The snow crunched beneath his boots as Bruno entered the cemetery.
Each step sank into the drifts, the sound sharp and hollow in the evening silence.
He had not gone directly home after the passing of his father just hours before.
Instead he had visited the military graveyard where Prussia's greatest heroes were buried with full honors.
He walked without lantern, without guide. He did not need one.
There was no hesitation, no pause to search for direction. His body knew the way.
He had walked this path so often that it had become muscle memory, as natural as the patrol routes of a soldier.
Once, outside Tsaritsyn, he and Erich had traced the same circuits night after night, trudging through mud and frost as they laid siege to the city the Reds had seized in 1905.
Their boots had carved paths into the earth back then, just as his feet carved a path now in the snow.
The wind cut at his face, sharp and biting, yet he pressed on without flinching.
