In the glittering courts of 19th-century Russia, a hidden war is waged not with cannons, but with memory itself. For Sineus Bielski, a gifted occultist noble, his duty is his life. As a chirurgeon for the clandestine Lodge, he serves the empire by excising threats from the narrative of reality, a perfect and isolated instrument of the state. But during Napoleon’s invasion, he observes an unthinkable new weapon: a French mortar that doesn’t just cut a memory, but annihilates it, creating a cancerous void in the world’s very fabric. Sineus brings this extinction-level threat to his superiors but is met with institutional dread. The Lodge masters, bound by centuries of protocol, forbid a direct assault. They order him to stand down and trust in rituals that are too slow, too weak, to stop the French army's advance and the growing, silent doom of the Lacuna. Forced to choose between his oath and his conscience, Sineus goes rogue, a traitor to his order. Hunted by his own brethren and the French occultist who now knows his name, his only path to stopping the weapon lies through an alliance with the Alchemical Carbonari. These dangerous revolutionaries see him as a symbol of the very oppression they fight, and their help will not come without a price. To save his homeland, Sineus must abandon every shred of his former life—his status, his honor, and the loyalties that have defined him. He must forge a pact with those who hate him, paying a cost in trust and blood for their aid. Every choice pulls another severed thread from the tapestry of his identity. He must become a leader he was never meant to be, uniting a fragile coalition of outcasts. But in a war where your own history can be turned into a weapon against you, how can you build a future when the price of victory may be your very self?
35 chapters
In the glittering courts of 19th-century Russia, a hidden war is waged not with cannons, but with memory itself. For Sineus Bielski, a gifted occultist noble, his duty is his life. As a chirurgeon for the clandestine Lodge, he serves the empire by excising threats from the narrative of reality, a perfect and isolated instrument of the state. But during Napoleon’s invasion, he observes an unthinkable new weapon: a French mortar that doesn’t just cut a memory, but annihilates it, creating a cancerous void in the world’s very fabric. Sineus brings this extinction-level threat to his superiors but is met with institutional dread. The Lodge masters, bound by centuries of protocol, forbid a direct assault. They order him to stand down and trust in rituals that are too slow, too weak, to stop the French army's advance and the growing, silent doom of the Lacuna. Forced to choose between his oath and his conscience, Sineus goes rogue, a traitor to his order. Hunted by his own brethren and the French occultist who now knows his name, his only path to stopping the weapon lies through an alliance with the Alchemical Carbonari. These dangerous revolutionaries see him as a symbol of the very oppression they fight, and their help will not come without a price. To save his homeland, Sineus must abandon every shred of his former life—his status, his honor, and the loyalties that have defined him. He must forge a pact with those who hate him, paying a cost in trust and blood for their aid. Every choice pulls another severed thread from the tapestry of his identity. He must become a leader he was never meant to be, uniting a fragile coalition of outcasts. But in a war where your own history can be turned into a weapon against you, how can you build a future when the price of victory may be your very self?
World
