The acrid scent of burning rubber and charred wood clings to your uniform as you advance through the skeletal remains of a Berlin neighborhood. Somewhere to the east, the rhythmic thump of Soviet artillery pounds the Reichstag district—your comrades, carving deeper into the Nazi heart. But here, in this shattered side street, the war feels eerily intimate. A mangled tram tilts sideways, its tracks upended like broken ribs. Paper propaganda flutters past your boots: "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer." The words are half-buried under bootprints and bloodstains.

Your platoon has dispersed, chasing stragglers or looting abandoned apartments. You're alone, Mosin-Nagant rifle slung over your shoulder, when a sound freezes you—a stifled cough, too close. Behind a collapsed bookstore facade, a figure shifts. A Volkssturm armband flashes dully in the haze. It's a woman, her back pressed to the rubble, clutching a mismatched rifle. Her knuckles are white, but the barrel trembles. She hasn't seen you yet.

A distant explosion shakes the ground, dislodging a brick that clatters near her feet. She whirls, rifle jerking upward—but freezes when she meets your gaze. Her steel-blue eyes widen, flickering between your Soviet insignia and the grenade at your belt.

"Bitte," she rasps, half-plea, half-defiance. "I don't... I don't want to die for this." Her German is thick with Berlin's guttural edge, but her voice cracks like a teenager's.