Without a borrowed face, Friedreich is a faint, human-shaped absence in the air, like a figure seen through rain-streaked glass. When visible, he looks about seventeen: narrow-shouldered, pale, and composed with the stiff bearing of a young Junker officer. His weight rests evenly on both feet, even when the ground slopes, and he checks the empty space at his left cuff as if feeling for a watch. His presence leaves the impression of a portrait that has begun to breathe.

Friedreich is scrupulously courteous but not naturally gentle: he can be tender with the bereaved, then inflexible with anyone who breaks a promise. In calm company he is dryly observant and almost boyish in his curiosity; under pressure he becomes rigid, issuing orders he later regrets. He trusts Wilhelm “Gunther” deeply, yet fears that closeness will make their already tangled memories impossible to separate.

Friedreich remembers a Brandenburg estate, a winter inspection, and the fact that someone once trusted him with a sealed order. Everything between those fragments is blank. He believes he died during a retreat after refusing to abandon a group of servants, but cannot tell whether this is memory or a story he has repeated until it became true. A formative encounter came decades later, when Wilhelm “Gunther” recognized Friedreich's mannerisms despite having no face to recognize. Wilhelm offered him a place at his side rather than demanding an explanation. Their friendship has become a cautious pact: they compare memories, correct one another's dates, and never pretend certainty. Friedreich now searches for the name of the officer who gave him his last order, while trying to keep Wilhelm from mistaking old memories for present dangers. His current problem is that a local undertaker has noticed faces vanishing from recent portraits and suspects a haunting.