The ragged cheer that went up from the sixteen surviving Carbonari was a raw, brittle sound in the vast silence of the pass. It was the sound of men who had stared into the abyss and seen it blink first. They clapped 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 a handful of men and five barrels of powder, and they had won.
Alessandro stood, his face grim but with a fire of victory 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. In that moment, Sineus felt a sense of belonging he had never known in the gilded, silent halls of the Winter Palace or the cold sanctums of the Lodge. This was interdependence. This was a victory shared.
— We brought down the mountain, — Alessandro said, his voice hoarse with spent adrenaline.
Sineus nodded, allowing himself to feel it. The knot of cold anger in his gut loosened. They had struck a real blow. They had bought time. They had honored their dead.
— Check the wreckage, — Alessandro ordered, his voice now crisp and businesslike. He pointed to Marco, the young scout 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. 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, the raw wound in the mountainside. The snow was falling thicker now, long, soft flakes that began to blanket the destruction.
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. The cheers died in the throats of the Carbonari. The boy 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. The paper was cold, impossibly clean. The fold was a perfect, sharp line, like a thread pulled taut just before it snaps. Sineus took it. The paper felt heavy, weighted with a meaning he did not yet understand.
— There is nothing down there, — Marco whispered, his voice thin against the wind. — Scrap metal. Broken crates filled with rocks. It was all a decoy.
The words fell into the silence and shattered it. The victory, so real and hard-won moments before, evaporated into the thin, cold air. They had not won. They had performed perfectly in a play written by the enemy. Alessandro stared at the wreckage below, his face a mask of disbelief turning slowly to cold fury. They had been led here. The ambush was not their plan; it was the enemy’s.
Sineus unfolded the paper.
Five words were written on it in an elegant, archaic script. It was a scholar’s hand, precise and confident. It was a style he recognized from the deepest archives of the Lodge, a form of calligraphy that had been rediscovered, not invented. This was the work of a man who did not just wield power, but studied it.
The message was simple.
I see you, Sineus Bielski.
The world narrowed to the five words on the page. The war against the French Empire, the fight against the Lodge’s inertia, the struggle for the soul of his own nation—it all collapsed into a single, terrifying point. This was not a war of armies anymore. It was a duel. The enemy was not a faceless general. He was a man who knew his name.
The hunter had become the hunted.
His past was no longer a source of strength or guidance. It was a map held in the enemy’s hands. Every choice he had ever made, every secret of his bloodline, every excised memory in the Lodge’s archives—it was all now a potential weapon to be used against him. His unique gift, the thing that set him apart, was now the leash by which he could be led into a trap.
— What is it? — Alessandro’s voice was rough.
Sineus did not answer. He could feel the shift in the world’s script, a cold focus settling upon him. He was no longer a piece in the game. He was the target. This man, this Lucien Lacroix, had not simply anticipated their ambush. He had orchestrated it, sacrificing a company of his own men just to deliver this single, devastating message. To confirm Sineus’s existence. To announce his own.
— Sineus. What does it say?
He finally looked up from the paper, meeting the inventor’s hard gaze. — He knows my name.
Alessandro’s expression tightened. He processed it tactically, his mind racing. — So they know your name. We change our methods. We go to ground. We—
— No, — Sineus interrupted, his voice flat and cold. — You don’t understand. He didn’t find my name. He left it for me. He knew I would be here. He knew we would succeed.
The tactical calculations in Alessandro’s eyes died, replaced by the same cold dread that was gripping Sineus. This was not about strategy anymore. This was about a predator toying with its prey. The shared triumph of moments ago was a bitter memory, replaced by a shared, chilling fear. The alliance, forged in desperation, was now being tested by a new and deeply personal threat.
Sineus’s hand clenched, crushing the note in his fist. The paper, once a symbol of a clean, precise message, became a crumpled, ruined thing. A tangled, severed thread. The elation of their victory curdled into the cold, metallic taste of dread.
The snow fell thicker, blanketing the raw rock of the landslide in a soft, indifferent white.
The wind whispered through the pass, carrying no cheers, only the cold scent of stone.
He had to find the man who wrote his name.
