The room was cold. Not the damp chill of a Petrograd autumn, but the sterile, absolute cold of a surgical theater. The air, filtered and dry, smelled of nothing. The walls were paneled in dark, polished wood that absorbed the light from the electric lamps, giving nothing back. The only color was the vast, detailed map of Petrograd that covered the far wall. A city dissected, its arteries and organs laid bare in black and red ink. Captain Valerius Wolff stood before it, a scalpel before a patient. His grey uniform was immaculate, the creases sharp enough to cut paper.
He was an instrument of the Kaiser's Ordo Umbrarum, the disciplined, occult-obsessed branch of the German High Command. His purpose was to bring logic to a world drowning in the chaos of sentiment. He held a steel pointer, its tip resting on a factory district near the Neva River. The Iron Palimpsest.
— The target is here, — Wolff said. His voice was calm, devoid of inflection. It was another tool, honed for clarity and command. — Intelligence confirms the Heart of the Artisan is located within a pre-erasure vault in this sector.
Around the heavy oak table sat six men. Two admirals from the High Command, their faces hard and weathered, their uniforms heavy with gold braid. Three diplomats from the Foreign Office, their civilian suits looking soft and flimsy in the severe room. The sixth man sat slightly apart, a nondescript functionary in a simple grey suit, his eyes fixed on a leather-bound notepad. He said nothing. He simply observed.
— The Heart of the Artisan, — one of the admirals grunted, his voice thick with skepticism. Admiral von Hessler. A man of steel ships and high explosives. He dealt in tons, not whispers. — More ghost stories from your department, Wolff. I have a fleet to run.
— A ghost story that can win a battle, Admiral, — Wolff replied without turning from the map. — The artifact is a vault-sealed kernel of solidified memory. The final, perfect moment of a master craftsman's life. A moment of pure creation. Its resonance is sufficient to overwrite reality on a strategic scale.
The senior diplomat, a man named von Schulenburg with a carefully trimmed mustache, cleared his throat. — Overwrite reality? Captain, such language is… alarming. It violates certain understandings.
— War violates understandings, Herr von Schulenburg, — Wolff said, his voice flat. He turned from the map, his pale eyes sweeping over the men at the table. He saw their doubt. Their fear. Their conventional minds clinging to a world of treaties and tonnage. They needed a demonstration. They needed to understand the new physics of this war.
— Bring him in, — Wolff ordered.
Two guards in the black uniforms of the Ordo Umbrarum entered. They were large, silent men, moving with an unnerving efficiency. Between them, they held a third man, a captured Russian spy. The spy was thin, his face bruised, his eyes wide with a terror that had burned past screaming into a state of pure, animal fear. He trembled, a constant, low-frequency vibration.
The guards forced the spy into a steel chair bolted to the floor in the center of the room. A single, bright lamp was angled down at his face, throwing the rest of the room into deeper shadow. The spy squinted, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
Wolff walked to a small, velvet-lined case on a side table. He opened it. Inside lay an object that looked like a surgeon's scalpel, but its blade was forged from a dark, non-reflective metal that seemed to drink the light. It was a Memory Blade, a tool for excising history. The metal was cool and solid in his gloved hand.
He approached the chair. The spy flinched, trying to pull away, but the guards held him fast. Wolff ignored the man’s fear. It was an irrelevant variable. He placed the tip of the Memory Blade against the spy’s temple. The metal was cold enough to raise gooseflesh.
— What is your name? — Wolff asked, his voice quiet.
— Dmitri… Dmitri Volkov, — the spy stammered, spit flying from his lips.
Wolff activated the blade. It did not cut the skin. Instead, it emitted a low, almost inaudible hum, a high-frequency vibration that traveled from Wolff’s hand into the spy’s skull. The hum was a clean, metallic sound, like the rapid ticking of a watch made of ice. A Ticker’s Rattle. The spy’s eyes went wide. A flicker of confusion crossed his face, then blankness. The process took four seconds. The price was the man’s identity. A small price.
Wolff removed the blade. The hum ceased. He looked into the spy’s now-empty eyes.
— What is your name? — Wolff asked again.
The man stared. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. He did not know. The concept of a name was gone. The memory had been cut, cauterized, removed. He was a shell. A body without a history. The man’s head slumped forward, and he collapsed in the chair, a puppet with its strings cut. The admirals stared, their skepticism replaced by a grim fascination. Von Schulenburg, the diplomat, looked pale. He had the expression of a man who had just seen a law of nature broken.
— That is the erasure of a single man, — Wolff said, placing the Memory Blade back in its case. He wiped his gloves with a cloth, a gesture of clinical finality. — With the Heart of the Artisan, we can erase not a man, but a fortress. A naval blockade. A rebellion. We can cut the memory of resistance from an entire city district, leaving behind a compliant, docile population. No rubble. No martyrs. Just… order.
He let the silence hang in the room. He let them contemplate the scale of it. The power to un-write the enemy’s will. To win the war not by destroying bodies, but by erasing the ideas that moved them. This was the future of conflict. Clean. Efficient. Absolute.
A sharp, crackling burst of static broke the silence. It came from a heavy brass and Bakelite device on a small table in the corner. A vox-caster. Its speaker grille was a web of black iron. The static resolved into a dry, mechanical rattle, the sound of a thousand tiny switches clicking in sequence. Then a voice spoke. It was distorted, filtered through layers of encryption until it was neither male nor female, just pure, dispassionate authority.
— The asset is approved. The timeline is accelerated. No failures will be tolerated, Captain.
Wolff felt the eyes of every man in the room turn to him. He stood straighter, his posture a study in discipline. He was an instrument of a higher will, a will that did not tolerate debate. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod towards the vox-caster.
— It will be done, — he said. The words were a vow.
The voice from the machine spoke again. — The potential for collateral memory degradation is acceptable. Plausible deniability is paramount. You are a ghost, Captain. Ghosts leave no trace.
The vox-caster fell silent, the only sound a faint, residual hum. The price of the mission was now explicit: his own existence if he failed. He would be erased from the records of the Ordo Umbrarum, his own memory cut from the annals of the Empire. He accepted the cost without hesitation. It was the logical price of power.
Wolff turned to the younger of the two admirals. — Admiral Richter, you may proceed.
The admiral nodded, his face grim. He walked to a communications officer standing by a teletype machine in the corner. The officer, who had been frozen in place throughout the demonstration, now snapped to attention.
— Signal the fleet, — Richter commanded, his voice sharp. — Execute Operation North Wind. All naval assets are to establish a hard blockade of the Petrograd waterways. No vessel in or out. Rules of engagement are unrestricted.
The communications officer began to type. The clatter of the teletype machine filled the room, a loud, mechanical rattle that hammered out the order, letter by letter. It was the sound of the noose tightening around a city a thousand kilometers away. The sound of Wolff’s will becoming steel and steam and high explosives.
The two guards lifted the hollowed-out spy from the chair and dragged him from the room. His feet scuffed silently on the polished floor. No one watched him go. He was already forgotten. A piece of equipment that had served its purpose.
Wolff turned back to the map. His eyes traced the canals and rivers of Petrograd, the arteries he would now constrict. He saw the city not as a place of people and history, but as a system to be controlled. A problem to be solved. His shadow fell across the colored inks of the map, a dark stain spreading from the sea.
The hunt had begun.
