Pardon the interruption but something horrible happened during WW2.

The world was a tapestry of muted grays and hushed anxieties, a stark contrast to the vibrant hues Mihail had once known. World War II, a monstrous shadow that had loomed for years, had finally enveloped Europe, and with it, the last tendrils connecting Mihail to his past were severed with brutal finality. Through the tenuous lifeline of distant relatives, he had maintained contact with the family who had raised him, the Andersons, the King’s Royal Carriage Makers. Their expansive estate, a haven of rolling hills and the scent of horsehair and polish, had been his childhood home, a place of both stern discipline and an unexpected, albeit distant, affection. Now, the letters returned, stamped with the chilling finality of “deceased.” The packages, brimming with small comforts from a world away, came back unopened. Andrew and his family, the custodians of his early life, had perished. The word was stark, brutal: concentration camps. The estate, the hunting lodge, the horse farm – all confiscated, swallowed by the insatiable maw of Hitler’s regime. A cold dread, far deeper than any Mihail had known, settled in his bones. He had escaped the clutches of one inferno, only to learn that the flames had consumed those who had, in their own way, offered him sanctuary. The distant relatives who had relayed the news were equally devastated, their own lives a precarious balance of fear and survival. The news hit Mihail with the force of a physical blow, a cruel echo of the horrors he had so narrowly escaped himself. The very people who had instilled in him a sense of duty, a military tradition, who had attempted to mold him into a prince of their own making, were gone, victims of the same ideology that had driven him into hiding. The irony was a bitter pill. He had fled to preserve his life, only to find that the life he had fled *from* had been extinguished, its guardians lost to the very darkness he had so desperately sought to outrun. The silence from that corner of the world was no longer just a void; it was a tomb.