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- Abandoned Village, Northern Italy -
- May 14, 1939 | Midnight -
By the time the moon rose above the broken roofs of the abandoned village, the strangers had made themselves at home among its ghosts. Stone walls cracked by old winters leaned against each other like drunks in an alley, and the wind rattled broken shutters with a soft, restless sigh. Somewhere behind the ruins, an old church bell hung crooked but silent — no prayers left to answer here.
The men Karna and Neel had tracked for two days now crouched around a half-collapsed barn. No fire. Just the moonlight spilling through the holes in the roof, touching tired faces and the single crate they'd carried so far through the woods and over the border.
Hidden behind a row of crumbling walls, Neel lay belly-down in the dirt beside Karna. Above them, an old window gaped open to the sky, the stars blinking through shattered glass like curious eyes. Between the two scouts, a small brass device no bigger than Neel's thumb glowed faintly in the dark — Aryan's gift to the Hidden Flame. A seed of runes and circuits that drank sound and gave it back whole.
It hummed now, soft as a sleeping cat, catching every word the strangers spoke just twenty paces away.
Inside the barn, the men who had killed Hydra's convoy sat on crates or leaned against splintered beams, their coats thrown over their shoulders. For the first time since the forest, they looked less like shadows and more like tired men shaking off days of cold and blood.
One of them — younger than the rest, dark hair curling damp against his forehead — shifted closer to the leader. His voice carried low but clear through the brass listening seed.
"Luca," he asked, tone half question, half relief at finally letting words loose, "why'd we do it, eh? Steal this thing from Hydra after watching them for months? We never lift a hand unless Sir Newton says so. Now suddenly we're robbing Nazis in the middle of nowhere for… this?"
He knocked his knuckles lightly on the side of the crate. The sealed old book inside made no sound — just sat there, heavy with secrets.
Their leader — Luca — didn't scold him. He was older, maybe forty, sharp lines under his eyes but something soft there too, a tired kindness that didn't quite match the knife at his belt. He leaned back against a beam, arms folded, breath misting in the cold.
"Orders are orders, Tomaso," Luca said. His voice was Italian, but under it lay a trace of something older — the kind of tone that made men listen even when the words were soft. "Sir Isaac says move, we move. He says steal from Hydra, we steal from Hydra."
Tomaso snorted, running a hand through his hair. "But why now? He's watched the world burn a dozen times and sat quiet. We all did. And now he wants an old book? What's so special in there? Some demon's bedtime story?"
A couple of the others chuckled dryly. One spat on the dusty barn floor.
Luca gave a small shrug, but his eyes flicked to the crate like he too was wondering. After a breath, he spoke again, voice lower, more like a confession meant for walls than men.
"He didn't tell me," Luca said. "But if I had to guess? I think it's the Darkhold."
Tomaso's mouth pulled tight. One of the other men muttered something that sounded like a prayer, half Latin, half fear.
"The Darkhold?" Tomaso asked, incredulous. "That's a fairy tale, Luca. Demon scripture, witches' bedtime tales. Even the Brotherhood treats it like a ghost story."
Luca's shoulders shifted, a slow exhale fogging the air. "Maybe. But Sir Isaac's worried. Says the prophecies don't match anymore — Nostradamus' old pages, the newer signs. Something's wrong with the timelines. Rumor is he wants Morgan Le Fey's counsel to untangle it."
That name — Morgan Le Fey — turned the barn's stale air colder. Even Neel, pressed flat in the dirt, felt the chill slide down his spine. Beside him, Karna's hand flexed once, silent.
Inside, Tomaso laughed, but it cracked halfway through. "Cooperating with witches now? What's next, we dance with Dracula too?"
No one laughed with him this time. Luca's voice stayed calm, but the shadows under his eyes deepened.
"Don't joke, Tomaso. If the old magic's stirring, so will the monsters that guard it."
Another man, leaning near the doorframe, shifted uneasily. "They say it started in the East. Bharat — that land they call Bharat now. They say its emperor… Maheshwara, they call him. Aryan, they whisper. Maybe he's stirring the pot."
Tomaso rubbed his face, voice muffled. "So what — we're fetching cursed books because some emperor halfway across the world found his godhood? Doesn't feel right."
Luca's smile was thin and tired. "None of it does. But Sir Isaac's eyes see far ahead. If the prophecies break, the Shield breaks. We are the Brotherhood. We guard the world, whether the world wants us or not."
His gaze dropped to the crate, almost gentle. "Rome will know what to do. The Shield will decide if this thing goes to Morgan… or if it burns."
Their talk trailed off Into low murmurs — small jokes, curses about the cold, wishes for real food and warm beds when they reached their hideout under Rome's old bones.
—
Behind the ruined wall, Karna eased back from the brass listening seed, eyes narrowed in thought. Neel waited, breath caught in the hush that settled between them.
"Sir Isaac Newton," Karna murmured, voice soft but edged like a blade drawn slow. "Alive. Leading some Brotherhood. And worried about Bharat."
