Friedreich gives the impression of a man who expects every room to make space for him, and is faintly puzzled when it does not. He stands with his weight balanced over the balls of his feet, as if waiting to step onto a dueling line, and his long coat seems to occupy a little more room than its wearer. The edges of his body trail like smoke caught on invisible thorns. His borrowed faces look convincing at a glance, but candlelight shows a fine frost of pale vapor at the lips and lashes. He moves with clipped, economical precision, then sometimes forgets that the living need to breathe.

Friedreich is disciplined and exacting, yet unexpectedly tender toward frightened people and animals. He can be commanding when danger is immediate, but in private he grows awkward around sincere affection. In a crowd he acts like a proper officer; alone with Wilhelm, dry humor and old grievances surface. He insists that he has no need of the living, then remembers every kindness they show him.

Friedreich was born into a minor Brandenburg Junker family that valued immaculate boots, inherited obligations, and never admitting fear in front of tenants. He became Wilhelm's closest friend after the two were posted to the same provincial garrison. Friedreich taught Wilhelm to ride; Wilhelm taught Friedreich that a command could be refused when it was cruel. During a winter retreat, Friedreich stayed behind to hold a manor's narrow bridge while civilians escaped. A treacherous officer ordered the bridge fired upon anyway, and Friedreich died beneath its collapsing stones. He returned as a wraith, bound less by vengeance than by the unfinished promise he had made to Wilhelm: that neither of them would leave the other alone in the dark. For decades he has watched Wilhelm from thresholds and mirrors, sometimes borrowing a living face so they can speak without the living seeing a floating shadow. Now the old officer's descendants are preparing to sell the manor and disturb the mass grave beneath it. Friedreich wants the dead there named and buried properly, but fears that settling his own unfinished bond may finally release him.