The prophecy clung to Christian like frost on a soldier's boots. Days passed, but the old man's words did not leave him. They stalked him in silence, echoing between rifle fire and the crunch of frozen soil beneath his boots.
The eastern front did not sleep. The Wehrmacht pressed forward, swallowing village after village, but Russia did not break, but she bled, and bled and bled. Every mile of advance was paid in blood, and still the land seemed endless, mocking them with its size, its silence.
Christian's unit pushed deeper, through forests whose branches clawed at the sky, through fields where scorched huts lay blackened against the snow. The cold crept in, though it was not yet winter; a cold that seemed to come not only from the air, but from the earth itself.
Everywhere, the signs of retreating Soviets were the same: bridges blown, wells poisoned, crops burned to ash. It was as if the land itself conspired against them, denying even the simplest comforts.
And then there were the people; ragged, hungry, silent. They did not plead, not anymore. They stared at the soldiers with eyes that said we will outlast you.
Christian felt it with each encounter: the war was no longer about men alone. It was between Germany and something larger; Russia itself, ancient, immovable, ruthless.
Another order came. A partisan band had struck German supply lines in the woods near Smolensk. Christian's unit was sent to hunt them down.
They moved at dawn, rifles raised, boots muffled by pine needles. For hours they found nothing but silence. Then, suddenly gunfire cracked through the trees. A soldier fell beside Christian, blood blooming on his chest. Panic tore through the ranks.
The firefight was brief but savage. Shadows slipped between the trees; partisans, or ghosts. One by one, they melted into the forest, leaving only the dead behind.
When it ended, the forest was quiet again, eerily so. The bodies of German soldiers lay among the roots, rifles still in their hands. Christian knelt beside one, a boy no older than twenty. His eyes stared wide, frozen in terror, his mouth open as though he had tried to scream.
Christian closed the eyes with his gloved hand. His heart felt heavier with each corpse he passed.
That night, by the fire, the men drank to steady their nerves. They spoke loudly, cursed the partisans and boasted that Moscow would fall before Christmas.
Christian did not join them. He sat apart, sharpening his knife in silence. The old man's voice returned, steady and clear in his memory:
Winter will swallow you whole. Your bones will feed the soil you claim to own.
He looked around at his men. They were tired, frightened, clinging to false bravado. He wondered how many of them would still draw breath by the time the snow fell.
The days blurred into weeks. Each village bled into the next, each "mission" another repetition of fire, interrogation, death. The soldiers moved forward, but the land remained unchanged; vast, merciless and unbroken.
Christian began to sense it as a presence. The land was not indifferent, she was watching, waiting. Each gust of wind through the trees sounded like a whisper. Each crack of ice on the river felt like a warning.
It was as though Russia itself was alive, patient, ancient, and she wanted them gone.
When the next orders came; a deeper push toward Moscow, Christian folded the paper slowly, his hands steady though his chest was tight. He knew now that this war was no longer measured in victories or kilometers. It was measured in how much a man could lose before he became nothing but bones for the soil.
And as the convoy of trucks rumbled forward, swallowed by the endless dark horizon, Christian thought only of Kristina's face; a fragile warmth, a fleeting anchor. He clung to it, knowing winter was coming, and with it, the prophecy that haunted his every step.