Chapter 550: Quartermaster of an Empire
The Tsar’s message left a somber atmosphere across the room. He had announced that within a year at the latest he would be dead. And his son would succeed him as Emperor of Russia.
It was a monumental statement to his family who hadn’t the slightest clue of his condition. And Bruno himself stayed silent for the rest of the gathering.
Whatever festivities were had with a brief reunion were thoroughly stifled by the Tsar’s speech.
And there in the silence, Bruno realized what was happening. He was getting older, and he was witnessing that even titans of history cannot emerge victorious against death itself.
Franz Ferdinand had been dead for a decade. Svetozar had lived just long enough to be given a funeral worthy of his service.
Hindenburg was on death’s list, and so was Kaiser Wilhelm II in just a decade he would pass. And now Tsar Nicholas II within the year.
Men who had forged an era whose legacy Bruno had preserved in a defiant battle against fate itself.
And one day, he too would be interred in the ground. Would he be given another life then? Like he had the first time of his passing?
Would he be welcomed by Saint Peter through the pearly gates as a reward for his faith, and serviced to God and fatherland?
Or would he face eternal damnation for the blood he had shed in the act of preserving the world as he felt it should have been?
When death finally came for him, would he too have such a chipper attitude, like Nicholas appeared to maintain even now, knowing his time was ticking by with each passing second?
It was a question he could not answer, no... he could only drink. Drink to numb the pain of having forsaken the chance to personally become close to the men he idolized.