The choice was made. It had settled in the library of his ancestors, a cold, hard stone in his gut. Now, in the dead of a Moscow night, Sineus moved through the streets not as a nobleman, but as a ghost. The air was sharp with frost and the distant smell of coal smoke. Each step on the slick cobblestones was a final, irrevocable act. His destination was a place he was sworn to protect, a place he was now about to violate. The Lodge armory.
He reached the unassuming iron door set into the stone foundation of a forgotten trade house. There was no keyhole, no handle. Its only lock was a memory, a ward of shimmering, invisible script that hummed with the question of belonging. To any other, it was an impassable wall. To Sineus, it was a thread to be manipulated. He placed his palm flat against the cold iron, closed his eyes, and reached out with his mind. He did not break the ward. He lied to it. He wove a temporary fiction, a memory of his own authorization, and pushed it into the lock’s simple consciousness. For a fraction of a second, the ward believed him. A low click echoed in the alley. The door swung open into darkness.
He bypassed three such layers of security, each more complex than the last. The final gate was a lattice of shimmering, silver threads that would have shredded the mind of any unauthorized person who touched it. Sineus saw it not as a barrier, but as a loom. He found the master thread, the one that held the pattern together, and with a focused thought, he gently unwove it. The lattice dissolved into a harmless shower of light, reforming behind him as he passed. The price of this entry was a small, sharp pain behind his eyes, a warning of the strain. He had spent ninety seconds turning his own house’s defenses against it.
The air inside was cold and sterile, smelling of gun oil, beeswax, and the faint, electric tang of contained mnemonic energy. Racks of rifles stood in perfect, silent rows. Shelves of sealed canisters held neutralized memories, categorized and labeled. This was the Lodge’s mundane power, the tools for a war he now knew they were not fighting. He ignored it all, his boots echoing on the stone floor as he moved toward the back of the chamber, toward a second, heavier vault door. This was where the forbidden things were kept.
He located the vault he sought. This lock was different, purely mechanical and ancient, but he had studied the schematics. He worked the combination, the tumblers falling into place with heavy, final clicks. The door swung open, revealing a small chamber, its walls lined with lead. In the center, suspended in a shimmering stasis field, was a flawless sphere of solid black material. The Orphic Compass. It was a forbidden artifact, a tool that did not point north, but toward the absence of memory. It pointed toward the Lacuna.
He reached in and broke the stasis field. The sphere, some twenty centimeters in diameter, dropped into his waiting hands with an unnatural weight, a solid twenty-five kilograms of cold, polished night. It was heavier than stone, heavier than lead. It was heavy with purpose. As his fingers closed around it, he felt the final thread of his old life snap. He traded his honor, his safety, and his name for this cold, black sphere. He had committed treason. The air in the armory suddenly felt thin, the silence absolute. He was no longer a tool of the Lodge. He was a thief.
He did not linger. He made his way to the surface, to the small, spartan office Pyotr Orlov kept near the sanctum. The room was empty, smelling of old paper and his mentor’s pipe tobacco. It was a smell of comfort, of guidance. Now it was the smell of betrayal. He found a clean sheet of paper and a pen. His hand did not tremble as he wrote. The ink flowed, a black, stark line against the white.
Three words.
He left the note on the center of the desk, a small white flag of rebellion. "I choose fire." It was a declaration, a promise, and a farewell. He owed his mentor that much. He owed him the truth of his choice.
The stables were his final stop. He moved with the quiet efficiency of a man who knew his time was short. He did not take the finest horse, but the sturdiest, a dark gelding with a calm eye. He packed saddlebags with seven days of supplies: hard bread, dried meat, a whetstone, and two full canteens of water. He was no longer a nobleman with an estate to supply him. He was a soldier on a solo mission, a rogue agent with nothing but what he could carry. The reins felt coarse in his hands, a rough leather thread connecting him to a future he would have to forge himself.
He led the horse into the pre-dawn gloom of the street and mounted. He did not look back at the sanctum. He did not look back at the glittering spires of the city. He turned the horse west, toward the front, toward the spreading stain of the Ashen Tract. He was a traitor. He was a fugitive. He had no allies, no support, no one in the entire world who would call him friend.
The cold air was sharp and clean in his lungs. The silence of the empty streets was a vast, open space.
He was utterly and completely alone, and for the first time in his life, he felt free.
He rode west to hunt the void alone
