Warsaw had become a city of echoes. Each street whispered of its former life; the laughter of shopkeepers, the clatter of horses over cobblestones, the scent of bread rising from ovens. Now those echoes were swallowed by the roar of artillery and the shrieks of collapsing masonry. By February's grey morning light, the city seemed like a dying cathedral, its stained-glass windows shattered into a thousand glittering knives. Smoke coiled in black ribbons, spiraling high into a sky that had long since stopped shining.
Christian moved through the rubble with his collar turned up against the bitter cold, his boots crunching over fragments of glass. The streets were deserted save for stray dogs, scavenging at the corpses that no one dared bury. A child's doll lay abandoned in the gutter, its porcelain face cracked clean in two. He had stopped seeing such things as tragedy. They were simply details, like weather reports, markers of a city's decomposition.
This was what Müller had told him Poland would be: a place where men were ground into dust, and shadows reigned supreme. Warsaw is not merely a battlefield, Wolfe, Müller's words echoed in his skull. It is a crucible. Here, the weak will be melted away. Here, the Reich will forge its blades. He met Jansen near the ruins of St. John's Cathedral, its spire blown apart by Luftwaffe bombs. Jansen looked gaunt, his eyes sunken from sleepless nights, his uniform smeared with soot. He lit a cigarette with trembling hands.
"They say another convoy slipped past us last night," Jansen muttered, exhaling smoke. "Polish couriers with messages for the exiles in France. If they get out, if they tell the Allies how hard Warsaw is fighting…" "They won't," Christian cut him off, his voice calm, steady. "That's our task today."
From the folds of his coat, he produced a folded map, edges singed, ink smudged. Their orders were written in Müller's own hand. They were to intercept a courier train traveling from Warsaw to the border, carrying sensitive information about the resistance and coded Polish transmissions. Failure was not an option.
Jansen scanned the paper, then shook his head.
"It never ends. Always more to strangle, more to silence. And for what, Christian? What does it matter if they know? The world already sees what's happening here." Christian's gaze was as cold as the wind slicing through the ruins. "It matters because the Reich says it matters." Jansen's lips twitched, as if to speak again, but he thought better of it. Instead, he ground his cigarette into the rubble and followed Christian into the shadows.
That night, the two agents crouched near the embankment as the courier train thundered past, its iron wheels shrieking like tortured souls. Floodlights from Wehrmacht search towers cut through the dark, sweeping the tracks with mechanical precision. Christian's breath slowed until it was almost nonexistent. He felt the pulse of the earth through the rails, counting the rhythm. Beside him, Jansen whispered a prayer in Dutch, barely audible over the roar. Christian did not pray anymore. To him, God had no voice here.
As the last car passed, Christian leapt onto the coupling, his boots clanging against steel. Jansen followed, less graceful, grunting with the effort. They crawled along the roof, the icy wind tearing at their coats, until they reached the baggage car marked with the Polish eagle. Christian dropped down, slid the door open, and slipped inside.
The courier was there. A man in his forties, spectacles fogged from the cold, clutching a satchel as if it were his heart. He looked up and froze, eyes wide. For a moment, the silence was unbearable. The only sound was the rattle of the train.
Then Christian moved. The knife appeared in his hand as naturally as breath. One swift step, a blur of steel, and the courier's throat blossomed red. He fell back, hands clutching uselessly at the wound, choking, drowning in his own blood. Christian held him down until the body ceased to tremble. Jansen stood in the doorway, horrified. "God, Christian…" Christian wiped the blade on the courier's coat and retrieved the satchel. Inside were coded messages, maps, and names. Precious fragments of a resistance about to be gutted.
He looked up at Jansen, his voice devoid of warmth. "We've done our duty. Let's go." Days blurred into nights. Christian killed in alleys, in basements, in shattered courtyards where snow mixed with blood. He slit throats of couriers, poisoned wells that supplied resistance hideouts, planted explosives on Polish ammunition caches.
Each mission grew darker, more intimate and more deliberate.
