The air in the Khavron Pass was thin and sharp, tasting of cold stone and the metallic promise of more snow. It scraped the lungs with every breath. Sineus lay flat on a high ledge, the rough granite biting into his elbows through the thick wool of his coat. A hundred meters below, the pass was a jagged wound carved through the mountains, a single, narrow road exposed to the grey sky. The wind was a constant, low moan, a hungry sound that seemed to rise from the depths of the earth.
Beside him, Alessandro Volpe worked with a focused, unnerving calm. The inventor’s bandaged hand, a stark white against the dark rock, moved with practiced economy as he checked the final connection. A thin, waxed cord, no thicker than a bootlace, ran from his position back to the five explosive charges they had spent the morning planting across the unstable rockface. It was a simple fuse, a primitive tool for a task of immense and brutal scale. Alessandro had explained the mechanics with grim satisfaction: the charges were not designed to simply explode, but to fracture the key stress points of the cliffside. To turn the mountain’s own weight into a weapon.
The sixteen surviving Carbonari were scattered along the ridge, small, determined figures braced against the wind. They were quiet. The bravado of the river raid had been scoured away, leaving only this hard, brittle resolve. Sineus felt the dull throb behind his eyes, the lingering price of the memory-noise he had unleashed. It was a constant reminder of the crude path he now walked. He was no longer a surgeon. He was a saboteur, and this desperate, all-or-nothing gamble was the consequence.
He shifted his weight, the movement sending a small cascade of pebbles skittering over the edge. Alessandro glanced at him, his eyes dark under the brim of his hat. The inventor’s face was gaunt, etched with exhaustion, but his gaze was as sharp as a shard of broken glass.
— They will be in the kill zone in ten minutes, — Alessandro said, his voice low and rough, barely audible over the wind. — If the scout was right.
— He was, — Sineus said. He did not need the Orphic Compass to feel the truth of it. A great weight of men and steel was moving toward them, a disturbance in the world’s script, a line of grim purpose being drawn on the map.
Then they heard it. Not a single sound, but a low, grinding rumble that vibrated up through the stone. It was the sound of iron-rimmed wheels on frozen earth, the jangle of harnesses, the muffled tread of a hundred marching feet. A few minutes later, the head of the column appeared around a bend in the pass.
A low murmur went through the Carbonari on the ridge. The scout’s report had not done it justice. It was not a convoy; it was a serpent. A full company of French infantry marched in disciplined blocks, their dark blue greatcoats a stark contrast to the first flurries of snow that had begun to drift down from the sky. Between them, a long line of some thirty heavy wagons, their canvas covers lashed down tight, rumbled forward, each pulled by a team of four horses. It was a force more than six times their own number, moving with the unhurried arrogance of an army that believed it had already won.
— Hold, — Alessandro commanded, his voice a low growl. He did not seem intimidated. He seemed energized, a craftsman seeing the perfect block of marble for his chisel. — Let the head of the column pass the marker. We take the center. All of it.
Sineus watched the serpent crawl into the trap. The lead soldiers marched past the blasted pine tree they had designated as the far marker. The wagons, filled with the components for the Lethe Mortar, followed. Each one was a nail for the coffin of a city, a town, a people. He felt a cold anger solidify in his gut. This was not about empires or politics. It was about Anya’s faceless doll. It was about Elina Petrova’s stolen home. It was about the smiling, empty husk of his mentor.
The last of the wagons cleared the near marker. The entire center of the convoy, its most precious cargo, was now directly below them.
Alessandro looked at Sineus. He gave a single, sharp nod. The choice was made. The price was already paid.
The inventor took the smoldering punk from a sheltered lantern. He touched it to the waxed fuse. The cord sputtered to life, a tiny, determined spark eating its way toward the mountain’s heart. It was a fragile, severed thread of fire carrying an enormous weight of destruction.
For a second, nothing happened. The fuse vanished into the rock. The convoy continued its slow, inexorable crawl.
Then the world broke.
The first explosion was a deep, gut-punching whump that seemed to come from inside the stone beneath them. It was followed in rapid succession by the other four charges, a string of deafening cracks that shattered the air. The entire ridge shuddered, a tremor running through the mountain like a beast waking from a long sleep.
A web of fractures appeared on the cliff face below, spreading with impossible speed. A great sheet of rock, a hundred meters wide, groaned and shifted. It hung there for a single, silent heartbeat, defying the laws of the world.
Then it fell.
It did not fall as a single piece. It disintegrated into an avalanche of stone and earth, a roaring, grinding wave of oblivion that descended into the pass. Boulders the size of houses tumbled end over end, and a river of smaller rocks and scree followed, and the sound of it was the sound of the world being torn apart. It was a physical, crushing roar that drowned out the screams of the men and the terrified shrieking of the horses below.
Sineus watched, mesmerized by the sheer, brutal power of it. The rockslide hit the convoy not as an attack, but as a geological event. Wagons were not just smashed; they were pulverized, turned into splinters of wood and twisted iron under thousands of tons of rock. The disciplined blocks of soldiers vanished, swallowed by the tide of stone. The serpent was broken, buried, erased.
The avalanche crashed against the far wall of the pass, sending a plume of dust and snow high into the air. It settled, the roar fading to a low rumble, then to the sound of individual rocks clattering to a final rest.
Then, silence.
A profound, ringing silence that was deeper than the quiet that had come before. The wind still moaned, and the snow still fell, but the pass below was dead. The road was gone, choked with a mountain of fresh-broken rock. There was no movement. No sound of survivors. Nothing.
A ragged cheer went up from the Carbonari. Men who had been grim and silent moments before were now clapping each other on the back, their faces split with grins of disbelief and triumph. They had done it. They had faced a hundred soldiers and thirty wagons with sixteen men and five barrels of powder, and they had won.
Alessandro stood, his face grim, but a fire of triumph in his eyes. He looked at Sineus, and for the first time, the inventor’s smile was genuine—a flash of white in his grime-streaked face.
— We brought down the mountain, — Alessandro said, his voice hoarse.
Sineus nodded, allowing himself to feel the victory. The knot of cold anger in his gut loosened. They had struck a real blow. They had bought time. They had honored their dead. For a moment, standing on the cold ridge, he felt a sense of belonging that he had never known in the gilded halls of the Winter Palace.
— Check the wreckage, — Alessandro ordered, his voice now crisp and businesslike. He pointed to a young scout, a boy named Marco with quick eyes and a wiry frame. — Confirm the cargo. Be careful.
Marco nodded and began to scramble down a less steep section of the slope, moving with the easy confidence of a mountain goat. The others watched him go, their mood still buoyant. They had won.
The wait was short, only five minutes, but the silence felt different now. It was the silence of anticipation. Sineus watched the chaotic jumble of rock below, searching for any sign of the scout. The snow was falling thicker now, long, soft flakes that began to blanket the raw wound in the mountainside.
He saw Marco appear from behind a massive boulder. The boy was moving slowly, his shoulders slumped. The triumphant energy was gone. He was just a small, tired figure picking his way back up the treacherous slope.
He was carrying something in his hand.
Marco reached the ridge, his face pale, his breathing coming in ragged gasps. He did not look at Alessandro. He walked straight to Sineus. He held out his hand.
It was not a piece of a Lethe Mortar. It was not a weapon part or a piece of a uniform.
It was a single, folded sheet of pristine white paper, untouched by the dust and destruction around it.
