It had been about a month until Ozerov decided he had enough men.
Not that he could say how many days it had really been.
There was no night down here. No sunrise. No sunset. Just the artificial sun—always overhead, always fixed in place. Noon, forever.
They'd brought clocks, of course. Watches. Radios. They failed.
In the cold, some had frozen solid. In the heat, the rest gave up. Springs snapped. Oil thickened. Gears warped. Batteries drained faster than they could be replaced. Even the good ones—the ones handed out to officers—started losing time. First a few minutes. Then whole hours.
No one knew what time it was anymore.
So they counted in shifts.
Three per day, maybe. One for sleep. One for labor. One for watch.
It didn't matter.
The men didn't ask. Ozerov didn't care.
All that mattered was when to eat. When to sleep. When to march.
And now, finally, it was time to march.
There were still men coming. They never stopped. The ladder remained full.
By estimation, Ozerov had gathered about two-thirds of the men that remained to him. But he could not wait any longer.
Like locusts, his men had stripped the nearby jungle bare. For food. For water. For wood.
It wasn't the right kind of wood—too wet, too wild, too eager to rot—but it didn't matter. They felled it anyway. Dried it over low fires. Cut it with salvaged blades and splintered saws.
Some had been carpenters, once. Others had learned to build in frozen towns, or on factory floors. None had built in heat like this. But they learned quickly.
They had to.
Tools were few. Nails were hoarded like bullets. But the jungle didn't care for neat corners or measured plans. It offered vines in place of rope, stone in place of iron, insects in place of rest.
And the men built. It would not last. But it was not meant to.
The jungle was full of food. But not for men.
Learning what could be eaten had cost lives. But it was a price well paid.
Now, with more mouths and fewer meals that didn't cost blood, Ozerov had to send scouts farther out. Deeper into the green. Some returned with food. Some came back empty-handed. And some didn't return at all.
And water.
There was plenty—but not enough that could be trusted. With the new numbers, he had been forced to order ice blocks carried down from the surface.
They were more precious than bullets.
A rifle without ammunition could still be used as a club.
But a soldier without water was only meat.
Brutal arithmetic showed him the truth: soon, he would start losing more men than he gained.
Between sickness, wild animals, insects, and dwindling food and water, the balance was tipping.
The Vril-ya hadn't attacked. Not even once.
But then, they hardly needed to.
The jungle was doing their work for them. Not all at once. Just enough. A small battle each day. Or better said—each three shifts.
A lesser man would have broken—under the losses, the unchanging sun, the strange, primordial jungle.
But Ozerov would not allow his men to break.
And the Vril-ya would pay for their arrogance.
It was an hour after Ozerov gave the order to march. One shift was roused from sleep. Another pulled from labor. A partial shift remained behind—just enough to guard the ladder, receive new arrivals, and keep the camp from falling into chaos. Their orders were simple: stabilize the line, then follow—once the next batch was ready to replace them. No excuses.
The first step of the march cost only ten executions.
Not for cowardice. Not for treason. Just... slowness. One man didn't rise fast enough. One tripped. One asked a question.
They marched toward the pillar of flame.
Ozerov didn't know what awaited them.
Scouts had been sent. None returned. Not even when he'd tried reconnaissance in force.
He had considered going himself. But that would leave the camp vulnerable.
A buzzing. Sharp. Close.
He swatted a dragonfly the size of a man's hand. Its wings snapped like parchment. It fell twitching.
Then he walked on.
Then the song came to him. As before, it was like he had always known it. Like a lullaby his babushka once sang, only just remembered.
A song harsh as Russian winter. Cold as the heart of Baba Yaga.
Singing it was like biting into ice sharp as broken glass.
But he sang. And his men sang with him. Some coughed from the harsh melodies. Some spat blood. But they all sang.
The endless sunlight dimmed. Shadows deepened—summoned by their song. A fine mist rose, softening the glare of the false sun. Plants withered. Giant insects dropped from the air, dead before they hit the ground. Even the heat recoiled.
It was as if they were bringing the Motherland's winter with them.
Such power, like all power, came at a cost.
