world of passing trams and bored policemen, of civil administration that would never sign their names to what they had done. The files they carried would find different hands—hands more interested in prosecution than paperwork, if they were lucky.

M!Y/n’s decision had carved a line in the day: what could be done would be done. They had followed the line down into the earth and come back with new definitions for the country’s quiet. The world would continue to call it recovery. He would call it unfinished.

And somewhere, in the rooms they had stripped of secrets, the “memory” Kreutz spoke of would be forced into the cold, one truck at a time, until it either changed or died.

13:03 hours – Safehouse Ruins, Near Rastatt

The afternoon air clung heavy with the bitter tang of burnt paper and charred wood, a taste that lingered on the back of the tongue no matter how many times M!Y/n swallowed. Smoke hung low across the valley like a gauze veil, drifting from the smoldering pile they had set aflame hours ago. Ash spiraled upward in lazy, spiraling eddies, caught by the occasional breeze only to be scattered again—ghostly dancers dissolving into the steel-gray sky.

The safehouse—if one could even call it that—was nothing more than bones now. What had once been a barn, modest but sturdy, had collapsed under the twin assaults of time and fire. Its roof had caved years ago, the beams warped and split. Today, Echo Squad had finished what history had started. Splintered timber, broken stone, twisted iron lay scattered like the entrails of some fallen beast.

Among the debris were the blackened remains of ledgers, maps, coded scraps of paper that had once pulsed with danger. They had photographed everything they could before consigning it to fire. Every scorched page carried whispers of the deeper machinery they had uncovered—the veins of the Black Root running beneath Europe like a buried disease.

A low-band relay, half-hidden in the earth a kilometer back, now carried those whispers outward—photographs compressed, coordinates burned into fragile signals, a heartbeat buried in static. A fragile secret offered to command. No reply had come. Not from French dispatch. Not from Allied channels. The silence pressed in, suffocating.

It was as though the world beyond these ruins had chosen to hold its breath, leaving Echo Squad marooned in ash and smoke.

Tomaszewski sat at the jagged edge of what had once been a stall wall, his rifle propped against the broken stone. His shoulders sagged forward, his body drawn small, like a man trying to make himself less of a target in a world that had already marked him. A dented canteen hung in his hands, his thumb tracing the old scar along its side again and again, as though the memory of how it had been struck might explain something the present could not. His eyes were hollow, distant. Since the raid beneath the Baden Metalworks, he had spoken almost nothing. Whatever he had seen in those stamped crests, in the memory of his mother and the trucks, had sunk deep and stayed.

Callahan kept to the treeline. He prowled like a wolf denied a hunt, scanning the shadows between skeletal trunks, his jaw tight enough that the muscles pulsed with each slow turn of his head. Every gust of wind seemed to sharpen him, every rustle of leaves pulled his gaze as though the forest itself conspired against them. Nerves stretched taut as tripwire.

Stanley sat cross-legged near the dirt road, his posture deceptively calm, though M!Y/n knew it for the lie it was. His rifle lay across his lap, disassembled in neat rows: barrel, bolt, magazine. Each piece gleamed faintly, oiled with care. His hands moved with a surgeon’s precision, wiping, inspecting, setting each part down with ritual exactness. It was not maintenance. It was penance. As though by cleaning away dirt and ash, he could scour away the images of what they had found: maps marked with convoys, manifests of “specialists” disguised in freight. A blueprint for a Fourth Reich, buried beneath the surface.

The faint tang of gun oil mixed with the wet earth. Rain had begun to drizzle again, thin but persistent, speckling their coats, clinging to their hair.

M!Y/n’s boots made little sound on the soaked ground as he moved closer. He lowered himself onto the mud-stained earth beside Stanley without a word, their knees brushing briefly before settling a few inches apart. The space between them was fragile—small enough to feel like an accident, deliberate enough to feel like a choice.

For a time, only the soft rasp of cloth against steel filled the air.

“Think Tomasz is done?” M!Y/n asked at last, his voice low, almost reluctant to disturb the silence.

Stanley’s hands didn’t falter. He ran the cloth down the rifle’s bolt, his eyes on the movement, though his thoughts were elsewhere. “No,” he said finally. His voice was quieter than usual, stripped of its usual edge. “I think… he’s waking up. To everything he’s always feared. To the fact that we were right. This never ended.”

M!Y/n turned his head, studying him. “The war?”

Stanley set the bolt aside, let his gaze flick up. His eyes were sharp, but something softer trembled behind them. “Not just the war. The idea of it. The idea that they could wait us out. That if you buried your head long enough, the rot would stop spreading. It didn’t.”

The words settled heavy, an anchor in the smoke-thick air.

M!Y/n nodded slowly. He felt the weight of them sink into his chest, the truth of it pressing against the ribs. His eyes wandered to Tomaszewski’s bowed frame, then to Callahan pacing in the distance, before returning to Stanley.

For a while, they said nothing. Rain ticked on steel, on mud, on ash. The world hushed around them, the only sound their breaths and the quiet clink of rifle parts.

