The bombardment had been going on for hours, but when the first shell hit the corner building; the one with the cracked façade and shuttered windows. It felt different. Louder, closer, as if the city itself had been waiting for this one moment to shatter.
Christian was crossing the narrow street with two others, helmets low, rifles slung, when the air thickened into thunder. The night split open. A rush of light; red, white, then black and then weight. He did not remember falling. Only the deafening collapse of walls above him, the thunder of stone, then the choking embrace of dust and silence.
When he opened his eyes, there was no sky, no street and no sound. Only pressure. His legs were pinned beneath heavy slabs, his ribs pressed so tightly he could not draw breath without pain. Darkness clung to him, a smothering blanket, broken only by the faint shimmer of dust motes when he blinked.
He tried to call out, but only coughed, the grit burning his throat raw. His hand clawed at the debris above him, nails splitting as they scraped against unyielding stone. He stopped. His chest heaved. His heart hammered.
The thought rose sharp and clear: This is where I die. Alone, unseen. Buried in a nameless street under rubble that will never be cleared.
Time dissolved. Minutes, hours; he could not tell. The pressure of the ruins was a second thought, grinding into bone and muscle. He could feel blood running down his shin where jagged stone had cut through his boot. Warm at first, then sticky, then cold.
His mind wavered between rage and despair. He thought of Kristina, her eyes the last anchor of light he had left, and the ring she had pressed back into his hand. He thought of Antonov's face in the instant before the blade tore through his throat, the warmth of blood on his hands and how it had felt less like killing a man than desecrating something larger.
And he thought of Müller. Always Müller, the shadow stalking him. The smirk. The voice like a noose tightening. I know where your heart is.
He pressed his head back into the dust, teeth grinding, and for the first time in months he wept.
Not for fear. He was beyond that. It was rage, blind, howling rage at the futility of it all. Rage at the endless charade of masters who used him, discarded him and dangled him on threads of loyalty and love. Rage at the war itself, devouring everything, leaving only ruins and ghosts.
His sobs echoed in the cavity of stone as though someone else wept with him. But he was alone.
"Hallo? … Hier drüben! Grabt! Schnell!" At first he thought he imagined it.
The German words pierced the silence like a blade. He froze, straining to listen. Boots clattered over loose stone. Shovels scraped. Coughs, curses, the grunt of effort.
Someone shouted: "I hear him! He's alive!" Hope struck him like a cruel blow. Part of him wished they would not find him, that the ruins would finish what fate had started. Yet when the stones shifted, when light trickled through cracks above, his hand rose instinctively, reaching.
The rubble moved. Hands dug. A helmeted face appeared, covered in grime, eyes bright with urgency.
"Hold on, Kamerad! We've got you!"
Stone by stone, plank by plank, they freed him. The weight lifted slowly, agonizingly. He gasped when his legs were dragged out, the pain sharp and searing, but pain was proof of life. Two men grabbed his arms, hauling him into the night air.
The world outside was a ruin of its own; streets cratered, walls burning, the sky striped with searchlights and falling ash.
He coughed violently, collapsing onto his side. Blood and dust spewed from his throat. His saviors knelt beside him. "You're all right now, sir." one said, clapping his shoulder. "You're safe. We've got you." Safe. The word sounded like mockery.
They gave him water, cold against his cracked lips, and wrapped a torn blanket around his shoulders. A young soldier barely more than a boy smiled as though to reassure him.
"You were lucky. Most don't survive a hit like that. God must be watching you."
Christian stared into the boy's face, into the eager light in his eyes. The words fell like ashes. God. Watching. What God watched these ruins? What God had watched Antonov die under his knife? What God had watched Kristina slip away into the hands of men who might never let her go?
Another soldier crouched down. "Don't worry, Kamerad. You'll fight again soon. The Reich needs men like you."
The Reich. Always the Reich. Always the promise that it mattered. That any of this mattered. Christian managed a nod. A lie. He had learned to lie with his face long ago.
They carried him to the remains of a dugout, a half-sunken shelter lined with boards. Other soldiers sat inside, hollow-eyed, eating cold rations by candlelight. They welcomed him with quiet nods, passing bread to him, patting his back. He ate mechanically, the taste of earth still in his teeth.
Their voices drifted around him. Words of encouragement. Assurances that they would hold the line. That Germany would triumph. That the sacrifice was not in vain.
He listened in silence. Their voices blurred into static, their faces into masks. He could not feel what they felt. He could not believe what they believed.
When they finally left him alone, lying on the dirt floor wrapped in the blanket, he let the sobs come again. Softer this time, muffled into his sleeve. Not from fear. But from rage.
Sleep came after some time, dragging him into blackness.
He stood in a vast open field beneath a sky swollen with fire. Before him stretched an endless tide not of water, but of soldiers. Soviet soldiers, marching shoulder to shoulder, their eyes blank, their rifles raised.
Antonov walked among them, his ribs bleeding, yet his face was calm. He raised a hand, and the tide surged forward.
Christian raised his pistol. His finger tightened on the trigger. But the weapon crumbled into ash again, slipping through his fingers, scattering in the wind.
He turned to run. His legs were heavy, dragging through mud that sucked at his boots. The tide grew taller, faster, a wall of flesh and steel.
They did not shout. They did not rage. They came with silence, inexorable, unending.
He screamed for help, for Kristina, for God. His voice was swallowed.
And then the tide struck him, cold and heavy, pulling him under. He fought, clawing upward, but the weight pressed down, endless. He opened his mouth to breathe, and ash poured in.
He woke with a violent gasp, clawing at the earth. His blanket was tangled around him, his chest heaving as though he were still drowning. The dugout was quiet. The others slept. But in his ears, the roar of the tide lingered, as real as the rubble that had buried him.
He lay staring at the flicker of the candle stub, his body aching, his soul hollow. The thought came again, clearer now, sharp and cold: If treason can save me… then treason it shall be.
The words tasted of iron. He whispered them into the dark, his voice shaking, but once spoken they could not be taken back.
He did not know whom to betray, or for whom. Kristina. His family. Germany. Hitler. Müller or Canaris. Perhaps all of them. Perhaps himself.
But he knew one thing: the rubble had not just broken the city around him. It had broken him. And there was no putting him back together again.