Each shard of sound—each dissonant note—took something from Ozerov.
Made him more numb. More hollow.
But his men fared worse.
As they sang, they didn't just spit blood.
Their lips turned blue from cold, cracked and stiff with frost.
And yet they sang. Not one stopped. Not even with their final breath.
Men stripped the dead. Still, the song lingered on blue, cracked mouths.
Ozerov kept leading.
Kept singing.
After all—it was still fewer than the jungle would've claimed.
The jungle ended abruptly.
And there it was.
Ozerov beheld the Vril-ya nest in its full, repugnant glory.
He called it a nest, not a city. That's what it was.
Towers rose from the earth like rotten teeth—the color of unworked stone, shaped in curves and holes. Green things clung to their sides, pulsing. Growing. Feeding.
It did not look human.
It reminded Ozerov of a termite nest he had once seen in Africa, as a young KGB agent.
Only this was bigger. Much bigger.
A deep, dark moat separated the nest from the jungle.
There was no bridge. Just water. Still as glass.
It reflected the false sun above, glittering like fake gold.
Ozerov did not stop.
He stepped forward. And the moat froze beneath his boots.
Ice crept outward like veins of silver, racing across the black water.
Wide. Solid. Thick enough to bear tanks—if they still had any.
The song never stopped.
But it changed.
It found a new rhythm. A deeper one. A colder one. It spread. It multiplied. It demanded.
More men fell. Some seized. Some cracked.
But the ice kept growing.
And behind Ozerov, one hundred thousand men marched across ice that should not exist.
All singing.
Ozerov could hear the ice cracking under the marching boots. But it held.
Well—most of it. Almost all.
A few losses were negligible.
Halfway across, he saw the shadow.
Something beneath the surface.
He jumped back. That saved his life.
The Vril-ya erupted from the ice—something hunched and clawed bursting upward, reaching for him with a crooked hand.
Smaller than the others.
More hunched.
Less human. More lizard.
But it wasn't the shape that unsettled Ozerov.
It was the absence. The absence of stench.
The Vril-ya reeked of atrocity. Of dominion. Of murder.
That was how he knew them. How the Crown tasted them.
But this one smelled almost pure. Even as it tried to kill him.
And it was not alone. From the hole, more crawled out—no iron staffs, no fire. Just raw muscle and sharpened talons.
"Kill them," Ozerov shouted as he stepped back. He was not afraid. He was not retreating. It was tactical. Let the men handle it. He had to conserve himself for greater enemies.
He looked around and saw it wasn't an isolated breach. There were others. Chaos. Panic. The song was faltering. The ice was cracking.
He pulled back farther, forced calm into his breath, and began to sing again—low and cold—eyes scanning the ice for more shadows.
This was the largest number of Vril-ya Ozerov had seen in one place. Even if they were smaller than before.
Hundreds. Maybe a thousand. Two at the most.
Not enough. Not nearly enough.
Too close to shoot. So the men used rifle butts, knives, fists. Good. Saved ammunition.
Men died. But more Vril-ya died.
Every ambush was crushed by numbers. By discipline. By hate.
Some soldiers screamed. Some cried. It didn't matter. As long as they fought.
And if a man died, Ozerov's conviction was strengthened. Fed by proof of their devotion. He felt invigorated. Ready to continue.
Then it was over. The last of them, broken and scattered. A few escaped back into the water. But most fought to the bitter end. It wasn't just spite. The holes in the ice closed quickly.
The column moved on. The ice held.
But Ozerov kept his eyes on the ice.
Watching for shadows underneath.
But it was at the shore that he saw the next enemy.
These were different. New again. Not something he had seen on the surface.
These snakes looked human.
They stood upright. They wore armor. They carried weapons.
Grown, not forged—made of bone or something like it. Pale. Ridged. Almost organic.
They formed a line at the end of the ice, just where the moat met land.
Each one carried a shield—tall, tower-shaped, like the old Roman legions. They overlapped slightly, forming a wall.
"Fire," Ozerov ordered.
He stopped singing aloud. But only aloud. The song still moved under his breath, low and steady, feeding the cold.