Then Stanley’s voice broke the silence again. Softer now. Almost vulnerable.

“You pulled him back,” Stanley said, not looking up. His hands fitted the magazine back into place with a muted click. “In the tunnel.”

“I had to.” The reply came quick, instinctive.

Stanley’s eyes flicked to him, sharp and searching. “No,” he said, firmer now. “You chose to. Like you did with me.”

The words struck deeper than M!Y/n expected. He felt them lodge beneath his ribs, heavy with a meaning they both knew but had never spoken. Their eyes locked—dark meeting darker, the unspoken stretching taut between them.

The moment lingered. Fragile. Electric.

Neither spoke. Neither moved.

M!Y/n felt the pull in his chest, a current tugging him closer, urging him to close the inches between them.

Stanley broke it first, looking away. He rose smoothly, rifle reassembled, movements clipped to hide what his eyes had betrayed.

“We move at dusk.”

The words were final, but his voice had lost its usual bite.

M!Y/n watched him stand, the silhouette of his frame etched against the ruin, shoulders squared against the world. He looked every inch the soldier: calm, hardened, untouchable. And yet M!Y/n knew the fault lines beneath that armor. The memories that kept him awake. The same ones that drew them together, raw and unshielded beneath skies like this.

Before he could think better of it, M!Y/n reached out. His fingers brushed against Stanley’s wrist as he passed—light, hesitant, but deliberate.

Stanley stopped. His eyes flickered down at the contact, then back up to M!Y/n’s face. Surprise flashed first, then something softer. Recognition.

“It’s not just Tomasz,” M!Y/n murmured, voice rough with exhaustion, with something deeper. His thumb lingered against the pulse beneath Stanley’s skin, steady and grounding. “It’s all of us. Carrying pieces we don’t want to admit we still have.”

Stanley’s chest rose on a slow inhale. His gaze dropped briefly to their joined hands, then returned, eyes shadowed but open.

“Sometimes it feels like we’re fighting ghosts,” he said, voice barely above the wind. “And maybe we are.”

The breeze tugged at their coats, chilling damp cloth against skin. But for a heartbeat, neither moved. The world narrowed to the heat of contact at the wrist, to the quiet weight of breath shared between them.

M!Y/n’s pulse quickened, a steady drum against his throat.

“I’m tired,” he confessed, words spilling softer than he intended. “Not just from the mission. From everything.”

Stanley’s hand shifted, his fingers brushing over M!Y/n’s in return. A small, grounding pressure.

“Me too,” he admitted. The words carried the same exhaustion, but also an intimacy that felt heavier than any weapon.

M!Y/n exhaled slowly, the air trembling out of him. He shifted slightly, leaning back against a beam of collapsed timber. The wood was damp and cold against his shoulders. Without speaking, Stanley lowered himself down again beside him, close enough that their shoulders brushed.

The contact lingered. Neither pulled away.

Rain thickened, drumming soft on the ruins around them, but under the broken shelter of the barn wall, they remained dry enough. The silence wrapped around them again—not suffocating now, but something else. A cocoon.

Stanley’s thigh pressed lightly against M!Y/n’s. Not enough to be deliberate. Not enough to be an accident.

Neither man shifted.

Their breaths began to match without conscious effort, a rhythm born of long marches, of nights spent back-to-back in foxholes. But here, it felt different. Softer. Shared.

M!Y/n tilted his head, just enough that it rested briefly against the rough canvas of Stanley’s coat. He felt the warmth beneath, the steady rise and fall of breath. Stanley didn’t move away.

The world beyond them still burned, still rotted, still plotted in shadows. But here, for the space of a heartbeat, there was something else.

Not victory. Not safety.

Just the fragile truth of two men leaning into each other because the weight of the war—of memory, of ghosts—was too much to carry alone.

The silence lingered, heavy and fragile, as if it could break at any touch.

And neither of them let go.

18:42 hours – Echo Squad Transmission

TO: CENTRAL – VIA FORWARD RELAY – SIGNAL UNSTABLE

FOUND BLACK ROOT HUB – BADEN METALWORKS.

DOCUMENTS SUGGEST LONG-RANGE OPERATIONS CONTINUING INTO OCCUPIED FRANCE.

ENEMY OPERATING UNDER CIVILIAN COVERS. FRENCH ZONE MAY BE COMPROMISED.

REQUESTING NEW ORDERS – OR GREENLIGHT TO FOLLOW.

—Sgt. M!Y/N

Chapter Text

Location: Alsace Region, French Occupation Zone – November 19th, 1946

Operation GLASS HOUND – Phase V

The Rhine looked like spilled ink in the predawn light—thick, endless, devouring what little color remained in the world. The fog rolled over its surface in slow waves, dense enough to blur the horizon into nothingness, and the air stung with cold so sharp it seemed to flay the breath from their lungs.

Echo Squad drifted silently across it, the raft groaning beneath their combined weight. Calling it a raft was generous—it was more an act of defiance cobbled together from war’s leftovers. Wooden planks scavenged from a burnt-out pontoon bridge, sandbags stitched together with wire, rusted oil drums repurposed as floats. Every inch of it spoke of desperation and necessity. The river licked at its sides with lazy menace, as if deciding whether to take them.

