They found the church after hours of running, a black skeleton against a sky of cold, indifferent stars. It was not a sanctuary, but a convenience of ruin. The roof had fallen in over the nave, leaving the main aisle open to the thin, weeping drizzle. The air inside was thick with the smell of damp earth, rotting wood, and the ghost of cold incense. Sineus stumbled past the remnants of pews, his legs moving from a memory of function, not from will. He collapsed against the stone base of a desecrated altar, the last of his strength finally gone.
He was not just tired. He was hollow. The image of Pyotr’s fall played again and again behind his eyes: a perfect, repeating memory icon of his own failure. The gentle, empty smile. The body folding like a discarded coat. The silver signet ring spinning on wet cobblestones. Sineus had led him there. His hope was the lure. His trust was the bait. The grief was a physical weight, a stone in his gut pressing him to the church floor. His morale was not low; it was a void.
He did not know how long he sat there, his back against the cold stone, the drizzle tracing paths down his face that might have been rain or might have been tears. He had reached the end of his own history. The Lodge hunted him. Lacroix hunted him. His past was a weapon turned against him, and his future was a blank page he had no strength left to write on. He felt a loose thread on the cuff of his coat and pulled at it absently. It came away in his fingers, a short, frayed piece of dark wool. A severed thread. Like the one he had seen on Pyotr, the one that had been a leash. Like the bond to his mentor, now cut forever.
Alessandro found him there. The Italian did not speak. He moved with a quiet, pragmatic economy, his boots making little sound on the debris-strewn floor. He found a relatively dry corner near the chancel, sheltered by a remaining piece of wall, and set down his pack. He offered no hand, no word of comfort. He simply began to check his pistol, the series of metallic clicks unnervingly loud in the heavy silence. It was not an act of unkindness. It was a statement of fact. The world did not stop because one man was broken. The war did not pause for grief.
The methodical sound of the weapon being cleaned and reassembled was a sharp stone against the soft, suffocating blanket of Sineus’s despair. Finally, Alessandro spoke, his voice a low rasp, devoid of sympathy.
— So. This is the end.
Sineus did not answer. He stared at the dark, empty space where the altar window had been.
— You have two choices, — Alessandro continued, his tone as flat and cold as the stone around them. — You can find a hole, crawl into it, and let the world forget you. Vanish. Or you can get up and fight for the people who will be unwritten next.
The words were brutal, a splash of ice water. Sineus flinched. He wanted the hole. He craved the oblivion of vanishing, the quiet end to the running and the pain. He had earned that much, hadn't he? He had tried. He had failed. The price was paid.
— There is nothing left to fight for, — Sineus whispered, the words tasting of ash.
— Nothing? — Alessandro’s voice was sharp now, edged with a contempt that cut through the fog of Sineus’s grief. — Tell that to the ghosts of Elina's village. Tell that to the baker who died with a rolling pin in his hands trying to buy us five seconds. Tell that to Anya.
The name was a physical blow. Anya. The little girl in the refugee camp, her eyes as empty as Pyotr’s had become, clutching a doll with a featureless face. A child whose past had been scooped out, leaving a quiet, walking husk.
— Like my family, — Alessandro added, his voice dropping again, the anger replaced by a low, burning intensity. — They were unwritten. Not by a Lethe Mortar, but by a nobleman’s decree, a piece of paper that said our work, our lives, our history, was now the property of the state. It is the same machine, Bielski. The same engine of oblivion. You just use a blade. They use the law.
Sineus closed his eyes. The grief was still there, a vast, cold ocean. But now, in its depths, something else stirred. A hot, clean spark of anger. He saw Lacroix’s trap, the chilling intellect that used a good man’s love as a weapon. He saw Grigori Levin’s smug, fearful face, sacrificing the world to preserve the sanctity of Lodge protocol. He saw the entire edifice of duty and honor he had built his life upon, and he saw it for what it was: a cage. A beautiful, gilded cage that had kept him from seeing the truth until it was too late.
His duty had not been to the Lodge. It had never been to the Lodge. His duty was to the people the Lodge was meant to protect. His oath was to the memory of the Empire, and the Empire was not a council of old men in a dark room. It was the baker. It was Elina. It was Anya. It was Pyotr, who had not offered him an escape, but a final lesson. True honor is a choice forged under fire. The choice was not to run. The choice was to burn.
The anger was a fire that burned away the despair, leaving something hard and clear in its place. He had been a tool, a perfect, sterile instrument of excision. But a tool could be reforged. He opened his eyes. The rain had stopped. A sliver of moon cast a pale, watery light through the broken roof, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the cold air. He pushed himself up from the floor, his muscles screaming in protest. The movement was slow, agonizing, but it was his own.
He stood, swaying slightly, and met Alessandro’s gaze across the ruined sanctuary. The Italian had stopped cleaning his weapon. He was watching Sineus, his expression unreadable. He saw the change in Sineus’s eyes. The hollow despair was gone, replaced by a cold, still resolve that was more frightening than any rage. The choice was made.
A moment of silent, unguarded understanding passed between them. It was more than an alliance. It was more than a partnership forged in the heat of battle. It was a bond of shared loss, of shared purpose. A new thread, woven not from the weight of history or the command of an institution, but from a conscious, painful choice. Alessandro gave a single, sharp nod. It was all the confirmation Sineus needed.
Sineus walked over to where he had dropped his rifle. He picked it up, the familiar weight of the wood and steel a comfort in his hands. He worked the bolt, the sound loud and final in the quiet church. He looked down at his right hand, the one that had been struck by the psychic backlash. A dull, crystalline ache throbbed deep in the bones, a permanent echo of Pyotr’s fall. It was not a mark of his failure anymore. It was a reminder of the price. A price he was now willing to pay, again and again, until the debt was settled.
The moon was a sliver of bone in the black sky. The air was clean and cold.
He looked at Alessandro, his new and only ally.
— We need a new plan.