Gunfire answered in rhythm—short bursts, precise, mechanical. Almost musical.
But the shields didn't break.
Not bone. Not real bone. Bone would have splintered.
These absorbed the bullets. Not easily. But enough.
Ozerov watched. Measured. Adjusted.
"Charge!" he shouted.
And the commissars echoed him—like gunfire bouncing off canyon walls.
Like a tide of flesh, the men moved.
Like a great wave, they struck the shield line.
The snakes didn't move.
Their polearms might've looked like bone—but they cut like tempered steel. With inhuman strength, they carved men apart.
But for every man who fell, ten more took his place.
The line didn't break. Not yet. But it was pushed.
Slowly. Inevitably.
And Ozerov watched.
Wary.
Where were the snakes he was used to?
Not these. The ones that wore human faces.
Men marched past Ozerov—to break, and to be broken. Like waves against a cliff. But enough waves could wear down even stone.
It was simple tactics. But sometimes, simple was better than clever.
Ozerov kept watching. The snakes liked to think they were clever. Deceptive.
Then he saw it. A flash of fire at the very edge of the column. Where the ice was thinner. Where the Crown barely reached.
Ozerov was not a tall man. So a grim-faced pair of soldiers knelt, hands locked, and he stepped up between them.
He pulled out the spotter's scope.
Fire bloomed where the column thinned—at the fringes, near the edges of the Crown's reach. His men burned as they marched forward in clusters.
But that wasn't what made Ozerov frown.
It was the soldiers who broke formation—who abandoned the column to charge toward the flanking snakes, drawn by fury and fear.
Foolish. Undisciplined. Once they left the Crown's shelter, they lit up like kindling.
"Pass it on. No one breaks formation. We march as one. Anyone who disobeys—shoot him."
He didn't check to see if his orders were obeyed. He knew they would be.
His eyes stayed on the shield wall.
That was where the battle would be decided.
Where the snakes would break.
Or the men.
Edges of the column mattered less. Once they broke through the shield wall, once they reached dry land, there was no stopping them.
Push. Push. Push.
Through his scope, Ozerov saw the first crack in their defenses. A Vril-ya fell, and no one replaced it.
His dry lips cracked into a wolfish smile.
Just as victory seemed within his grasp, the snakes struck back.
First, a thunderous roar, like rubble breaking.
Then, over the shields, Ozerov saw it—approaching fast. A flash of movement, a T-rex charging through the battlefield. Its massive form, mostly a beast of ancient power, was shadowed by a small human figure clinging to its back.
But it wasn't just the sight that rattled Ozerov. It was the sound. A roar so powerful it seemed to swallow everything. And it was just the first of many.
The noise alone made his heart pound—there was more to come, more he couldn't yet see, hidden behind the shield wall.
The snakes struck. But not at Ozerov's men. Not directly.
They struck at other snakes—the ones manning the shield wall. They hit from behind. At those who had defended them so valiantly.
Explosions ripped through the line. Force hurled Vril-ya and their shields forward like living ammunition.
The wall broke. But not inward. Outward. For a moment, it was both gate and weapon.
Now the narrow stretch of land was littered with dead and dying.
Through that gap came the great beast—charging. But not alone. At its side thundered bone chariots, pulled by tri-horned dinosaurs.
And now they were close enough for Ozerov to see the rider. Small man. Pale. Unmistakable mustache. Rising in the saddle like a ghost from a museum.
He could only stare. Every history lesson screamed the name: Adolf Hitler. Or at least, a snake wearing his face.
And behind that chariot… more monsters. All wearing human faces.
One among them was a grim confirmation of the truth Ozerov knew in his heart—Joseph Stalin. The truth the Revolution had been stolen. The truth it had been perverted by snakes.
But no time to dwell on that, for they were coming. Coming for him.
It wasn't false pride. It was how the snakes thought. To them, only power mattered.
Ozerov might have spent men's blood like water, but he never forgot that each drop was precious. Each man was someone's son. Someone's husband. Someone's father.
But they died so their old mothers, their faithful wives, their young could live free.