Callahan sat at the stern, hands locked around the tiller. His knuckles had gone bone-white, and his breath fogged the air in sharp bursts. He didn’t speak; none of them did. The silence had its own kind of gravity here—heavy, sacred. Words felt like they’d only wake the ghosts lurking in the mist.

Stanley crouched near the center, his rifle resting across his knees. The dull metal reflected the faintest smear of light from the east, ghostlike. He kept scanning the shoreline they’d left behind, then the one creeping toward them ahead. Every flicker of shadow could be an ambush; every ripple in the water could hide a mine. His jaw worked in small, rhythmic motions, like he was grinding the cold itself down to dust.

Beside him, Tomaszewski murmured a low prayer in Polish—half to his god, half to the river. He did it under his breath, lips barely moving, like superstition kept him safe. His fingers toyed with the edge of a rosary that had been broken so many times it was now just a loop of mismatched beads.

And near the bow, M!Y/n watched the fog ripple in front of them like a curtain waiting to be pulled aside. He could hear his heartbeat louder than the river. The air reeked of damp rot, oil, and gunmetal. Beneath the layers of uniform and wool, his shirt clung to his skin, sweat mingling with the chill. He wanted to rub his hands together to bring back some feeling, but even that small noise felt too loud. The silence wasn’t peace—it was the kind of quiet that came before things went wrong.

“Two minutes,” Callahan finally muttered, voice gravelly, low enough to barely carry.

M!Y/n nodded, though Callahan wasn’t looking. Two minutes until they touched the French side. Two minutes until they disappeared again into another dying village in a war that everyone else insisted was over.

The raft shifted slightly as the current caught it, and M!Y/n’s boot brushed against a patch of water seeping through the seams. The cold burned like acid. He pulled back, muttering a curse under his breath. Stanley shot him a sharp look, the kind that carried a thousand unspoken warnings.

M!Y/n met it briefly, the kind of glance only men who had seen too much could share—equal parts annoyance and understanding.

A faint rumble echoed in the distance. It could have been thunder. Or it could have been something less natural—artillery somewhere deep in the German interior, a reminder that borders meant little now. The Allies had declared victory, sure, but the men out here in the ruins knew better. Victory didn’t feel like this. It didn’t feel like mud and fog and orders written in invisible ink.

The raft scraped against the shallows. Callahan lifted a hand and everyone froze. A moment later, he gave a silent nod.

They moved.

Boots hit mud, the sound muffled by the thick layer of silt and decay. The riverbank was littered with the remnants of another army’s passage—spent casings, twisted wire, half-buried helmets still bearing faded insignias. The earth smelled of rust and bone.

M!Y/n slung his rifle and crouched low, eyes sweeping across the treeline. The mist clung to the land like a veil, distorting shapes. He could barely make out the silhouette of shattered farmhouses in the distance, roofs sagging like broken backs.

Tomaszewski joined him, whispering, “You think anyone’s still here?”

“Not the kind we want to meet,” Stanley replied quietly. His breath came out in visible bursts, the air around him trembling with each exhale.

The squad fanned out, moving uphill through the skeletal remains of a once-green valley. Their boots sank into mud that sucked greedily at each step. Somewhere nearby, a lone crow screamed—a harsh, ragged sound that echoed through the emptiness.

M!Y/n’s hand brushed the edge of a fence post as they passed—a splintered thing, still wrapped with a strand of old barbed wire. He caught the faint trace of a hand-painted German warning, half-scrubbed away by rain. Minen. Mines.

He stepped carefully.

The village appeared slowly, emerging from the fog like something summoned from memory rather than reality. Mörchweiler.

It looked dead.

Half the houses had no roofs. The church steeple leaned to one side, cracked down the middle like a snapped bone. The air smelled of old fire and wet stone. No birds. No dogs. Just the wind pushing through hollow windows.

Callahan signaled them to halt near what had once been a barn. The structure was mostly intact—one side burned black, the other covered in ivy that had somehow survived the shelling.

“This is it?” Tomaszewski muttered. “Command sends us across a damn river for this?”

M!Y/n crouched beside him, scanning the main road that cut through the center of the village. A pale flag hung limply from a post—a dirty sheet, stained by rain and age.

The Pale Flag.

He’d heard the stories whispered by resistance contacts during past operations. Towns that surrendered before a single shot was fired. Towns that lived by turning their eyes away, trading neighbors for safety.

November 19th – 03:21 hours

Edge of Mörchweiler

They moved slowly, boots sinking with each step, the wet earth swallowing sound. The air smelled of wood rot and the faint, acrid tang of burnt oil. Somewhere in the distance, a sheet of corrugated metal clattered against a wall, tapping rhythmically in the wind like a nervous heartbeat.

Tomaszewski took point, his silhouette half-consumed by the haze. His rifle moved with his eyes, scanning each shadow, every door left ajar, every motionless curtain. There was no rhythm to his breathing anymore—just short, shallow pulls. His nerves were drawn taut, his body wound like a spring about to snap.