One night, he and Jansen cornered a young resistance fighter no older than
Katia. The boy had been carrying a message sewn into his coat. Jansen raised his pistol but hesitated, his hands trembling.
"Don't make me do this," Jansen whispered. "He's just a boy." Christian's reply was merciless. "Then you shouldn't be here." He stepped forward, ripped the pistol from Jansen's hand, and fired. The boy collapsed without a sound. Jansen recoiled, bile rising in his throat. Christian pocketed the message, his face unreadable.
Afterward, as they walked back through the ruined streets, Jansen whispered, "You're changing. I don't recognize you anymore." Christian looked at him with eyes that seemed carved from obsidian. "This is for our people." But Warsaw was not silent prey. The resistance struck back like wolves. Ambushes erupted in the alleys, Molotov cocktails rained from rooftops, and German patrols vanished into the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city.
One evening, Christian found himself alone after a skirmish near the river. His squad was scattered, their cries echoing through the smoke. From the shadows, a group of Polish fighters emerged, rifles leveled. They had him cornered. Christian closed his eyes for one breath, steadying his pulse. Then he moved.
The first man fell with a bullet through his skull. The second with a knife to the lung. He pivoted, fired, reloaded, lunged, killing with a precision that felt less like combat and more like art. When it was over, six bodies lay sprawled in the snow. The river carried their blood downstream, staining the ice crimson.
Christian stood over them, chest heaving, a strange clarity settling over him. For the first time, he realized he did not just endure the killing. He had begun to savor it. And that terrified him more than anything.
When he returned to their safe house, Jansen confronted him. The Dutchman's face was pale, his hands trembling. "What are you becoming, Christian?" Jansen demanded. "Do you feel nothing? Do you sleep at night knowing what you've done?"
Christian's voice was ice. "I sleep fine."
"That's a lie," Jansen spat. "You're drowning in this. And one day, it will consume you whole." Christian stepped closer, his expression unreadable. "You shot a woman whilst she still held her child in her arms." Jansen tried to respond but couldn't. He clenched his fist. "What we are doing here is for our people, for peace to prevail on this continent." "No, this is murder." Came Jansen's reply. Jansen was beginning to break. He had had enough of the war. "Jansen, leave on your own terms, before it becomes too late for you."
Their eyes locked, two shadows in a room lit only by candlelight. For the first time, Jansen seemed to realize that the man beside him was not the boy who had once spoken of Kristina, of love, of defiance. This was someone else entirely. Someone forged in blood and fire.
Herr Müller arrived days later, his black trench coat glistening with melted snow. He summoned Christian alone, leaving Jansen behind. "You're adapting well," Müller said as they walked through the ruined streets, the corpses of civilians strewn around them like discarded rags. "You've stopped questioning. You've stopped hesitating. That is the difference between wolves and sheep." Christian did not reply.
Müller gestured at a pile of bodies; resistance fighters, bound and executed. "Fear is the greatest weapon, Wolfe. Not bullets. Not bombs. Fear. Make them believe they cannot hide, that the shadows will always find them, and they will break themselves before you even arrive." Christian studied the corpses without flinching. "I understand."
Müller smiled faintly. "Do you? I wonder." That night, Christian proved himself once more. He tracked a resistance leader through the frozen streets, following footprints in the snow like a hunter stalking prey. The man fled into a cellar, but Christian cornered him, dragged him out, and slit his throat beneath the moonlight. The snow drank the blood greedily, turning white into crimson.
When he returned, Müller clapped him on the shoulder. "You are becoming exactly what the Reich needs. "Jansen watched from the shadows, his face twisted with horror and something else, something dangerously close to hatred.
By the end of February, Warsaw was a graveyard. The fires never stopped burning, the air never stopped reeking of smoke and death. Christian moved through it all like a phantom, his heart hardened, his soul reshaped.
The man who once sneaked out to meet Kristina, who once dreamed of defying the Reich for love, was fading. In his place stood something colder, sharper and infinitely more dangerous.
Jansen's voice still whispered doubts, but Christian no longer listened. The shadows had claimed him. And as Müller had said, there was only one way to leave them, was by dying.