Free from snakes.
And not just for themselves. For every human. Even those ungrateful capitalist pigs overseas.
Slowly, once again, he gazed at the men between him and the charging beast.
Not enough.
Not nearly enough.
Ozerov did not consider himself irreplaceable.
But the Crown—That was.
"If I fall—take the Crown," he shouted to the men nearest him. "It doesn't matter who. Just so long as someone does."
And there was no more time.
To keep the column as wide as he could, Ozerov had marched near the front. It was simple geometry. The Crown's dominion spread in a sphere.
Men were trampled beneath beasts from an earlier age—those whose bones belonged in museums.
And now those men were pressed to his back. He couldn't have retreated even if he'd wanted to.
He understood the folly of his last order—but only too late.
The T-rex's jaws bore down on him.
Time slowed.
He could see every detail.
Every bleeding bullet hole his men inflicted on the beast's scaly hide.
And then came the thought:
If the Crown ended in the beast's gullet…
How would any man retrieve it?
And without the Crown, the Vril-ya would be free. Free to use their powers.
It would be a massacre.
That could not be.
He could not have led men here just to die.
They had to win.
For everyone.
He almost prayed.
To anything.
To anyone.
To stop this.
He reached for the Crown. He didn't know why.
Perhaps to toss it away.
To throw it back.
To the men behind him.
But the Crown answered first.
The thing rose from blood and shadow.
It was a black wolf—but not any wolf that belonged to a sane world. It was something born of nightmares, or torn from some old, half-forgotten horror film.
A mad leshy, sent to punish men who had burned too many forests. Starved and diseased, its fur hung in patchy clumps, wiry muscle coiled beneath. And yet, there was strength in it. Pure, relentless strength.
It was a herald—of winter, of war, of cold, pestilence, and brutality.
And it was beautiful.
As the T-rex's jaws descended, the wolf leapt—teeth against teeth, beast against beast. There was a spray of red as blood gushed. The great reptile shrieked in its death throes, stumbling, flailing, hurling its rider to the ground like a broken toy.
Ozerov found himself on his knees. A sudden weakness had overcome him. A price, perhaps, paid for a miracle.
And the wolf—already fading—melted back into the shadow and nightmare it had come from.
With effort, he stood on shaky knees. It was not yet time to rest. There was work to be done.
He looked around. The chariots were losing momentum. They struck like elephants trampling ants—but enough ants can devour even an elephant. They were slowing. Stopping. And then, overrun.
The men brought them down with bullets, with knives, with rifle butts, with bare hands.
With grim satisfaction, Ozerov watched Stalin torn apart by the mob. A justice, at last.
But there was still one more. The snake that wore Hitler's face. He saw it struggling in the dirt, scrambling to stand.
Ozerov pulled out his handgun. Not the best for killing snakes—but enough bullets would do the job.
Then he looked at his hand.
It was black. Frostbitten. Almost rotting. It didn't hurt. He could still move it. A small price to pay.
But the hesitation—that single moment—was enough.
Enough for the snake to scuttle away. To run.
Ozerov pursued, rallying the men behind him.
The creature was fast. But while snakes are fast—men endure.
And it couldn't escape. Not with that stench. Stronger than he had ever felt.
It filled him with hunger.
Hunger for justice.
For atrocity—not the kind done in heat or madness.
But the industrial kind.
He could believe it was the real Hitler. Or real enough.
The one who had done the work.
Ozerov hunted through the nest, boots pounding on the curved stone.
He followed the fleeing snake deeper in—toward the center.
Toward the pillar of flame, roaring into the artificial sky.
At its base stood a structure. A tower made of bone.
The snake that wore Hitler's face was already climbing it, fast.
Ozerov followed. Slower—but relentless.
It would not escape. It would tire. And then…
But when he reached the summit, the pillar of fire was gone.
And the snake was waiting for him.
It held some kind of stone cup in its hand. With a cruel smirk, it pointed upward—then leapt from the platform.
Ozerov looked up.
And saw it.
With the pillar gone, the false sun was falling.
Fast.
Too fast to react.
Fire was the last thing he saw.