Stanley lingered at the rear, a quiet anchor to their formation. He glanced ahead to Tomaszewski, then over his shoulder toward the fields they’d crossed—always checking, always measuring. His voice cut the silence at last, low enough to barely disturb it.

“He hasn’t blinked in ten minutes,” Stanley murmured.

M!Y/n adjusted the strap of his rifle, the cold biting into his fingers even through the gloves. He followed Tomaszewski’s rigid outline through the mist and spoke softly, as if afraid his words might echo.

“He’s trying to stay ahead of what’s catching up,” M!Y/n said.

Stanley’s lips twitched—a ghost of agreement, or maybe just weariness. They both knew what it meant. Out here, it wasn’t the enemy that haunted them most—it was the silence, the waiting, the knowing something unseen was watching back.

Ahead, the first sign of their quarry appeared—a collapsed barn at the village’s northern edge, its frame bent and blackened by fire. Beneath the layers of straw and soil lay a wooden crate, half-buried, its corners still faintly marked by the faded insignia of the Armée Française.

Tomaszewski motioned for them to halt, then crouched, brushing away the dirt with the muzzle of his rifle. The sound of metal scraping against wood seemed to roar in the stillness.

Callahan moved in next, lowering himself to one knee. He pulled back the covering tarp, slow and deliberate, revealing the contents within.

The air changed.

Inside the crate were remnants of something unmistakably wrong—neatly packed schematics marked in German script, brass and steel components for propulsion assemblies, fragments of rocket casings etched with serial codes that didn’t belong on this side of the Rhine. The kind of tech the Reich had buried when it burned, meant for projects too secret even for surrender.

M!Y/n’s breath caught. His stomach turned with that familiar, metallic dread.

“Christ…” Tomaszewski muttered under his breath, tracing a finger along one of the diagrams. “This is Peenemünde tech.”

“Not just that,” Callahan said, eyes narrowing. He lifted one of the sheets, the paper stiff with age and damp. “These regulator parts—they’re from V-2 prototypes. German, no question. But the storage stamp…”

He turned it so they could see.
The stamp read: GRAND – Groupe de Résistance Alsacienne Nouvelle-Direction.

A partisan cell. French. Allied.
But what they were doing with Nazi hardware was something else entirely.

Stanley crouched down, picking up a smaller scrap of paper wedged beneath the crate. It was covered in smudged, hurried writing—names, codenames, coordinates, all in broken shorthand. At the bottom, the same GRAND insignia was inked in black: a stylized fleur-de-lis split in two, a black star crushed within it.

M!Y/n stared at it, silent for a long moment. Then his voice came, low and rough, pulled from somewhere deep.

“They’re using our allies,” he said.

His tone wasn’t angry. It was worse—disbelieving, hurt. Like a fracture opening in something he still wanted to trust.

Stanley exhaled sharply through his nose. “Maybe not allies anymore.”

Callahan didn’t respond immediately. He just stared at the crate, expression unreadable, as though he could see through the paper and metal into the mind that had put it here.

“The Black Root doesn’t recruit,” he said at last. “They infect. They don’t need flags—just people desperate enough to believe in something after the war took everything else.”

He stood, glancing toward the church in the village’s center, its bell tower leaning slightly, as though listening.

“That contact of ours—Vierge Blanche—she said there was still resistance activity here. Maybe this is what she meant.”

M!Y/n looked around again, at the shuttered windows and the faint shapes moving behind them. “Or maybe we just walked into their church.”

The words hung there, suspended in the damp air.

Then, from somewhere deeper in the village, came the sound of metal scraping stone. Slow, deliberate. Not wind. Not accident.

Tomaszewski’s rifle snapped up instantly, his eyes flicking toward the sound. “We’re not alone.”

Callahan raised a hand, signaling for silence. The squad shifted into defensive positions almost instinctively—Stanley covering the rear, M!Y/n taking the left flank, Tomaszewski still locked on the source of the noise.

The fog thickened again, pressing closer.

Then a figure stepped out from between two collapsed walls.

A woman—small, wrapped in a tattered cloak that swallowed her frame. Her boots left prints in the mud as she approached, hands raised, palms empty. Her face was streaked with dirt and soot, but her eyes—sharp, pale grey—cut through the fog like searchlights.

“I am Vierge Blanche,” she said, her voice carrying that blend of exhaustion and defiance that M!Y/n had come to recognize in those who’d survived both sides of occupation. “You came.”

Callahan didn’t lower his weapon. “We weren’t told you’d be expecting us.”

She gave a humorless smile. “I stopped expecting anything years ago.”

Her gaze shifted, briefly, to the crate at Callahan’s feet. Something flickered behind her expression—regret, maybe, or guilt. “You shouldn’t have found that,” she murmured.

Stanley’s voice was sharp. “Then why leave it half-buried in the open?”

“Because I wanted you to see it.” She stepped closer, her tone low but fierce. “Because I needed you to understand what’s been happening here.”

