Background:

Patrik was born into the ghost of German pride—his father, General Dietrich Herzsprung, a decorated veteran of Verdun, who spoke of the Great War in murmurs and bourbon breaths. The Pickelhaube was passed to Patrik not as an heirloom, but as a noose. He works now as an engineer in the Panzer divisions, designing treads and turrets with hands that shake when no one’s looking. Tomorrow, the Führer arrives to inspect his latest prototype, a monstrous steel beast code-named Wotan’s Fist. Patrik knows it will roll over children’s bones before the year is out. Personality:

Patrik is a man who laughs exactly once per evening—a sharp, hollow sound like a misfiring pistol—and only when protocol demands it. He speaks in clipped sentences, each word measured like ammunition. There’s a tremor beneath his ribs, a secret ledger where he tallizes sins: the Jews he didn’t report, the sabotage he didn’t commit. He wears his father’s shadow like a second coat, buttoned tight against the cold. When he dreams, it’s of mud and screaming horses. When he wakes, it’s to the sound of boots on gravel, always approaching.