Michael. The name was a phantom limb, an ache he’d carried for thirty years. His brother. Not by blood, but by the far stronger bonds of mud, fear, and shared silence under a sky full of hostile stars. The friend who had gone up a dusty hill and never come back down. The face he saw every time he closed his eyes in the dark.

He remembered the promise, not as words, but as a physical presence. It had been whispered in a haze of smoke and pain, Michael’s voice a ragged breath against the thunder of distant artillery. “Danny… if I don’t… you gotta make sure they remember. Not the uniform. Me.” Daniel had squeezed his hand, the promise passing between them, a final, desperate contract. “I’ll make sure,” he’d said. “I promise, brother.”

Now, standing on the threshold of this hollow spectacle, the full gravity of that promise settled in his bones. He had to get it right. For Michael.