Callahan gestured with his rifle. “Start talking.”

She hesitated, eyes darting toward the church again. “Not here. Too many eyes.”

The words chilled the air more than the fog.

They followed her through narrow lanes, between walls scrawled with half-faded propaganda—old German orders layered beneath newer French slogans. Both sides had claimed these stones once, and neither had left them clean.

The cellar she led them to was hidden beneath what had once been a bakery. The door was concealed under stacked barrels and sacks of grain that had long since gone stale. Inside, the space smelled of mildew and dust, but the walls were lined with maps, photographs, and notes pinned up with trembling precision.

A lantern swung from a low beam, casting their shadows against the stone.

“This is what’s left of us,” Vierge Blanche said quietly. “The Resistance. Or what used to be.”

She spread out a set of papers across the table, her hands shaking just slightly. “When Paris fell, we fought for France. When France fell, we fought for survival. But when the Germans left—when the Americans came—what do you think happened to those who no longer had a war to fight?”

No one answered.

She looked up at them, her expression hard. “Black Root offered them one.”

The name hit the air like a blade.

Callahan’s jaw clenched. “You’re telling me the group we’re hunting is recruiting former resistance?”

“Not just recruiting,” she said. “They’re merging. Black Root gives them weapons, resources, purpose. GRAND—my people—were supposed to be the line against them. But…” She looked down, shame darkening her face. “Not all of us stayed loyal.”

M!Y/n stepped closer, eyes on the scattered documents. “What’s their endgame?”

Vierge Blanche hesitated before replying. “Something called Phase VI. I don’t know what it means. But they’re collecting pieces—scientists, blueprints, weapons—anything left from the Reich’s shadow projects. They believe they can finish what Berlin started.”

A beat of silence.

Stanley muttered, “We’re standing on the edge of a new war.”

“Not new,” Callahan said, voice low, steady. “Just unfinished.”

Outside, the wind shifted again—carrying with it the faintest echo of movement, boots on stone, synchronized and sure.

Vierge Blanche froze. Her eyes darted to the lantern. “They found us.”

Before Callahan could answer, a sharp whistle cut through the night, followed by the unmistakable clack of rifles being readied.

The cellar exploded into motion.

M!Y/n lunged for the door, pushing over a crate to use as cover. Stanley was already moving, grabbing Tomaszewski’s arm and pulling him down behind the table. The first gunfire ripped through the air—short, precise bursts, too coordinated for bandits.

Callahan fired back, the muzzle flash lighting up the cramped space in brief, violent bursts. “They’re trained,” he shouted. “Black Root operatives!”

Bullets splintered the beams above. The lantern swung wildly, shadows jerking across the walls like ghosts trying to flee.

M!Y/n felt his pulse thunder as he leaned around cover, fired, saw one of the attackers fall—a dark figure in a gray coat with no insignia. No flag. No country.

Then the silence returned, deafening after the chaos.

The air was thick with smoke, the scent of burnt powder stinging their throats.

Callahan gave the order in a clipped tone: “We’re moving out. Take what you can carry. This place is burned.”

Vierge Blanche didn’t argue. She swept the most vital papers into a satchel and pulled her cloak tighter. “You don’t understand. They’ll never stop. This isn’t about Germany anymore. It’s about what comes after.”

M!Y/n looked at her, breath clouding the air. “Then we stop them before it begins.”

She met his eyes for a moment—then nodded once.

Outside, dawn was beginning to break. Weak light filtered through the mist, washing the ruins of Mörchweiler in shades of ash and pearl.

The Pale Flag still hung over the mairie, barely clinging to its pole. The red had bled to rust, the blue had vanished entirely. Only the white remained, bright against the fog.

A surrender no one had ever taken back.

As they vanished back into the mist, M!Y/n looked once more at the flag, its limp fabric stirring faintly in the cold breeze.

It felt less like a banner now, and more like a warning—one written in silence, for those too stubborn to believe that war ever really ends.

Vierge’s gloved hand moved to her coat pocket. She withdrew a folded scrap of paper, edges singed and damp. “You won’t find them here. Not anymore. There’s a graphite mine. Ten kilometers north. Near the Vosges Ridge. Black Root uses it. They ship from it. No French patrols go there.”

“Why?” M!Y/n pressed.

Her gaze lifted to his, cold as the fog itself.
“Because they’re told not to.”

The words hung there—an accusation and a warning.

05:34 hours – Vosges Ridge – Abandoned Graphite Mine

The forest thinned as they ascended, the treeline crawling back like frightened witnesses to some buried sin. Frost crusted the ground, shimmering beneath the pale blue dawn. Wind keened through the pines with a hollow cry, and every breath they exhaled drifted like ghosts between them.

The snow wasn’t pure. Dark streaks of soot and coal dust marred the ground, veins of black crawling like decay beneath the white. It smelled of old fire—burnt graphite and machinery oil.

When the mine appeared, it was less a structure than a wound in the mountainside. The mouth of it yawned open, timbers warped and scarred, rails half-sunk into the frozen mud. The world around it was still—too still. No birds. No insects. Even the wind softened as they approached, as if the mountain itself held its breath.

