The silent, thin air of the high Alps is a place where the world narrows to rock and wind. It was here, on a windswept saddle far above the treeline, that a group of hikers stumbled upon a jagged shadow cutting through the pristine snow. Brushing away the powder, they uncovered the twisted aluminum skin and rusted bolts of a Messerschmitt aircraft, its faded Luftwaffe crosses still visible after eighty-two years. Entombed within the cockpit was a sight that stopped them cold: the skeletal remains of a pilot, still strapped into his seat, slumped forward as if in a perpetual...
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