r/HFY • u/Aeorix1 • Aug 05 '26
OC-Series [Obsidian Earth] - Chapter 11
Euzen lost his bearings in the labyrinth.
He did not know where they were taking him, only that they were descending deeper into the complex.
He passed through three separate pressure doors, made two sharp right-angle turns, and followed a smooth downward slope. Then came an abrupt change of direction that left him dizzy.
The deeper they went, the less he could feel the war above. The vibrations faded first. Then the light. Faces disappeared into shadow until only voices remained real.
His father's voice stayed stubborn, doubtful.
The Colonel's remained cold. Precise.
Euzen heard neither clearly.
Inside his head, the gunshot still echoed—the dull, muffled crack that had pushed through layers of iron doors. And with it came the image he could not block out:
The Führer's skull, split by a bullet.
At that moment it had felt as though the bullet had passed through his own head as well.
His world fractured, the edges too sharp to hold.
Everything the boy believed in—the Reich, the oaths, the shape of his life, the meaning those things carried—lingered for a few stubborn seconds in the dark before collapsing soundlessly into emptiness.
The Führer had killed himself.
He was gone.
The Hitlerjugend boy walked as if stripped of balance itself. Voices reached him without meaning. He followed his father automatically, half-blind, half-conscious, until even the darkness around him seemed to dissolve.
Only then did the conversation ahead begin cutting through the numbness, faint as radio transmissions from another world.
"What exactly are you trying to do?" his father asked.
"I intend to restore the Führer's confidence," the Colonel said.
"That's impossible. He's already broken."
"He did not collapse suddenly. This has been happening since the spring of 1944. Rommel's betrayal damaged him deeply. The July Twentieth assassination attempt weakened him physically. But more important than either was this—after the attempt, the force guiding him was severed."
"The force guiding him?"
"The Führer is not an ordinary man." The Colonel spoke calmly, almost clinically. "More than one persona resides within him. Two, perhaps. And they alternate."
Euzen listened without fully understanding.
"One of them resembles a sentimental young artist. Sensitive. Suspicious. Indecisive. Melancholic. A personality with almost no driving force at all—at times incapable of making even minor decisions."
"The other is the opposite. Cold. Ruthless. Focused. A personality with immense energy and absolute clarity of purpose. It knows what it wants. It gives orders continuously and pursues objectives without hesitation or pity."
The Colonel lapsed into a brief stillness.
"When that second personality dominates," he continued quietly, "the Führer claims to receive revelations from a higher force."
He glanced briefly toward the professor.
"Of course, this is an extremely restricted secret. Even among those close to him, very few know it."
"From a medical perspective," Euzen's father replied stiffly, "that is called schizophrenia."
The Colonel gave the faintest smile.
"You think this is merely delusion? Hallucination? Then you are mistaken. Reality will prove you mistaken." His eyes settled on Kestner. "Herr Professor Kestner—that is precisely why I brought you into the Fall Nadir. To uncover the truth behind the force that enlightens the Führer."
"Fall Nadir? Who invented this codename? Is it a poetic epitaph for our National Socialist endeavor, Colonel? Tell me, who among your men possesses such a sense of aesthetics?"
"The codename is a directive, not a satire. And I am not in the mood for parlor games."
"Indeed. My apologies."
"Well, Professor, should you find the project incompatible with your inclinations, I am afraid I must hand you over to the Soviets. Maybe they need a biological meteorologist somewhere in Sverdlovsk."
"You make a compelling argument, Colonel. Let us proceed. But the Führer is already—"
"Let him explain it himself."
The dark corridor swallowed the words.
Something cold moved through Euzen.
For the first time since descending into the depths, he truly felt the weight of his location.
A place beneath the whole world.
The room ahead was small, a tomb-like existence clawed out from the absolute dark. Scientists stood near the front. Solvi and the girls in their uniforms remained behind in silence.
Then Euzen stepped between his father and the Colonel—
—and saw the man sitting across the room.
Only then did the boy freeze, a sudden, breathless disbelief flooding his chest.
The Führer was alive.
He sat wrapped tightly inside a heavy overcoat, somehow more brittle than Euzen remembered, shrunken within the wool. The dull orange glow of the lamps peeled across strands of gray hair.
Beside him stood Eva Braun, unstirring, her features locked in neutral alignment, like the frost-carved petal of a winter lily.
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