Vierge crouched near the entrance, brushing her fingers over fresh bootprints. “Someone’s been through here within the last two days,” she said softly. “Military issue. Not French.”

Stanley leaned in, scanning the disturbed earth. “Could be Black Root. Or someone cleaning up after them.”

Tomaszewski adjusted his grip on the rifle. “Either way, they didn’t expect company.”

They moved in.

The mine swallowed them whole.

Darkness pressed against the edges of their flashlights, thick and wet. Every wall wept moisture, and the trickle of water echoed like whispers between stone ribs. The air carried a metallic tang—iron, graphite, and the faint ghost of blood.

Electric cables snaked along the ceiling, strung with new bulbs that hummed softly. Too recent. Too functional. This place wasn’t abandoned. It was operating in the shadows.

The tunnel widened into a reinforced corridor. A steel door loomed ahead, its hinges rusted but disturbed—fresh hammer marks gleamed in the light. Tomaszewski nudged it open with the barrel of his rifle.

Beyond it lay a chamber that felt like a cathedral buried in hell.

Crates lined the walls in strict military order. Wehrmacht markings sat beside unmarked black stencils. A line of stretchers leaned against one side, some bearing sealed boxes, others draped in cloth. Faint shapes lay beneath one—too still to be alive. The air buzzed faintly with the hum of machinery buried deeper within.

Callahan’s voice cracked the silence. “What the hell is this?”

Stanley moved toward a metal cabinet, prying it open with a bayonet. Folders spilled out, thick with photographs and stamped sheets.

Some read: ACQUIRED.
Others: NEUTRALIZED.

One bore a symbol that froze M!Y/n mid-step—a cross bound within three curved lines, like faith being strangled.

“That’s not German,” he muttered.

Stanley’s voice dropped to a near-whisper. “That’s something else.”

Behind them, Vierge shifted uneasily, her flashlight trembling. “We shouldn’t stay long.”

But the universe disagreed.

Two sharp cracks split the silence—gunfire from the tunnel mouth. Tomaszewski spun, returning fire. M!Y/n lunged for cover, dragging Vierge down as a shadow streaked past the entrance—fast, human, desperate.

A shot ricocheted. The figure stumbled into the light.

A woman. Thin, pale, wearing a half-civilian uniform dusted with coal. A Black Root tattoo inked fresh on her forearm, still red from the needle.

Tomaszewski’s bullet caught the wall just above her shoulder. M!Y/n was faster. He slammed into her, knocking the pistol from her grip and pinning her against the stone.

She smiled through the blood dripping from her mouth.
“We are the new order,” she hissed—and pulled a pin from her belt.

Everything stopped.

Then the world tore open.

The explosion wasn’t thunder—it was silence dying.
White light flared. Then came red. Then smoke.

M!Y/n felt himself thrown sideways, the air punched from his lungs. Stanley’s hand locked around his collar, dragging him behind a metal locker just before the shockwave hit. Fire and debris ripped through the corridor.

The ceiling cracked.

Stone screamed.

And the tunnel collapsed.

Dust fell like snow. The world dimmed into muted breaths and ringing ears.

Someone coughed. A groan.

“Callahan!” Stanley’s voice, hoarse and raw.

“Dislocated,” Callahan rasped. “Shoulder… or maybe the goddamn mountain.”

“Tomaszewski?” M!Y/n wheezed.

“Still breathing,” came the reply from somewhere in the dark.

Vierge stirred beside him, face streaked with soot and blood. “You said... they use your allies,” she muttered, voice trembling. “They use everyone.”

M!Y/n turned his light upward. The corridor was gone—buried under tons of rock. They were sealed in.

Stanley slumped beside him, camera in hand. He snapped a few unsteady shots of the smoldering chamber, of the black-marked crates and flickering lights that still burned despite the blast.

“We’re sitting in a coffin,” Callahan said through gritted teeth.

M!Y/n stared at the sealed wall, the smoke curling like ghosts toward the ceiling. His voice was steady, almost reverent.

“No,” he said quietly. “We’re standing in a graveyard.”

07:15 hours – Forest Edge Safezone

The forest was still burning in places. Not with flame, but with sound—the low hum of wind pushing through frost-bitten pines, the occasional groan of trees shifting under snow and smoke. Dawn came slow and brittle, filtering through the branches in fractured rays. It painted everything the color of ash.

They had crawled out of the mountain before sunrise, bloodied and deafened, following a ventilation shaft that Stanley found half-buried in gravel. It took two hours of digging, half of Callahan’s swearing vocabulary, and the kind of luck soldiers don’t trust.

Now, they sat beneath the pines—Echo Squad reduced to four shadows and one uncertain ally.

A small fire spat sparks into the cold air, reluctant to live. Callahan’s arm was splinted, a strip of M!Y/n’s undershirt tied tight around his shoulder. His face was ghost-pale, sheen of sweat on his brow. Tomaszewski sat apart, back against a tree, the scarf in his lap streaked with dried blood that wasn’t his. He ran his thumb along its edge like a prayer bead.

