The basement smelled of gun oil, cold steel, and stale dampness. In the dim light of a single bulb, the steel skeleton wearing Viktor’s flesh seemed woven from shadows. He stood unnaturally straight, motionless, as if he weren't breathing. A machine. The grandfather opened an old military crate. The creak of rusty hinges echoed in the silence. He began to pull out heavy, angular plates of armor. They were not merely black; they were coated in a substance that drank the light. No reflections, no shine—just a matte, abyssal darkness that looked like a hole cut out of reality. A void in the shape of a man. A breastplate, pauldrons, greaves... Despite the strange coating, every piece was marked with scratches and bullet dents. The history of someone else’s war, which was now to become his skin.

  The grandfather started with the legs. He bolted the plates to the frame, metal grinding against metal. Every tightened bolt felt like the strike of a hammer nailing down a coffin lid. Then the breastplate. It lay on Viktor’s chest with the weight of a tombstone, and the boy gasped for a moment under its weight.

  Then the grandfather opened another crate. Inside, on oily rags, lay weapons. An MG 42. An StG 44. And a crude trench knife.

  "Trash, not weapons," the old man muttered, running a finger along the machine gun's barrel. "But it's the only kind we have."

  Viktor’s gauntleted hand came to rest on the cold grip of the MG 42. He lifted it. The servomotors in his new back whined quietly, compensating for the weight.

  MG 42. Hitler’s Buzzsaw, the inner voice whispered, this time without excitement, but with cold, predatory appraisal. Twelve hundred rounds per minute. We’ll tear them open. All of them.

  A shiver ran through Viktor. Not from the voice. From the realization. He held a tool for mass murder in his hands, and his new body didn't even feel the weight. He looked at his hands in the black gauntlets. They were not his hands.

  He took the trench knife and attached the weapons to the magnetic clips on his armor. Finally, his grandfather handed him a helmet. Black, dull, with a narrow T-shaped eye slit. Viktor put it on. The click of the locks cut off the peripheral world. His vision turned into a narrow tunnel. His own breathing thundered in his ears like the surf in a sea cave.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  When the helmet sealed, the illusion was complete. He was no longer a boy. He was a walking absence of light.

  The grandfather stopped him, placing a wrinkled hand on the gauntlet gripping the hilt of the trench knife.

  "Wait. This isn't your blade. This is a butcher’s tool."

  He took the knife away and retrieved a short sword in a plain wooden scabbard from a hidden spot in the wall. A Tanto. The blade was old but impeccably maintained.

  "This belonged to your great-grandfather," the old man said, placing the weapon in Viktor’s hand. "He carried it through the entire war."

  Viktor looked at the elegant blade in his monstrous steel hand. Honor and deformity. Salvation and murder. He felt the bitter irony of the moment.

  Then the grandfather unrolled a second bundle. Inside was a sword of incredible length—an Odachi. The old man took it for himself, slinging it over his shoulder. He spread a map on the table.

  "Listen to me, Viktor Kenzaki. The man who did this to us... his name is Ishikawa. His father was the head of the Japanese wing of the 'Axis.' We must split his attention. I'll go south, into the mountains, to find his henchmen. I'll make them hunt the ghost of an old demon."

  His finger pointed to the northern part of the map, circling an unremarkable village.

  "You... go here. Intelligence indicates a camp in this area. They call it 'The Institute.' That is where they took Anya."

  Viktor nodded. Once. A short, mechanical movement. He attached the tanto to his belt.

  The grandfather handed him two old radios.

  "This is all we have. Speak only if it is a matter of life and death."

  They stepped out of the shack into the pre-dawn mist. Without another word, they parted. The old man with the enormous sword on his back vanished into the forest, moving south.

  And Viktor, the Iron Angel in a sarcophagus of void-like steel, took his first heavy, clanging step north. Toward Anya. Toward his own hell.