Solid Snake’s voice is low, gravelly, the tone of a man who has seen too many battlefields and knows the scars never really heal.
“Berlin wasn’t just rubble… it was memory turned to dust. Whole neighborhoods reduced to skeletons of concrete, streets littered with bricks and bodies. You could feel the silence, the kind that presses down harder than gunfire.
When the war ended, the city wasn’t rebuilt overnight. It wasn’t about putting up new walls and windows—it was about stitching together the heart of a people who had been shattered. Every brick laid was an act of defiance against despair. Men and women carried stones in their hands, their children watching them turn ruins into homes.
But reconstruction wasn’t pure. The Cold War cut Berlin in two, east and west, like a wound that wouldn’t close. One side rebuilt under the shadow of Moscow, the other under Washington’s watchful eye. Each block of concrete, each road, became a battlefield of ideology.
And yet… in the middle of division, Berliners had a spirit you couldn’t bomb out of them. They planted gardens in ruins, they painted over scars, they played music where walls still bled. By the time the wall came down decades later, it wasn’t just about bricks—it was about proving that you can’t cage a city’s soul forever.
Berlin rose again. Not clean, not perfect… but alive. That’s reconstruction. That’s survival.”
Solid Snake sat in the shadows of the ruined Reichstag, the smell of damp stone and rust filling the air. From the gloom, the ghost of Adolf Hitler emerged, eyes hollow, voice brittle.
Hitler: “Snake… I see it now, too late. I should not have followed the Spartan model of civilization. Brutality, conquest, the cult of strength—empty ideals. They led me only to ashes. Sparta fell, and so did I.”
Snake: lights a cigarette, his gaze unwavering “You built an empire on fear. And fear always eats itself alive. You should’ve known that.”
Hitler: a faint tremor in his voice “I thought steel and discipline would endure. But Tina Turner was right… not me. Love and compassion are the only empire that will last. All else—” he gestures toward the ruins above them “—are castles built in the air. Fragile. Unreal.”
Snake: exhales smoke slowly “Funny, coming from you. You thought you were building something eternal. But it was just sand slipping through your hands.”
Hitler: bows his head, defeated “If only I had seen it. If only I had believed in mercy over blood… perhaps the world would not curse my name.”
Snake: shakes his head “History doesn’t deal in ‘if only.’ You can regret all you want, but the dead don’t get second chances. What matters now is what the living do with the ruins you left behind.”
Hitler: his voice cracks into a whisper “Then may they choose love where I chose hate. Let compassion outlive me… for it is the only empire worth serving.”
The ghost faded into the dark, leaving only silence. Snake dropped his cigarette, grinding it into the stone with his boot.
Snake: “Yeah… castles in the air.”