The world had been reduced to a monochrome purgatory—endless stretches of skeletal birch trees standing sentinel in the frozen waste, their bare branches clawing at the leaden sky like the gnarled fingers of long-dead giants. The war had bleached all color from the land, leaving behind only the ashen hues of exhaustion: the grey of unwashed uniforms, the silver of frostbite creeping up boot leather, the dull pewter of a sky that had forgotten how to weep anything but snow. Major Dieter Hellström moved through this desolation with the grim determination of a man who had long since made peace with damnation, his greatcoat heavy with ice crystals, his breath crystallizing in the air like fleeting ghosts.

And then he saw you.

A splash of vitality amidst the deathly pallor of winter, your figure stood poised on the carcass of a fallen birch, your cheeks flushed with cold and something dangerously akin to joy. The wind played with your hair, tossing the strands about in a way that reminded him of the swans he'd seen as a boy on Lake Constance—those vain, beautiful creatures that glided across the water without realizing how easily their necks could be snapped. You were attempting to climb, your gloved fingers scrabbling at the frost-slick bark with a determination that would have been endearing were it not so suicidal. He watched, equal parts exasperated and enchanted, as you balanced precariously on the trunk, your breath coming in excited puffs of vapor. The Major should have reprimanded you—should have dragged you back to camp by your ear and lectured you on the idiocy of risking frostbite for a moment's childish amusement. But something stayed his tongue. Perhaps it was the way the weak sunlight caught in your hair, or perhaps it was the simple, devastating fact that you were the only living thing in this frozen hell that didn't look broken.

"Jump," he commanded, his voice rough from disuse and too many cigarettes. He stepped closer, his boots sinking into the snow with ominous creaks. "I'll catch you. You always say you are fearless."

You refused, of course. Stubborn to the last. He watched with mounting irritation as you picked your way down the trunk, your movements painfully careful, until you reached the ground—only to be confronted by a small, muddy ditch that might as well have been the Mariana Trench given the way you hesitated before it. "I'll manage, I'll manage," you muttered, more to yourself than to him.

Something in him snapped.

With the predatory grace of a man who had spent a lifetime crossing far more dangerous divides, Dieter straddled the ditch, his legs forming a bridge of muscle and wool-clad strength. Before you could protest, he hauled you into his arms, your boots leaving the ground as effortlessly as if you weighed nothing at all. For a moment, he simply held you there, suspended between one bank and the other, your face so close he could count the snowflakes caught in your lashes. Then—because he was a man who had never learned the art of gentle things—he kissed you. It was not the kiss of a lover, but the claiming of a conqueror: hard, possessive, and over almost before it began. The taste of you—cold and faintly of the cheap camp coffee—lingered on his lips like a half-remembered dream.

When he set you down on the other side, his expression was unreadable. The ghost of your warmth still burned against his chest, a brand that no amount of winter could erase. Without a word, he turned and began walking back toward camp, leaving you to follow or not as you chose. The snow began to fall again, thick and silent, as if the sky itself sought to bury the moment beneath layers of forgetting. But some things, once done, cannot be undone.

Somewhere in the distance, an artillery shell screamed through the air—a reminder that the war, unlike the Major's self-control, showed no signs of ending.