The El ávila Valley.

  Mateo rubbed his eyes, feeling the grit of sand against lids that hadn't truly closed in three days. Before him, a valley once inhabited only by scrub brush had transformed into a colossal anthill.

  Three hundred laborers. Twenty engineers from Khuba. One hundred and fifty soldiers with engineering expertise. And at its heart, the skeletal steel framework beginning its ascent skyward—the National Gunpowder Factory.

  "Master Mateo, pressure in the water pipeline has stabilized," a young engineer reported. "We're prepared to conduct the mixing furnace test trial tomorrow morning."

  Mateo nodded, his gaze fixed on the construction. "And raw materials?"

  "The initial nitrate shipment from the offshore island mines is already in the eastern warehouse. Sulfur from the active volcano is scheduled to arrive the day after tomorrow. The cotton linters for nitrocellulose—"

  "—will be delayed," Mateo interrupted, his voice flat. "I've read the report. The vessel from the northern plantations encountered a storm. Grant them an additional two days, but ensure they compensate with overtime afterward."

  The engineer dutifully recorded the instructions. "Yes, Master."

  Mateo traversed the valley's perimeter, trailed by two Blindaje guards who maintained their distance yet remained vigilantly alert. From this elevation, the entire complex sprawled before him: the main factory, storage warehouses, worker barracks, and most critically—the windowless structure at the eastern terminus.

  The Center for Applied Weapons and Chemical Research.

  No placard. No identifying marker. Only thick concrete and steel doors. Within its confines worked twenty-seven of the finest scientists he had managed to recruit—some from Caraccass University, others poached from foreign enterprises with triple their previous salaries.

  They had been given only production targets and unlimited resources.

  "You'll exhaust the national treasury within a year at this velocity."

  Mateo turned. Isabella stood several meters behind him, clad in a simple white blouse and a long charcoal skirt. Her hair was loosely tied, stirred by the valley winds. Her eyes surveyed the industrial complex below with an inscrutable expression.

  "Two years," Mateo corrected. "And this isn't the national budget. These are special funds derived from tobacco contracts with Khuba and the reallocation of NLU appropriations that are no longer necessary."

  "Shadow budgeting." Isabella stepped closer. "Does Father know?"

  "He signed the authorization."

  "But he didn't examine the fine print, I suspect." She positioned herself beside Mateo, their shoulders nearly touching. "Father is too preoccupied being a national symbol to scrutinize small details. That's your responsibility, isn't it?"

  Mateo offered no response. Below, engineering crews began igniting massive lanterns for the night shift. The darkened valley gradually transformed into a sea of tiny lights, mirroring the star-scattered heavens above.

  "I didn't come to criticize," Isabella said, her tone softening. "I came to inquire. What precisely are you constructing here?"

  "You may consult the reports."

  "I've already read the reports. A gunpowder factory. A small arms manufacturing plant. Research facilities. All of it sounds... reasonable. For national defense." She paused, carefully selecting her words. "But this isn't national defense scale, Mateo. This is the scale of warfare. Warfare we haven't yet encountered."

  Mateo gazed at the factories below. Those lights flickered, pulsed, like an artificial heart. "We will encounter it, Bella. Perhaps not this year. Perhaps not next. But one day, foreign vessels will materialize on our horizon, and we will be compelled to choose: surrender our resources, or fight."

  "And you're certain fighting is the correct choice?"

  "I'm certain that possessing the capacity to fight is the only guarantee of peace." He turned, fixing his gaze upon Isabella. "History teaches that weak nations are devoured. Not because they are evil, but because they are vulnerable. I refuse to let the Republic become prey."

  "So we become predators?"

  "We become unappetizing to predators." Mateo redirected his attention to the factories. "A subtle distinction, but significant."

  Isabella remained silent for an extended interval. The valley breeze carried scents of parched earth and heated metal from the construction.

  "Felix," she finally uttered. "Did he survive?"

  Mateo registered surprise at the abrupt shift in topic. "No word yet. But encrypted communications from our assets in Prussi confirm his team arrived and has begun advancing toward the front lines."

  "What did you instruct them to accomplish?"

