The retreat ended with a line in the snow.
Christian, half-dazed, was herded with the remnants of a broken company into a shallow depression where there was no escape, they were cornered. Officers barked orders with clipped fury, pulling the scattered men into formation, ready to lead them to Russian prison camps. Behind them, the sky still glowed from the fires of the Soviet advance.
But then came the sound that changed everything: the grinding thunder of panzers moving forward.
The Germans counterattacked with iron precision.
Columns of armor rolled through the smoke, their turrets spitting fire, their tracks grinding over the frozen bodies of the fallen. The Wehrmacht had been beaten back, but now it returned with a vengeance not wild, not frenzied like the Soviets, but calculated, cold, and merciless. Christian and the other soldiers run toward the panzers. The Soviet soldiers, had already began running.
Christian stumbled forward and met the charging army. The soldiers on foot nodded at him, to show their respect. "Give me a rifle!" Within moments, he had a rifle clutched tight though his hands though they still trembled from what he had seen. The shock of the Red Army's fury clung to him, but as the German lines stiffened and advanced, he felt the pendulum swing.
The artillery opened first. Heavy guns that had been hidden, preserved for just this moment, unleashed their fury in a coordinated barrage. The shells screamed overhead and tore into the Soviet ranks. The earth convulsed under the impact, snow and flesh scattering in fountains of red and white.
Then tanks dispatched the enemy with ease.
Christian watched as a Tiger tank fired point-blank into a mass of advancing infantry, the explosion tearing men apart like dolls. Another Soviet squad charged forward with Molotovs, only to be mowed down by machine gun nests that had been silent minutes before. The Germans had baited the Soviets into their fury and now they closed the trap.
"Vorwärts!" a captain bellowed, his voice raw but unyielding. The infantry surged, bayonets fixed, rifles spitting fire. Christian moved with them, though his mind lagged behind. Every step felt heavier, weighted with the knowledge of what this meant.
The counterattack was not merely about territory. It was vengeance; German vengeance answering Russian vengeance, a cycle with no end.
The Soviets faltered. Their momentum, born of grief and rage, shattered against steel discipline. Christian saw them stagger, confused, as if the death of Antonov could no longer shield them. One by one, they fell, their hymns drowned in the mechanical chorus of German firepower.
He climbed over a barricade of bricks and twisted rebar, firing at shadows through the smoke. Each shot rang in his ears, but he could no longer tell if he hit anyone. Around him, Germans pressed forward like wolves, reclaiming ground inch by inch.
For hours, the city became a maelstrom; blocks changing hands, buildings collapsing under shellfire, alleys running with blood. Christian felt himself pulled deeper into it, his legs moving without thought, his lungs burning with ash.
When at last the Soviets broke, it was sudden. The Red tide that had seemed unstoppable only hours before now shattered into streams of men retreating eastward, leaving behind their dead and dying. The Germans did not relent. They chased, they slaughtered, they ground the enemy into the snow until silence fell at last.
Christian stood amid the ruins, chest heaving, staring at the carnage. The bodies lay in heaps, German and Soviet alike, indistinguishable under the frost and blood. The air stank of fire and iron.
The Germans had won the day. But as Christian looked across the field, he felt no triumph. Only emptiness.
The counteroffensive had reclaimed ground, but nothing else. The Soviets would come again. They always came again.
And in the hollow of his chest, Christian knew that every step he took forward was only binding him deeper into a war without end. A war where victory belonged not to nations, but to the shadows manipulating them.