Reichsgraf of Stützung, keeper of one of Eisen's oldest names and its heaviest inheritance. His father Konrad's last charge, delivered in 1616 under a bad moon, bound him to a duty he has never explained to anyone: unite the kingdoms of man, and find God's chosen. He has been forty years old for rather longer than is customary.
The Inquisition knows. Knight Inquisitor Friedrich read the old reports, built a chair of silver, and named him in front of witnesses; the city of San Cristóbal chased something wolf-shaped through its streets on the night of the Blessing of the Spring. His companions saw everything, and stayed.
Silver unmasks liars. You are not cursed, Axel. You are revealed.
What Friedrich calls revealed, Axel carries as a discipline: locks on his doors, an elixir with an iron schedule, an old soldier who used to hold him through the bad nights (currently missing), and a physician who paid dearly for what she knows. He took a silver bullet meant for Aruma on the pilgrim road and dug it out of his own shoulder with a dagger, mid-battle, out of spite.
His sword is still missing. His debt to the crown in exile is still open. And Eisen, where the Inquisitor waits, where the Countess campaigns, where something sleeps under his own house, is getting closer on every page.