Laura opens a package from the army and finds Freddie's uniform jacket and identity tags inside.

Freddie wakes trapped in a bombed-out German pillbox, realizing an injured German soldier named Hans Winter is sealed in there with him.

Haunted by her losses and encouraged by the Parkey sisters, Laura resolves to return to Belgium and find out what happened to Freddie.

Freddie and Winter dig through the mud and finally crawl free of the pillbox into the freezing rain.

When a Canadian soldier attacks Winter in No Man's Land, Freddie panics and kills the man.

Taking shelter in Faland's glittering hotel during a shelling, Laura spots Freddie in the crowd but assumes she is hallucinating.

Freddie and Winter reach Laura's aid station at Brandhoek only to find it bombed and Laura gone.

Believing Laura is dead, Freddie gives Winter his uniform jacket and identity tags, leaves him with Kate, and departs with Faland.

Kate tells Laura that a German prisoner arrived with Freddie's jacket last November and claimed, deliriously, that Freddie was still alive.

The wounded Winter appears at Couthove's doorstep and tells Laura she must rescue Freddie from Faland.

During Gage's official visit to Couthove, Winter and Pim struggle over a concealed pistol that fires and nearly hits Gage.

Laura enters Faland's hotel, finds the ghostlike Freddie, and guides him through doors that open into his most painful memories.

Laura seizes Faland's violin and threatens to smash it, forcing him to release her and Freddie from the hotel.

Pim locks the interrogation room door, draws a hidden pistol, and shoots General Gage dead.

Jones secures forged papers and arranges ship passage so that Laura, Freddie, and Winter can return to Canada.

When Laura receives Freddie's uniform jacket in Halifax, she refuses to accept that he is dead and joins Mary Borden's hospital unit to investigate. Meanwhile, Freddie escapes a bombed pillbox alongside the German soldier Hans Winter and crosses No Man's Land at enormous personal cost. After a traumatic killing, Freddie fights to keep Winter alive and reaches Laura's aid station, only to find it bombed and Laura apparently dead. Believing he has lost his last purpose, Freddie surrenders himself to the fiddler Faland, whose magical hotel offers escape from unbearable memory. Laura discovers the truth through Winter's wounded arrival at Couthove and storms Faland's domain to recover her brother, forcing Faland's hand at violin-point. The climax arrives when Pim kills Gage and Faland takes her away, leaving Laura, Freddie, and Winter to finally escape Belgium and sail for home.

The core search: Laura hunts for Freddie as he is lost to Faland's domain.

At a seance with the Parkey sisters, a mysterious message declares Jimmy Shaw dead but insists Freddie Iven is still alive.

Lying in the pitch-dark pillbox, Freddie recites a passage from Paradise Lost to distract himself and Winter.

Mary Borden invites Laura to join the staff at her privately funded field hospital in Belgium.

Pim insists on accompanying Laura and Mary to Belgium; Laura shows her scarred hands as a warning, but Pim refuses to be deterred.

Aboard the ship to Europe, the women debate soldiers' reports of angel sightings on the battlefield.

Arriving in London, Laura and Pim watch a medical train unload soldiers who have been driven to madness by the war.

Freddie and Winter hear a man begging to be killed and haul a drowning British Tommy out of the mud.

The morning after Faland's hotel, the women wake to find only ruins; soldiers warn them the mysterious fiddler destroys those who seek him again.

Laura arrives at Couthove burning with fever, and surgeon Jones scolds Mary for bringing a sick nurse to the front.

Jones performs an experimental blood transfusion on the soldier Trovato, and a skeptical Laura is impressed by his belief in the future.

Freddie decides that surrendering his memories of Winter would destroy the last cornerstone of his identity and refuses to give them up.

In the streets of Poperinghe, Laura sees her mother's ghost pointing urgently at something in the crowd behind her.

After the Poperinghe riot, Jones gently tends to Laura's injuries; overwhelmed by his tenderness, she abruptly flees the room.

Recognizing the fugitive Winter, Jones agrees to hide him in the hospital ward and gives Winter his own blood in a transfusion.

Lost in the countryside after escaping Faland's hotel, Laura calls to her mother's ghost, which takes her hand and guides them to Couthove.

Before Laura departs for Belgium, she attends a seance, meets Mary Borden, and fails to dissuade Pim from joining the mission. The journey across the Atlantic and through England reveals the war's psychological devastation through soldiers driven to madness and shipboard debates about miraculous visions. Freddie and Winter deepen their bond in the dark pillbox and later pull a drowning Tommy from the mud, demonstrating a shared humanity that crosses enemy lines. At Couthove, Laura encounters Jones's forward-looking medicine and begins to feel something thaw in herself, even as his unexpected gentleness overwhelms her. The supernatural thread continues through Laura's mother's ghost pointing urgently in Poperinghe and through Faland's hotel dissolving into ruins by morning. When the escaped Winter returns wounded, Jones's quiet heroism in hiding and transfusing him sets the stage for the final confrontation.

The supporting fabric: smaller moments that build character and deepen the war's toll.

Official army letters inform Laura that Freddie is missing and presumed killed following the assault on Passchendaele Ridge.

The arrival of rats in the sealed pillbox leads Freddie and Winter to discover a small crack that might offer escape.

Laura returns to Pim's house and formally accepts Mary Borden's invitation to work at the field hospital in Belgium.

After dinner in London, General Gage pulls Pim aside for a private conversation; she returns to the others visibly shaken.

At an overcrowded aid station in Ypres, a Tommy reveals Winter is German, forcing Freddie and Winter to flee deeper into the city.

In Faland's wine cellar, a feverish Winter begs Freddie not to trust their host and claims to know exactly who Faland is.

Waking from a nightmare in Faland's hotel, Freddie finds himself paralyzed with terror and recognizes the symptoms of shell shock.

Freddie realizes that each story he tells Faland permanently erases the corresponding memory from his own mind.

Faland takes Freddie to a military officers' party and plays violin woven from Freddie's stolen memories, igniting a violent rage inside him.

Faland offers to deliver the wounded Winter to Couthove in exchange for Freddie's final story: how he fell in love with Winter.

Laura finds Pim in the cemetery speaking to a figure who vanishes on approach; Pim claims she was sleepwalking.

Pim confesses that Gage told Jimmy his execution for desertion would serve as a lesson to other soldiers, and she has wanted revenge ever since.

Faland enters the interrogation room and offers Pim oblivion; Laura unties Winter and they slip out as Faland begins to play.

At a boarding house, Freddie and Winter confess their love for each other and share their first kiss.

Months after the war ends, a knock at Laura's door reveals Jones standing on her doorstep, smiling.

The news that Freddie is officially missing and presumed dead sets Laura's mission in motion, while a small crack discovered thanks to rats gives Freddie and Winter their first real hope of escape. Each character crosses a threshold that reshapes who they are: Laura formally commits to returning to Belgium, Pim receives shattering news from Gage that she will never forgive, and Freddie learns that Faland's bargain costs him one memory per story. Faland's revelation of Freddie's stolen life played back as violin music forces Freddie to confront what he is losing, and his final deal — surrendering the story of his love for Winter — marks his deepest fall. The truth about Pim's vendetta and Jimmy's execution for desertion reframes every choice she has made, and Faland's offer of oblivion gives her the exit she has been seeking all along. Freddie and Winter's first kiss and Jones's quiet arrival at Laura's door months after the war ends confirm that resilience and love have outlasted everything.

The pivots: key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that change everything.