  "Data collection. Assessing the efficacy of novel tactics. Reporting on weapons technology." Mateo paused. "Nothing more."

  "You're lying," Isabella stated, devoid of accusatory tone. Merely factual. "But that's acceptable. I don't require the specifics." She drew a deep breath. "That's not why I came."

  "Then why?"

  Isabella extracted something from her skirt pocket. A small brown envelope, edges worn, bearing broken wax seals.

  "This arrived from Diego," she said. "He wrote to me. From the vessel."

  Their cousin. That blazing fury in his eyes three years past, when Mateo had offered him that demeaning third-tier administrative position.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Mateo accepted the envelope. His hands remained steady, yet something stirred within him—not guilt, not remorse. Simply... a profound, weighty stillness.

  "You've read it?"

  "Yes. He dispatched it via military courier, inscribed 'for Isabella, personal'." She regarded the envelope now resting in Mateo's grasp. "You needn't read it. But I wanted you to understand what he wrote."

  "Why?"

  "Because it concerns you."

  Mateo unfolded the letter. Diego's handwriting was precise, almost calligraphic—a remnant of his military training.

  Bella,

  We sail away from shores I may never behold again. Strange, because for three years I despised that place, despised the palace, despised our cousin who occupied that shadow throne while my father—our father—gradually disintegrated in that stifling rented room.

  But now, aboard this vessel, what I yearn for is precisely that coastline. The dust of Caraccass City. The morning market's aroma. Even your counterfeit smiles at birthday celebrations.

  I will not forgive Mateo. Not because he extended that demeaning employment—I recognize it as a calculated decision, however agonizing. But because he never once inquired what I desired. He simply determined. Like a deity dispensing fate to mortals.

  Perhaps that's what transforms him into an exceptional leader. Or an efficient monster.

  But you are different, Bella. You still question. Still hesitate. Still deliberate. Please, don't permit him to excise that element of your being. The world requires more individuals who doubt, and fewer who possess absolute certainty.

  I shall write again if I survive. If not, remember that among all bitter memories, your face in the garden—when you smiled at me, genuinely smiled—remains the sweetest.

  -Diego

  Mateo refolded the letter, returning it to its envelope. His hands remained steady.

  "He harbored affection for you," he observed.

  "That's your interpretation of that correspondence?" Isabella nearly laughed, yet her voice carried bitterness. "Not the segment about 'efficient monsters'?"

  "A fair critique." Mateo extended the envelope back to her. "But he isn't mistaken. I've never inquired what people desire. I simply calculate variables and determine optimal outcomes."

  "And now?"

  "Now I continue the same practice." His gaze fixed on Isabella. "Because it's the sole methodology that yields results."

  Isabella returned the letter to her skirt pocket. "You know, occasionally I envy you."

  "Envy?"

  "Your absolute conviction in your choices. Never doubting, never regretting. Like a river flowing inexorably toward the sea, never questioning whether it wishes to become ocean or remain a tributary." Her smile carried melancholy. "I would willingly experience such certainty."

  "Certainty," Mateo said slowly, "is a luxury I've purchased at tremendous cost. I simply conceal the transaction."

  They stood in extended silence. Below, factory lights continued their vigil, night shift workers assuming their positions. Steam engines began their hissing respiration, exhaling white smoke into the darkened firmament.

  "I must return," Isabella finally announced. "Foundation meetings tomorrow morning. Mother wishes me to represent her."

  "You perform admirably."

  "I study under the finest instructor." She turned to depart, then halted. "Mateo."

  "Yes?"

  "Whatever transpires subsequently... with Félix, with Diego, with all those you've dispatched across the ocean... I won't hold you accountable. You undertake this for us. I may not endorse your methods, but I comprehend your objectives."

  She departed before Mateo could formulate a response. Her footsteps dissolved among the elongated shadows cast by the factories.

  Mateo remained solitary upon the hillside, contemplating the industrial complex he had conjured from dust and ambition. Somewhere within that windowless edifice, his scientists labored through the night, compounding compounds, measuring detonations, inscribing formulae that would constitute the nation's defensive foundation.

  Somewhere upon the ocean, Diego was composing another letter that might never reach its destination.