“She was French,” he said finally, voice low, hollow. “French.”

The fire cracked. The sound made everyone flinch.

Stanley rubbed soot from his face, eyes unfocused. “We’ve fought French before,” he muttered, “but this…” He shook his head, voice thick. “This is different.”

Tomaszewski looked up. His eyes were glassy, pupils blown wide from exhaustion and something deeper. “She smiled,” he said. “Like she knew. Like she’d already won.”

No one answered him. The silence wasn’t agreement—it was resignation.

M!Y/n crouched by a salvaged crate. Inside were the remnants of what they’d pulled from the mine before it collapsed—scorched documents, charred folders, a handful of film negatives sealed in a metal tin. Black-and-white photographs of children, factories, hospitals, all marked with identical ink stamps.
Maps of French towns. Supply routes. Names of resistance fighters they knew were dead.

And medical records—too many of them, listing blood types, genetic markers, psychiatric evaluations.

M!Y/n’s fingers hovered over one photo: a Black Root officer shaking hands with a man in a business suit. No insignia, no rank. Just that faint symbol embossed in the corner—three curved lines strangling a cross.

“They’re not trying to win the war,” M!Y/n said quietly.

Callahan’s voice was rough. “Then what the hell are they doing?”

M!Y/n turned the photo toward him. “They’re rewriting it.”

The words hung in the cold like gun smoke.

Vierge stood at the edge of the camp, a dark silhouette against the snow. She’d stayed silent since they emerged from the shaft, eyes distant, haunted. The partisan badge pinned beneath her coat had cracked down the middle, its enamel chipped. She looked like she wanted to speak but didn’t know to whom—or what truth would even matter anymore.

Stanley finally broke the silence. “What now?”

M!Y/n rose, brushing soot from his hands. His voice steadied. “We burn the files. Photograph what we can. Get word to Command before anyone else finds that mine.”

Callahan snorted faintly, bitter. “And the rest?”

M!Y/n looked east, toward the horizon bleeding into color. His breath clouded before him, a single trail of smoke joining the dawn. “The rest,” he said, voice flat but certain, “we carry.”

No one spoke again. They began tearing pages, one after another, tossing them into the fire. The flames hissed and flared, eating away the proof of what they’d seen—names, faces, numbers. Some things the world wasn’t ready to know.

Vierge watched from a few paces away, her expression unreadable. When M!Y/n turned toward her, she finally met his gaze.

“You’ll send this to London?” she asked.

“London. Maybe Algiers,” M!Y/n replied. “Depends who’s still listening.”

Her lips twitched—half a smile, half a wound. “Be careful who you tell. Black Root isn’t the only one rewriting history.”

Then she turned and started down the slope, disappearing between the trees without another word. Her shadow flickered once in the pale light, then was gone.

Tomaszewski stared after her for a long moment, scarf still in his lap. “Do you think she’ll make it?”

Stanley didn’t look up from the fire. “She’s already gone. One way or another.”

The wind picked up, scattering ash through the clearing. It caught on their clothes, their faces, their skin—like the memory of what they’d left buried in the mountain.

And somewhere deep in the forest, faint and rhythmic, came the echo of distant engines.

Not German. Not Allied.

Something else.

Later – Riverbank, Alone

The forest was still heavy with the ghost of smoke. You could smell the mine from here — iron, cordite, and the sour edge of burnt paper — seeping through the pine. The stream cut through the quiet like a heartbeat. Cold, restless, alive when everything else felt half-dead.

M!Y/n crouched beside it, sleeves rolled high, skin numb where the water bit into him. It wasn’t gentle. It stung, like tiny shards of glass pressing into his veins. The current tugged against his fingers, catching bits of ash and blood and dirt and carrying them off like secrets it didn’t want to keep.

He stared at the reflection trembling on the water’s surface. The image there barely looked human. His eyes were red from smoke, shadows carved deep beneath them. A bruise spread over his temple like a bruise on the sky — faint at first, then darkening, blooming purple and blue. His face looked older somehow, even under the rippling water. The kind of age that doesn’t come from years, but from everything you’ve had to survive.

He scrubbed harder at his hands. The blood wouldn’t come off easily. It had dried into the lines of his palms, under his nails, the creases of his knuckles. Some of it wasn’t his. Some of it was the woman’s. The partisan with the Black Root tattoo who’d smiled before pulling the pin. He could still feel the echo of the explosion in his bones, the weight of her body as he’d slammed her against the wall, the smell of burning metal.

No matter how hard he washed, he still felt her there — the imprint of violence like a second skin.

A twig snapped behind him. Soft, deliberate. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t need to look to know who it was.

Stanley.

The sound of his boots over frozen ground was distinct — a steady, rhythmic crunch, too measured to be anyone else. M!Y/n didn’t turn. He just kept scrubbing, water splashing against his forearms.

Stanley didn’t speak. He stopped a few paces behind, the silence between them familiar, almost ritualistic. A silence that wasn’t absence but understanding.

