The corridor of the Institute smelled of ancient dust and reheated coffee. An acrid, almost metallic mixture, as if history itself were slowly rusting within those walls.

  Ekaterina Smirnova walked with a steady stride, her heels striking the stone floor like a metronome of war. For her, chaos theory was not an academic abstraction—it was a method.

  Only by destroying can one build.

  And that morning, Lyudmila Sidorova was about to find out.

  —You still cling to words as if they were sacred bones —Ekaterina said without stopping, without even looking at her—. But etymology doesn’t unearth civilizations. It buries them.

  Lyudmila froze. The air around her seemed colder.

  She had spent thirty years upholding a doctrine now treated like an inconvenient relic.

  —What you call destruction —she replied in a low, tense voice— is nothing more than ambition dressed up as modernity.

  Ekaterina smiled. It was not a kind smile.

  It was a crack.

  Her research into the interactions between Chinese dynasties, Scythian tribes, and Persian empires had elevated the Tomsk Institute to an international pedestal. Academic exchanges, foreign funding, Chinese delegations walking the halls as if they already belonged there.

  The new order had sponsors. And Lyudmila was not one of them.

  A few meters away, Ksenia watched in silence.

  Her stomach was tightly knotted, as if the ground had been pulled from beneath her without warning. A follower of Lyudmila’s line of thought, her position was fragile, almost invisible. The Institute now functioned like an elegant steamroller: it didn’t crush bodies, but reputations.

  The clock read 11:45 a.m.

  The midday meeting would decide the future of the research. And perhaps her own.

  Ksenia closed her eyes for a second.

  Then it happened.

  A smell that did not belong there: cold smoke, resin, damp earth.

  A fleeting image: a hand that was not hers, reaching toward an impossible horizon.

  A word she didn’t remember learning, yet recognized deep within.

  Sora.

  Her heartbeat quickened.

  —Are you all right? —Lyudmila asked, noticing her pallor.

  —Yes… —Ksenia lied—. It’s just… the air.

  Ekaterina watched them. Her gaze lingered on Ksenia a second longer than necessary, as if she sensed something—like she could smell weakness.

  —Herodotus is not enough —she declared, already inside the meeting room—. His accounts must be completed. Transcended. Choros-Gurkin understood that.

  Maps lay spread across the table. Two points marked in red.

  The Tuekta kurgan, where shepherds had unearthed the Guardian Griffin.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  And the burial site discovered after the accident of Captain Alexander Viktorovich, hidden somewhere within the Tabyn Bogdo Ola Confluence.

  Two sites.

  Two paths.

  One sacrifice.

  Ksenia felt that something—or someone—was watching her from a time that did not exist.

  As if this moment, just before the collapse, had already happened.

  The meeting room was too large for so few people.

  Or perhaps too small for what was about to erupt.

  A white, clinical light poured in through the windows, merciless toward wrinkles and contradictions alike. On the oval table: closed folders, untouched water bottles, and a dormant projector, like a silent witness.

  Pavel Andreevich Volkov sat at the head of the table.

  His presence altered the air. It always did.

  He wore the gray suit Ekaterina had given him in Beijing, but Lyudmila didn’t need to look at him directly to remember him years earlier, shirt unbuttoned, arguing theories until dawn. The past had a strange way of taking a seat among them.

  —Thank you for coming —Pavel said, his voice carefully neutral—. I’ll be brief.

  Ekaterina settled to his right. Her hand brushed his for a second—a minimal gesture, almost administrative. Lyudmila saw it. Ksenia did too.

  At the other end of the table, Irina Baranova opened her laptop. The sharp click of the keyboard sounded like the opening shot.

  —The Institute’s financial situation —Irina began without looking up— does not allow for ambiguity or academic adventures.

  Adventures.

  Lyudmila pressed her lips together.

  —We are talking about two sites of incalculable historical relevance —she said—. The Pazyryk are not merely material culture. They are—

  —A budgetary problem —Irina cut in, now looking directly at her—. Excavations at Tuekta require logistics, international permits, security. Tabyn Bogdo Ola doesn’t even have precise coordinates. That’s not research. That’s a gamble.

  Ekaterina leaned forward.

  —Every breakthrough in knowledge begins as a gamble —she said—. If Choros-Gurkin hadn’t been ignored for decades, we would now better understand the transitions between the visible and invisible worlds in nomadic cultures.

  —That is precisely what we cannot finance —Irina replied—. The “invisible world” does not appear on balance sheets.

  Pavel raised a hand.

  —Enough. This is not an epistemological debate.

  Silence.

  —The Institute is undergoing a restructuring phase —he continued—. Chinese funding requires stability. Control. Measurable results.

  Lyudmila looked at him directly for the first time.

  —Results—or obedience?

  The question hung in the air.

  Ekaterina smiled, but there was no triumph in it this time. Only sharpness.

  —Don’t dramatize, Lyudmila. No one is questioning your legacy. We’re simply saying we can no longer afford to follow it.

  Ksenia felt the urge to speak. Her heart pounded in her temples.

  —The Pazyryk understood death as a passage, not an end —she said, surprised even to hear her own voice—. Their kurgans were not tombs. They were nodes. Thresholds.

  Irina frowned.

  —And how does that translate into a viable plan?

  Ksenia swallowed. The smell returned. Frozen earth. Ancient leather. Something burning slowly.

  —If we only excavate objects, we lose the symbolic system —she said—. The Guardian Griffin is not a sculpture—it is a sentinel between planes. Ignoring that mutilates history.

  Ekaterina studied her with renewed interest.

  —Interesting —she murmured—. But dangerously speculative.

  Pavel closed the folder in front of him.

  —That is precisely why we are here —he said—. From this moment on, any travel, local contact, or preliminary action at either site is strictly forbidden without explicit authorization from the Council.

  Irina nodded.

  —Any violation will be considered a serious offense. Immediate disciplinary action.

  The word fell like a slab of stone.

  Lyudmila rose slowly. Her chair scraped against the floor.

  —You are legislating fear —she said—. Herodotus wrote of peoples who spoke with the invisible because they understood the world does not end with what is seen. You are amputating that part due to lack of funds.

  —For institutional survival —Pavel corrected, without looking at her.

  That was the hardest blow.

  Ekaterina stood as well.

  —It’s not personal —she said— though it was. —It’s evolution.

  Lyudmila looked at her with a mixture of exhaustion and ancient fury.

  —No. It’s an elegant purge.

  Ksenia felt the presence again—not as a vision this time, but as certainty.

  A thread tightening across time.

  Sora, she thought, without knowing why.

  —Then it is settled —Irina concluded—. None of the professors present will act on their own.

  Pavel closed the meeting with a curt gesture.

  —This Institute cannot afford a collapse.

  Ksenia knew, with unsettling clarity, that they had just caused one.

  An instant before the collapse.

  Exactly as in the accounts.