He glanced at Neel, mouth tightening into the faintest ghost of a grin. "His Majesty's name reaches far, even here in these dead stones."
Neel's reply was little more than a whisper, but steady. "What do we do now, sir?"
Karna closed his hand around the seed, its faint glow winking out under his palm. The old church bell above them creaked in the wind, iron throat mute.
"We follow," Karna said, voice calm, eyes hard. "Rome next. Secrets waiting under centuries of dust. If they worry about Aryan…" — his fingers drummed once on the stone — "…then so do we. Where Maheshwara's shadow reaches, so does ours."
A cold gust tugged at their cloaks as the Brotherhood inside drifted toward uneasy sleep. Outside, the Hidden Flame curled tighter around Europe's secret wounds, eyes open in the ruins where empires went to die.
And under the cracked bell, two ghosts of Bharat slipped deeper into the night — shadows against old walls, carrying questions that would soon echo through Rome's ancient veins.
—
- Outskirts of Rome -
- May 16, 1939 | Dawn -
The road into Rome's skin was older than the boots that trod it tonight. Long before these men came, it had been a track for legionnaires, pilgrims, lost kings and broken emperors — now it served shadows. The Brotherhood moved quick but careful, cloaks pulled tight against the pre-dawn chill as they left the last crumbling farmhouses behind. Under their arms, the crate with its sealed book looked small, but their footsteps bent the hush of the sleeping fields around it.
A low wall half-swallowed by weeds marked where the old road ended. Beyond it, an iron gate sagged from stone pillars, rusted but still chained shut — a lie for curious eyes. Tomaso kicked the lock once with his boot. It fell open, untouched by any real bolt. They slipped inside one by one, boots soft on gravel, until they stood before what looked like nothing more than a half-collapsed wine cellar swallowed by vines.
Luca ran his palm over a broken slab of brick. His breath fogged in the dawn air as ancient runes flickered faintly under his glove — just a heartbeat of light, then stone ground against stone and a stairway yawned open, swallowing the world above behind a door that shouldn't have been there.
Deep below, the Immortal City waited — Rome beneath Rome, where old secrets never died, only whispered slower.
—
Hidden behind a low rise, Neel and Karna crouched in the half-dark, watching the Brotherhood vanish under the earth. The morning light was pale, not yet strong enough to chase away the cold or the mist that clung to the old stones.
Neel felt his breath catch when the hidden door closed behind the last cloak. For a moment, the world felt still — like all the whispers they'd carried since Switzerland were about to slide into silence with it.
Beside him, Karna didn't move. His eyes stayed pinned to the stones, the weeds, the spot where the runes had glowed and vanished. Then, slowly, he turned — his gaze cutting through the mist to a shape moving in the shadows near the gate.
An old man. Bent but not frail. Robes loose around thin shoulders, white hair tangled like a nest, eyes pale as winter ash. He moved with a hush, staff tapping gently as he passed the rusted gate — not a guard, not quite a master either. A watcher.
And the watcher saw more than crumbling stones.
He paused where the Brotherhood's trail ended. His head tilted just slightly — like an owl catching a mouse's heartbeat under snow. His eyes, cloudy and calm, swept the ruins. He inhaled — slow, careful — as if the wind might carry a secret word to him if he listened hard enough.
Neel felt the breath seize in his throat. Karna's gloved hand touched his shoulder — not roughly, but firm, like a parent catching a child before he could fall through thin ice.
Stay very still, the touch said. But Neel's mind had no words left — only the steady drum of his pulse as the old man's sight seemed to drift closer, brushing their hiding place like a cold palm on bare skin.
Then Karna moved. Not his feet — not at first. The air around him bent, just slightly, like sunlight shifting through river water. Neel felt it — the tug, the spark at the base of his skull — just as Karna's fingers tightened.
The world blurred.
Light folded in on itself — no thunder, no flash — only the soft snap of every shadow in the clearing slipping sideways. Karna's Photokinesis broke them free of the watcher's searching eyes — one heartbeat they were stone and moss, the next they were gone, swept up like motes in a sunbeam.
—
The old watcher stepped forward. His staff tapped once on the flagstone where Neel's boot print had pressed the dust moments before. He bent low, nose almost brushing the ground, breath rattling in the cold hush.
Nothing. No sign but a warmth that had no right to be there — like a candle just snuffed out in an empty room.
Slowly, the watcher straightened. His eyes, white and milky, narrowed in thought. Somewhere in the deep dark below his feet, the Brotherhood's fledglings carried their prize toward their Immortal City, certain they were safe in the bones of empire.
But above them, under the new sun, the old watcher turned his face to the sky and muttered to the stones in a tongue older than Rome's walls.
"Something hunts the hunters," he rasped, voice soft as shifting earth. "This will not go unnoticed."
He let the breeze carry his words down the ruined road, down into the cracked heart of Rome — where secrets slept uneasy, waiting for the next footstep to wake them.
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