When he finally stepped forward, his shadow fell across M!Y/n’s reflection — a tall, dark outline that made the rippling image look less like a man, more like a ghost.

“You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that,” M!Y/n muttered. His voice sounded raw, scraped down to the bone.

Stanley crouched beside him, elbows resting on his knees. His breath came in visible clouds, merging with the mist over the water. “You knew it was me.”

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s not sneaking.”

That almost drew a smile, but it died before it reached M!Y/n’s mouth. He stared down at the stream again, his hands still submerged, the skin turning white from the cold. “You could’ve died,” he said quietly. “In there.”

Stanley didn’t answer right away. The forest filled the pause for him — the wind brushing through the pine needles, a crow somewhere distant.

“I didn’t,” Stanley said finally.

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s exactly the point.”

That earned him a glance. M!Y/n turned, eyes sharp despite the exhaustion. Stanley met them head-on, as he always did. There was no bravado there, no mockery. Just that quiet steadiness he carried like a weapon. The same steadiness that had gotten them all out alive.

“You’re bleeding,” Stanley said after a moment, voice low. He reached out, fingers brushing the edge of the bruise on M!Y/n’s temple. The touch was light but grounding — the kind of contact that burned even through the cold.

“I’ve had worse,” M!Y/n muttered, though his voice faltered.

Stanley’s hand lingered a fraction too long before he pulled it away. “You said that last time, too.”

“That was worse.”

Stanley’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “You’re a terrible liar.”

M!Y/n wanted to say something — a retort, a deflection, anything — but his throat locked up. The tension in the air wasn’t the kind that could be broken by words. It hummed between them, low and electric, a current like the river itself.

He looked at Stanley again, really looked this time. The soot on his face, the cut across his jaw that hadn’t stopped bleeding yet, the faint tremor in his hands he was trying to hide. Underneath all that was the same calm he always wore like armor — but M!Y/n had learned to see through it.

“You’re shaking,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re lying.”

Stanley’s gaze softened, something flickering behind it — not anger, not fear, but something that looked too close to vulnerability. “We’re all lying, Y/n. It’s how we stay alive.”

M!Y/n huffed a breath that might’ve been a laugh if it hadn’t sounded so bitter. “You’re starting to sound like me.”

Stanley’s lips curved, a small, tired smirk. “No,” he said, voice rough, quiet. “You’re starting to sound like a leader.”

The words hit harder than he expected. M!Y/n blinked, and for a second, the forest fell away — the mine, the explosion, the woman’s smile — everything blurred into the hum of the stream and the pulse in his chest.

He didn’t feel like a leader. He felt like someone trying to hold himself together with shaking hands.

Stanley stood, brushing frost from his knees. He looked down at M!Y/n for a moment, snow settling in his hair, melting on his collar. The light caught his profile — sharp lines, bruised skin, eyes that had seen too much and still held steady.

M!Y/n rose slowly, the water dripping from his hands like melted glass. He didn’t know what he was going to say until he said it. “You should’ve let me take the blast.”

Stanley’s head tilted slightly. “And do what? Dig you out after?”

“I can handle myself.”

“I know.” His tone softened, almost fond. “That’s what scares me.”

The silence that followed was heavier than before, filled with everything neither of them had said in months. It wasn’t new — that pull between them, the closeness that always hovered just out of reach. It was there in every mission, every too-long glance, every time they patched each other up in the dark.

Stanley stepped closer, boots sinking into the thawing earth. The distance between them shrank until M!Y/n could see the flecks of ash still clinging to his eyelashes.

“You’ve got a death wish sometimes,” Stanley murmured.

M!Y/n’s breath caught. “Maybe I just don’t like losing people.”

Stanley’s jaw tightened. “Then stop trying to trade yourself for everyone else.”

The words landed somewhere deep. M!Y/n’s hands, still wet, curled into fists. “You think I want this?”

“I think you don’t know what else to do.”

Their eyes locked — two battle-hardened souls, too close, too tired, both fighting wars they didn’t understand anymore. The air between them felt charged, like before a storm.

Stanley’s voice dropped. “You can stop pretending you don’t care, Y/n.”

The name slipped out like a secret, soft and deliberate.

M!Y/n’s breath hitched. He didn’t move, didn’t step back, even when Stanley did. The world seemed to contract around that single moment — the sound of the stream, the echo of the blast still in their bones, the quiet heartbeat between them.

For a fleeting second, Stanley reached up again, thumb brushing the edge of M!Y/n’s jaw where the bruise met skin. The touch lingered — too soft for war, too real for friendship.

Then he let go.

“Get some rest,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “We move at sundown.”

And just like that, he was gone — boots fading through the frost and fog, leaving M!Y/n standing alone beside the water.

The stream whispered again, soft and steady. He looked down at his reflection. The bruises, the dirt, the red still clinging under his nails. But beneath it all, something new. A spark.

Maybe strength. Maybe longing.

Maybe both.

He cupped the water in his palms, let it run through his fingers. It didn’t sting anymore. But it didn’t warm either.

Only one thing did. And he’d just walked away.