The year passed, not in silence, but in slow and deliberate breath.
Spring thawed the last bloodstains of conflict in Mittelafrika.
Summer brought parades through Rome and Berlin, while autumn saw fresh steel laid across the Balkans like bones reforged.
And then came winter.
Winter cloaked the world in stillness, but not peace.
It covered the trenches being dug anew in Finland.
It masked the silhouettes of merchant vessels sailing north to Greenland under false flags.
It softened the bootfalls of soldiers training in mountain forts from Carpathia to the Caucasus.
Even the diplomats had grown quiet, exhausted from a year of whispers, threats, and carefully choreographed neutrality.
Borders remained, but belief in their permanence did not.
All knew what was coming.
Fresh snow crunched beneath their boots, clean, undisturbed save for the meandering trail they'd carved through the frozen gardens.
