For the first time, Anna truly understood that even in the heart of Moscow, there were shadows darker than the war itself.
That evening, she had only intended to deliver a routine battle report. As she passed the command room, the snow drifted silently outside the heavy windows, a white shroud for a dying world. Inside, the dim amber light flickered like an old oil lamp struggling against an encroaching tide of black.
She heard the voices before she saw the men—senior officers, their tones hushed and jagged with malice. Anna froze, her breath hitching in her throat.
"If the General Secretary continues to lean on him…"
"Our positions will mean nothing. We will be obsolete."
"He must make a mistake. Or…"
The sentence was left hanging, a lethal unspoken promise. Their eyes flickered toward the doorway, dismissing Anna as if she were merely part of the stale air. Her heart constricted. They weren't planning a defense; they were planning a betrayal.
She turned to run, to scream a warning, to find Ilya—but time ran out.
The explosion didn't just break the silence; it erased the world.
Heat, thunder, and a blinding wall of white. Anna—her laughter, her crooked scarf, her fragile silhouette—was swallowed by the bloom of fire.
When Ilya breached the room, he found only a skeleton of scorched wood and a blizzard of blackened papers. He screamed her name until his lungs burned, but the only answer was the hollow whistle of the winter wind through the ruins.
From that day forward, the man known as Ilya ceased to exist. Only the machine remained.
He continued the war. He tracked the German divisions with a cold, terrifying precision. But every victory felt like a serrated blade across his chest. Each red arrow on the map was a reminder of what he had lost. Anna was gone, and with her, the very purpose of survival had turned to ash.
For months—then years—he tried to claw his way back to his own time. In the brief snatches of sleep he allowed himself, he imagined waking in a sun-drenched library. He reached for the ghost of a mobile phone, the hum of electric lights, the scent of his parents' kitchen.
But every time he opened his eyes, he was greeted by the same trinity of despair: Smoke. Blood. Death. There was no exit. The era had claimed him, and it would not let go until it had finished breaking him.
The decades slipped away like sand through calloused fingers. By the time the final guns fell silent, Ilya's hair was the color of the Moscow frost. Deep lines, carved by grief and strategy, mapped his face.
Finally, he lay in a narrow hospital bed, his body a spent shell. Every breath was a labor of iron and lead. He closed his eyes, and the memories surged—Anna's smile, the thunder of the Katyusha rockets, the crushing weight of every life he had traded for time.
Then, he felt a strange, impossible warmth.
A dream, he thought. The final mercy.
The door clicked open. A figure entered, moving with a grace that felt like a melody. Ilya struggled to focus his blurred vision. It was impossible. He knew that face better than his own soul.
Anna.
She wasn't wearing a tattered wool coat or a nurse's uniform. She wore simple, modern clothes. Her hair was pulled back, and her eyes were clear and radiant—like sunlight reflecting off melting snow.
"You're awake," she said, her voice a soft caress.
Ilya's hands trembled against the pristine white sheets. "...You… is it really…?"
His voice, cracked by years of commands and silence, broke completely. Anna reached out and took his hand. Her skin was warm. Real.
"It's me," she said, her smile steady and enduring. "You've been gone a long time, Ilya. You finally woke up."
Tears tracked down the deep furrows of his face, but for the first time in a lifetime, he didn't fight them. The war, the gulags, the cold, the decades of mourning—it all dissolved, evaporating like mist under a summer sun.
They looked at each other, a shared smile that spoke of a thousand-year nightmare finally ending in a dawn of rebirth. Sunlight poured into the room, accompanied by the distant, peaceful hum of the modern world.
Everything had returned.
Ilya tightened his grip on Anna's hand, a silent vow echoing in his heart: No matter how cruel the history, no matter how many times we are torn apart, we will always find our way back to the light.