  And somewhere on the Europanian continent, Felix and twenty-four Sombra phantoms crawled through the darkness of trenches, plundering secrets from hell itself.

  He possessed no entitlement to doubt. Isabella had extended him absolution he never requested, comprehension he never sought.

  Yet he could not accept it. Not from arrogance, but because doubt constituted the sole remaining thread of his humanity. And he could not afford to lose that.

  ***

  The Prussi Empire.

  Felix pressed his body against the damp trench wall, feeling artillery vibrations transmit through the mud and into his ribcage.

  The trench bore layered odors—not merely the stench of mortality. Perspiration of terror, cold gunpowder residue, stagnating floodwater, and something cloyingly sweet like decomposing blossoms—residue, he recognized, from yesterday's gas attack.

  Beside him, Elina adjusted her night-vision apparatus with trembling fingers. Not from fear—she had transcended fear since that first day. But subzero temperatures were crystallizing the lubricant within the focusing mechanism.

  "Four machine gun emplacements," she whispered, breath materializing as fine mist. "Coordinates recorded. Range 400 meters, elevation 15 degrees."

  Felix acknowledged with a nod. Seven hundred meters beyond, behind Prussi lines, their divisional command awaited intelligence. But Sombra's mandate extended beyond reconnaissance. They were eyes and ears, certainly. Also, however, blades.

  "We could eliminate two," Pablo whispered, the youngest team member, inexplicably retaining his optimism. "Infiltrate via the rear communication trenches, plant explosives in the ammunition magazines, exfiltrate before detection."

  "The remaining two would escalate their alert posture," Felix interrupted. "Our mission is intelligence gathering, not unilateral warfare."

  "Attend to that, Pablo," teased Pierre, a former thief from Puerto Cabello who had joined Sombra because it was 'more engaging than burglarizing the wealthy.' "We're merely observing apparitions."

  "But we could—"

  "Enough." Felix's voice remained soft, yet extinguished all protest. "Elina, transmit coordinates to Prussian command. Their artillery will accomplish the task. Our mission concludes here."

  They withdrew in reverse, crawling through constricted communication trenches, passing Prussi soldiers either exhausted into slumber or feigning unconsciousness. At one intersection, a Prussi sergeant regarded them with suspicion, but their counterfeit uniforms and documentation proved sufficiently convincing.

  "Reconnaissance report for division commander," Felix articulated in flawlessly accented Prussian, refined through hundreds of hours with agents who had once inhabited Berlim.

  The sergeant nodded, returning attention to his lantern-illuminated maps.

  When they finally emerged from the trench network and reached relatively secure rear territory, Elina inhaled deeply. The air remained frigid, yet purged of mortality's stench.

  "I cannot endure it," she whispered. "Not the artillery. Not the corpses. But their manner of... resignation. These Prussi soldiers, they fight with such pathological discipline. As though they've already accepted they will never return."

  "Because perhaps they won't," Felix said, gazing at the ashen sky beginning to flush crimson from distant flare launches. "This conflict will consume millions. Survivors won't be the strongest or the most intelligent, but the most fortunate."

  "Or the most craven," Pablo murmured, his voice saturated with bitterness.

  Felix offered no response. Within his garments rested a compact notebook containing sketches of emerging weaponry, artillery tactics, defensive formations, and most critically—detailed diagrams of rifle grenades and portable flame projectors he had observed in Prussian supply depots.

  This intelligence would be dispatched within the week, conveyed by a courier disguised as a Swess merchant, crossing the ocean toward Venez.

  There, in that tranquil place, Mateo's engineers would transmute these sketches into armaments. And one day, perhaps this year or a decade hence, they would be deployed to protect coastlines that now existed only in Felix's dreams.

  He examined the map in his hands. Beyond the trenches, beyond the artillery barrage, beyond this burning continent, there existed a silent palace, rose gardens, and a youth prematurely aged by circumstance—constructing the foundations of warfare from figures and calculations.

  "May you comprehend what you're orchestrating, Mateo," Felix whispered to the wind. "Because we're all wagering our existence upon it."

  He refolded the map, signaling his team to advance. The night remained protracted, and beyond enemy lines, additional secrets awaited appropriation.

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