World War II was never supposed to touch us like this.
That was the lie we told ourselves.
The moment the first true shots of the war echoed across Europe, the Foundation's predictive models began lighting up like alarms in a containment breach. At first, it was subtle—small probability spikes, anomalous energy readings in regions historically irrelevant. Then the name Hydra appeared in our intelligence reports.
Again. And again. And again.
Hitler wasn't just waging war.
He was hunting.
By the third week, it became undeniable: the Nazi regime, Hydra in particular, had pivoted hard into anomalous acquisition. Ancient relics. Buried sites. Objects that should never be removed from their resting places. They were tearing open the past, desperate to weaponize anything that didn't obey reality.
That's when I authorized Protocol Black Curtain.
Foundation agents embedded deep within the Wehrmacht, the SS, and Hydra cells activated simultaneously. Sleeper operatives who had waited years—some decades—for this exact moment. Files started flooding in: excavation sites in Romania, an artifact convoy rerouted through the Alps, whispers of something old unearthed beneath the sands of North Africa.
Red Skull's name appeared more than once.
Too often.
Hydra's engineers had begun designing weapons meant specifically to interface with anomalous properties. Not study them. Not contain them.
Use them.
That crossed a line even war couldn't excuse.
O5 command shifted into full wartime posture. Secure sites went dark. Mobile Task Forces were redeployed en masse. Entire SCP vaults were moved off-grid, some relocated to places that technically did not exist anymore—folded into pocket dimensions, buried beneath false histories, or quietly transferred to orbital facilities.
Including the Death Star.
What most of the world didn't know—couldn't know—was that the Foundation wasn't fighting a war.
We were fighting to stop reality itself from becoming ammunition.
Every time Hydra dug something up, our agents were already there—sometimes sabotaging the site, sometimes replacing the object with a convincing fake, sometimes ensuring that whatever they found never left the ground at all. In the worst cases, we erased entire battalions from history, incidents written off as "unexplained losses" or "logistical failures."
Quiet. Clean. Necessary.
From the Wanderer's Library, I watched it all unfold—projecting myself into briefing rooms, excavation sites, and secure labs halfway across the world. Ancient tomes lay open before me, magic sigils slowly turning in the air as I cross-referenced myths with emerging intelligence.
Too many of the things Hydra sought had names in those books.
Names that ended worlds.
This wasn't just World War II anymore.
This was an anomalous arms race—and if we lost even once, the consequences wouldn't be measured in borders or casualties.
They'd be measured in extinction events.
And somewhere out there, buried beneath blood-soaked soil and forgotten ruins, something was waiting.
Something that wanted to be found.