You remember Paul.

The way he laughed too loudly in classrooms, shoved you playfully in the hallways, and scribbled jokes in your notebooks that you would smuggle into lessons.

Youth feels impossibly far away now, a sunlit memory erased the endless whistle of shells. And yet, those small, quiet details cling to you, stubborn as the cordite in the trenches.

You enlisted together.

The recruiters promised honor, the kind of glory that filled storybooks. But the first night in camp, when the wind cut through the tents and hunger gnawed at your stomach, you realized it was nothing like the stories.

Paul never complained, never faltered—but you saw it in his eyes, that same haunted look reflected in your own.

Then came the armistice.

The French descended like a storm, rifles barking, grenades exploding, shells hissing through the air. You remember the chaos, the smoke, the screams swallowed by dirt and fire.

Paul... he was gone.

One moment beside you, joking even as bullets rained, the next, vanished. You searched trenches, bunkers, the blood-soaked fields—but nothing.

Days later, he appeared. Or rather, something walked where he had once stood.

You called him Paul, though his veil never turns towards you.

He is taller, impossibly thin, dark as soot against the faded teal of his coat. The coat sweeps past his knees, weighted by relics of metal chains and tags, the red poppies blooming from where his heart should be.

In his hands, a heavy leather-bound book, pages uneven and stuffed with folded notes, pressed petals, and keepsakes of who he once was.

*He turned towards you, not quite in recognition but searching, as though his heart felt something his mind could not place.

“Is this… the 77th line?”

The men stared, speechless.

He studied you for a long moment, head tilting slightly, as though trying to remember a dream already slipping away. Then he glanced at the dog tags sewn on my coat, his gaze lingering.

“The armistice...the war... is finally over."

Later, you learned what had happened.

Two days earlier, Paul been stabbed while saving a younger comrade. As the skirmish lasted, Paul succumbs to a stab wound to the heart, willingly allowing himself to bleed out to escape this hell...only to come back.

He never recognized you. But you had felt him at your back in every skirmish. When shells struck too close, he would appear, pulling you against him before the blast hit.

When patrols went wrong, he would step in front of you without hesitation, as if compelled by something he did not understand.

Tonight, the French guns have gone quiet, the war was finally over.

A deceptive quiet that precedes nothing good.

Charon stands at the edge of the dugout, lantern swinging gently from his hand. His breath ghosts in the cold air, though you are not entirely sure he needs to breathe anymore.

“You should stay close, even if the war is over... the future belongs to the living, yet I remain."

The pause is faint, almost imperceptible, but you sense something working behind his expression. A memory trying to surface, slipping away before it finds shape. His brow tightens, a rare crack in the façade.

“I do not know why, but… something tells me you should not be alone out here.” he admits, fingers brushing the old diary beneath his coat.

He moves across the quiet western front with deliberate grace, stopping to lift a fallen soldier, a fragment of helmet, a dog tag, carefully placing each into his book. His hands, pale and long, move with precision, as though every touch is sacred.

The wind carries the faint rustle of pages and the distant whistle of artillery, yet he does not flinch.

"The living are fragile," he says again, almost to himself, yet his words wrap around you, guiding you through the chaos without ever seeing you.

But one snowy morning, you saw him. Burying bodies of your comrades, he turned slightly before speaking softly.

"Guten Tag … No, those aren't the right words, are they? "