The charred bones of Nachtwind lay still in the snow.
Smoke trailed from its ruptured dorsal coil, rising in pale ribbons that disappeared into the gray canopy above the Moselle. The resonance plates had fractured. Its gliding system, once peerless, now slumped like the cracked shell of a grounded beetle.
Emil Laurant stood ten meters away, silent.
The snow beneath his boots had already melted from the core heat of Charogne, now powered down in standby mode. Beside him, Rousseau stared at the wreck, half-expecting it to rise again. But it didn't. There was no retaliation. No vengeful resurrection.
Only a hollow stillness — not peace, but aftermath.
Fournier approached from the tree line, breath clouding in the cold.
"Confirmation," he said. "No secondary unit. No support. We caught it alone."
Emil didn't move. "That wasn't a scouting run."
Fournier blinked. "What was it then?"
"A challenge."
In Königstein, Wilhelm Rainer's voice was hoarse.
"Shut down the coils. Salvage the harmonic core. We'll rebuild."
His aide hesitated. "The control array's fused, sir. The central frame can't take another resonance cycle."
"Then make a new one."
"But with what metal? We've exhausted the Silesian stores—"
"I said make a new one!"
The silence that followed was thick.
Rainer closed his eyes. In that instant, he could still feel the moment Nachtwind had buckled — not to brute force, but to a mirror. Laurant hadn't met his weapon with strength.
He'd met it with understanding.
That was the danger.
Not his power.
His insight.
Back in Verdun, the Ministry reeled.
The after-action report had spread like a virus through internal channels. The term "acoustic redirection" appeared seven times. The phrase "zero visibility engagement" appeared twelve. Lavalle read it all with blood draining from his face.
He called Amélie at noon.
"We need him in Paris."
She said nothing.
"You don't understand," he pressed. "He's passed the threshold. This isn't defense anymore. He's writing doctrine."
"Emil won't come," Amélie said. "Not unless he's forced."
Lavalle exhaled. "Then we'll force him."
"No," she said calmly.
"Then offer him something he values more."
Lavalle paused. "Like what?"
Amélie stared at the classified document in her hands.
"Like control."
Emil was already moving.
Three days after the battle at Saint-Privat, he led a small convoy north, deeper into no-man's-land. He carried no orders. No escort. Only blueprints. And Charogne's fractured rib panel, now fused at the seams — evidence of just how close he'd come to failure.
Fournier rode beside him in the front truck.
"This is madness," he muttered. "We've left the army. The chain of command. You're walking us into exile."
"Not exile," Emil said. "Rebirth."
"Where?"
Emil unfolded a map, his finger circling a zone labeled RED 12 – DESTRUCTIVE ZONE: NON-RECLAIMABLE.
"Here."
"Are you insane?" Fournier whispered. "That's a dead sector. No infrastructure. No resupply. Just crater fields and gas ghosts."
"Exactly."
They reached the ruins of Cormicy at midnight.
Once a cathedral town, Cormicy had been erased by a triple-artillery barrage during the early weeks of the war. Nothing remained above ground. But beneath it, hidden by the debris of collapse, were dozens of stone basements and wine vaults — a natural warren of tunnels.
It was there that Emil began to rebuild.
Not just the machines.
The mission.
He worked without writing to the Ministry. Without permission. Without prayer.
Charogne was disassembled again. Not for repair — but for evolution. The armor plates were stripped and replaced with newer, more flexible alloys provided by Lisette Arban, who arrived a week later with a freight truck full of experimental material.
"Laurant," she said, throwing down a schematic, "if we push the frequency chamber past 12 megahertz, we're not just weaponizing sound. We're weaponizing nervous response."
"You mean paralysis."
"I mean collapse."
Emil nodded.
"Then build it."
What emerged was not a machine.
It was a prototype of silence.
No name. No title. Only designation: Unit Null.
Where Charogne had shape, Unit Null had suggestion — smooth curvature, no seams, no turret. Its surface shimmered under lamplight, the alloy almost soft to the touch, though it could withstand concussive shock four times greater than Nachtwind's last output.
The resonance emitter was internalized — no more dorsal coils, no external ribs. Everything moved within, echoing through concentric shells until it emerged as a whisper of annihilation.
Rousseau stood back from the finished frame, pale.
"This doesn't look like a weapon."
Emil looked up from the control module.
"It isn't."
"Then what is it?"
He met Rousseau's eyes.
"It's an answer."
Meanwhile, reports came in from the German side.
Fragments of Nachtwind had been recovered, along with partial telemetry logs. But something was missing — something critical.
"Where's the resonance stone?" Rainer asked.
His technician shook her head. "It's gone."
"Gone how?"
"It was present in the final recording. Absent on-site. Someone extracted it."
"Impossible," he growled.
But it wasn't.
Because in a vault beneath Cormicy, under triple lock and flanked by two engineers, Emil Laurant held the resonance crystal from Nachtwind in his hand, studying it under a cold lamp.
It pulsed faintly.
Not a beat.
A breath.
He leaned closer.
"Your voice," he murmured. "Now mine."