Chapter 397: The Purge of Vienna Begins
The streets of Vienna had become an open wound, festering with blood, smoke, and the unrelenting echoes of gunfire. The Werwolf Brigade’s purge had begun in earnest, and though their campaign had already shattered the city’s criminal underbelly, the battle was far from over.
The resistance was not composed of a singular, organized faction. Instead, it was a chaotic web of brigands, criminal syndicates, and ideological revolutionaries. Ethno-nationalist separatists waged war in the name of their own fractured visions of sovereignty, religious fanatics saw the collapse of the monarchy as a sign to enact their own holy war, and Marxist revolutionaries—emboldened by the chaos—sought to turn Vienna into the first stronghold of a new socialist order.
These groups did not fight for Austria—they fought for themselves. And in doing so, they ensured that the empire’s fall would be even bloodier than its slow, inevitable death.
A cold drizzle swept through the ruined avenues, turning the cobblestone streets into a mess of mud and blood. The scent of burning flesh lingered in the air, a sickening reminder that the city was being gutted from the inside out. In the depths of an abandoned tenement, now turned into a command post for one of the largest revolutionary cells, Gregor Varga, a former dockworker turned Marxist militia leader, stood over a table covered in stolen weapons and bomb-making materials.
"The Werwolf Brigade is hitting the brothels and drug dens first. They’re dismantling the networks that fund our operations," one of his lieutenants spat. "We cannot allow them to keep pushing unchecked."
Gregor’s jaw tightened. "Then we push back. We are not rats to be slaughtered in the street. The monarchy is dead. The revolution has begun. We must strike first and make them bleed."
His words were met with nods and murmurs of approval. They had all seen what happened when the Werwolf Brigade came—entire blocks razed, suspected dissidents lined against walls and shot, entire families vanished in the night. These mercenaries were not soldiers of Austria. They were executioners, paid in gold and blood.
The orders were given, passed through the alleys and ruins like whispers in the wind. Small cells of fighters—some with military experience, others nothing more than desperate men with stolen rifles—began preparing for a counterattack.
The first explosion shattered the fragile calm of the night. A horse-drawn carriage loaded with explosives was sent barreling toward a Werwolf supply convoy, detonating in a fiery blast that sent shards of burning wood and steel into the unsuspecting mercenaries.
Automatic fire erupted from the rooftops, cutting down Werwolf foot patrols as they scrambled to react. The revolutionaries had no discipline, no real tactics, but they had desperation, and desperation made men willing to throw their lives away in the name of vengeance.