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- Switzerland -
- May 10, 1939 -
The old railway tunnel looked abandoned to anyone with ordinary eyes. Cracked stone arches, rusted tracks swallowed by weeds, a lone maintenance shed half-hidden by pine trees — just another relic left behind by the shifting tides of Europe's restless borders. But deep inside, past the silent rails and behind a thick iron door disguised as a bricked-up wall, a new heart pulsed for Aryan's Hidden Flame.
The base wasn't grand — no golden walls or marble pillars here — just wide halls carved into the mountain rock, warm with humming generators and the quiet thrum of magic-infused runes that ran like veins underfoot. On paper, the place didn't exist. In truth, it was the crown jewel of the Hidden Flame in Europe — a haven for whispers, secrets, and those brave enough to carry them back into the dark.
At its center stood Rudra. Young — not yet twenty-five — but he held himself like a man who'd already lived twice that. His skin carried the memory of Bharat's summer sun, but the air around him felt like winter's breath — crisp and tinged with a bite that made even seasoned agents keep their coats close when he passed.
He was an Inhuman — a child born under strange stars, abandoned in a Calcutta alley, half-frozen and half-starved until the Hidden Flame found him. Karna himself had pulled him out of that gutter. Aryan had given him a name that meant Roar of the Storm. Now, Europe only knew him as a ghost behind frozen doors.
Tonight, Rudra stood over a wide table littered with coded maps, black-and-white photographs, and neat stacks of paper marked with both official seals and hidden runes. Around him, a handful of senior agents leaned in, listening closely. They'd spent years burrowed into Europe's cracks — some as smugglers slipping weapons through Baltic ports, others as bankers moving Aryan's hidden money from London to Lisbon without ever leaving a trail.
These men and women had been the backbone of Aryan's shell companies back in '35 and '36 — factories that didn't make what they claimed to make, offices with empty desks and locked doors, charities that served only to pass funds through a dozen ghost accounts before landing where Aryan wanted. When Bharat's flag finally flew free, these old pipelines didn't vanish. They grew fangs.
Under Elias Varga's careful hands, the Kalachakra Group rose like a phantom tycoon — buying mines, building railways, backing new factories in bomb-battered cities. Officially, it was just an ambitious new player riding Europe's chaos for profit. Quietly, it was the Hidden Flame's river — carrying gold, knowledge, and influence wherever Aryan pointed.
Rudra tapped his finger on one of the photographs — grainy, but clear enough to show a row of trucks marked with symbols no ordinary merchant would use. Hydra's men. He'd traced them from a secret weapons cache in Berlin, down through smuggler routes in Prague, all the way to hidden airfields near the Swiss border.
"They're moving something," Rudra said, his voice calm but cold enough that frost bloomed along the edge of his glass of water. "Weapons for sure. Maybe documents. We'll know soon. But there's more — they're working with someone our files only list as Der Umbra." His eyes lifted, sweeping the room. "An old myth. A man who trades shadows for loyalty. If he's real, he's worse than the usual Hydra rat."
A senior agent — grey at the temples, eyes sharp from years of slipping papers through customs without a whisper — leaned forward. "You want a team to intercept?"
Rudra shook his head. "Not yet. I want to follow. We need the root, not the branches. Hydra's nest here is older than the Reich itself — older than half these borders. We cut it out, we do it with a surgeon's blade, not a hammer."
The air shifted then — a faint ripple through the rune lines hidden in the stone floor. The heavy security wards flickered once, like a heartbeat acknowledging an old friend. Rudra's words trailed off as the agents straightened, the room growing warmer as if the mountain itself recognized what had just stepped inside.
Karna appeared at the far end of the hall — coat dark and damp from a fresh Alpine drizzle, hair still wind-tossed from crossing half the continent in ways no train or plane could follow. His eyes found Rudra immediately — and for a moment, the cold in the air softened.
"Assistant Director on deck!" Rudra called, his voice carrying easy authority. The senior agents saluted, fists over hearts — the sign of the Hidden Flame.
Karna returned the gesture with a quick flick of his fingers — an old code they all understood. At ease, but stay sharp. He stepped closer, boots echoing on the stone, his eyes sweeping the maps and photographs with the ease of a man who'd seen ten operations just like this one blossom in the dark and choke kingdoms to their knees.
"Rudra," he said, voice warm but edged with the same iron that had once dragged a boy from a gutter and shaped him into this weapon of frost and quiet flame. "You've done well. Aryan told me you'd have Europe ready. I see now he wasn't exaggerating."
Rudra dipped his head, a ghost of pride flickering through the frost in his eyes. "I've had good teachers."
Karna smiled faintly — the kind of smile only a few ever saw. He reached out, clapped Rudra's shoulder, then turned his eyes back to the waiting agents.
"Hydra's thick here," Karna said, his tone sharpening. "Older networks, deeper tunnels. Some of them reach so far back they've forgotten why they even serve the snake. But they're in our way. And Aryan wants them… peeled back to the bones."
He tapped the photo Rudra had marked — the convoy near Prague. "We start here. No alarms. No headlines. We find where they sleep, where they bury their secrets. We burn it clean. Quietly."
He paused, looking around the stone room — at the young spies who'd traded their real names for a mark on an invisible ledger, at the runes humming faintly with the promise of safety if only they stayed clever enough to deserve it.
Then his eyes landed on Rudra again — his first frost-borne ghost of Bharat's Hidden Flame.
"Europe thinks it's cold already," Karna said, his voice low but carrying, a promise sliding through the hush like a knife. "Let's show them what real winter feels like."
And as the agents gathered closer, a map spread wide between them, the mountain base hummed with new purpose — a heartbeat of secrets, frost, and hidden fire ready to slip through Europe's shadows once more.
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