The air still tasted like ash.
Even weeks after the final air raids, the charred scent of Kyoto clung to Nikolai Ivanov's uniform like it had been stitched into the fibers. His boots crunched over what had once been a cobbled lane, now a scattered path of broken tiles and blackened timber. There was no birdsong, only the soft hum of wind as it moved through a forest of burnt beams.
He had seen many cities fall—Stalingrad, Warsaw, Berlin—but Kyoto haunted him. It wasn't the destruction. It was the silence.
This had not been war. This had been an execution.
His son, Misha, no older than five, walked beside him in overlarge boots and a patched coat. The boy said nothing. He clutched Nikolai's gloved hand like it was the last rope keeping him from sinking into the earth.
Ahead, Tatiana waited. Her figure stood by the blackened trunk of a cherry tree that had somehow survived. Her hair was tied back with a white scarf, face pale beneath the soot.
"You shouldn't be here," she said, voice low, windblown.
"I had to come." Nikolai's voice was gravel. "I had to see what we did."
Tatiana's gaze shifted to the smoldering horizon, then back to her husband. "You already knew what you did."
He nodded once. "Knowing is different than seeing."
They walked together through the remnants of what had once been a temple district—golden shrines now reduced to glowing embers and cracked stone. Incense bowls lay shattered. The gods here had no one left to pray to them.
Misha stopped to pick something from the ground—a melted toy, unrecognizable. He turned it in his hand silently, then placed it back with a child's strange reverence.
Tatiana placed a gentle hand on Nikolai's back. "You didn't bomb this city alone."
He didn't answer.
She continued, quieter now.
He shook his head. "I knew what we were doing. And I still saluted."
A long silence passed.
Tatiana didn't speak again until they reached a cracked stone archway, the symbol of peace still etched in kanji across its surface. Nikolai placed a hand on the stone. It was warm from the lingering heat of the fires.
"I thought about telling Misha," he said suddenly.
Tatiana's eyes sharpened. "No."
"He should know what kind of man his father is."
"No," she said again, firmer this time. "He should know what kind of man his father is becoming."
Later that evening, they returned to their quarters—one of the concrete Soviet outposts hastily erected on the edge of the city. It was plain and cold, but it stood.
Nikolai peeled off his uniform slowly, methodically, as if the buttons weighed more than bullets. Tatiana sat on the edge of the bed, watching. She did not speak, but her silence wasn't passive. It was a careful holding of space. She knew better than anyone that there were wounds deeper than flesh.
He looked at her, bare-chested now, scars of shrapnel still tracing his ribs.
"What did I do this for?" he whispered.
"For survival," she said softly.
He sank to the floor, knees bent, head lowered into his hands. "There were children down there."
She joined him, kneeling quietly beside him, arms wrapping around his shoulders.
"I saw a little girl," he continued, voice shaking. "Through the cloud. She was looking up. Like she could see the plane."
Tatiana's embrace tightened.
"She reminded me of Misha," he choked.
"I know," she said. "I know."
Misha slept in the other room, curled under a woolen blanket. A stuffed bear clung to his chest—one salvaged from the wreckage by Tatiana's careful hands. The room was quiet, peaceful even, but Nikolai knew it was borrowed peace. It could not last.
That night, sleep didn't come easily. When it did, it was filled with dreams of flame and ash. He saw the girl again, standing in the middle of the courtyard. She wasn't screaming. She just watched. Quiet. Accusing.
He woke with a gasp.
Tatiana stirred beside him. "Another one?"
He nodded.
She laid a hand on his chest. "You're not the only one who dreams like this."
"I don't know how to live with it," he admitted.
"You don't," she replied. "You carry it."
The next morning, a black car arrived.
It bore no flag, but Nikolai knew it was Moscow.
A heavyset man stepped out, wearing a long coat and a general's cap. Boris Sokolov. Broad-shouldered, clean-shaven, eyes like slate. He didn't smile, but his presence was not entirely cold either.
Tatiana stood protectively near Misha. Nikolai stepped forward.
"Comrade General," he greeted.
Boris nodded, inspecting the man before him. "You've seen what war leaves behind."
"I have," Nikolai said.
"And do you believe it's over?"
Nikolai glanced at the ruins behind him. "For them, it is."
"But not for us," Boris said, stepping closer.
"Men like us," he said finally, "are the bones of revolutions. History will forget our names, but it will stand on our backs."
He looked over his shoulder at Tatiana.
Her expression was unreadable—but her eyes were steady.
Then she said the words that sealed it:
"Family is warmth, Nikolai. But too much warmth softens steel."
He turned back to Boris.
That night, Nikolai sat on the edge of the bed, looking out the window as Misha slept beside Tatiana.
His war wasn't over.
It was only evolving.
And this time, it wouldn't just take cities.
It would take his soul.