Third Division, Lisbon Archives and Audit Bureau.

  Thick stone walls shut out the sun—and the wind.

  Only dampness lingered here, eternal and clinging, mingled with the sour reek of decaying paper and cheap ink gone rancid.

  And in this tomb of bureaucracy sat Jo?o Fernandes.

  His desk and chair seemed more decrepit than the others—wood darkened by moisture, like driftwood long drowned in brackish water.

  Around him, silence hummed with the sound of deadened labor. His colleagues had been absorbed by the gloom, hunched inside their threadbare grey suits like men sealed in coffins.

  Their pens crawled across ledgers like dying insects, tracing meaningless, repetitive paths.

  Jo?o lowered his head. Gold-rimmed spectacles veiled the light in his eyes.

  He opened a thick customs ledger. Its parchment cover was cold, rough—a shield concealing the blank sheet beneath his elbow.

  That sheet felt like smoldering charcoal, warming against his skin.

  The ink in the bottle had thickened, blackening into a deep, stagnant blue.

  Jo?o prodded it with his nib—as if testing the bottom of a dead sea.

  Then came the whisper of steel on paper.

  And in that scratch, his eyes began to burn.

  Without hesitation, he wrote a title destined to tear through the suffocating air of this room.

  Each letter, slow. Each stroke, heavy:

  ”Um país. Um partido. Um líder.”

  –ONE NATION. ONE PARTY. ONE LEADER.

  When the last letter fell, his fingertips tingled. He could feel his heart hammering against his ribs—a pulse violently out of sync with the rot around him.

  He inhaled deeply. The mildew in his nostrils no longer smelled of decay—but of gunpowder.

  The pen hovered.

  Through the grimy transom window, his gaze fixed on a beggar slumped in the street corner—motionless, hollow, radiating the numb stench of collapse.

  The nib descended. The words turned sharp. Cold. Surgical.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “The sick do not need philosophy. They need a scalpel.”

  “While the nation bleeds, Parliament babbles.”

  “Look! The so-called ‘progressives’ only breed chaos—yet cannot feed a single child.”

  He wrote faster now. His throat burned—not from thirst, but from fire within.

  Beside him, an old clerk wheezed like a broken bellows.

  Jo?o pressed harder. The nib ripped through the page—a faint, wet tear—and the sound sent a jolt of visceral pleasure up his spine.

  “Only one man acts: Salazar.”

  “No slogans. Only ledgers. No speeches. Only balance.”

  “In 1928, while the Left wept for Moscow’s moon, Salazar plugged the treasury’s bleeding wound.”

  “This is no miracle. It is love—for Portugal, in its truest, hardest form.”

  He paused. Watched a drop of ink bloom into a black star on the page.

  It looked like congealed blood.

  Outside, clouds swallowed the sun. Pedestrians scattered like startled ants.

  But I know, he thought, this manuscript will unleash a storm far darker than any thunderhead.

  He drew another breath. His eyes hardened—sharp, venomous, predatory.

  Oh, this is merely an appetizer. They should be ready.

  “What do our Leftists truly want?”

  “They are traitors to the nation.”

  “They wish to turn Portugal into the world’s laughingstock—”

  They dream of planting a second branch of the Soviet Party on Portuguese soil.

  They bow only to their master in Moscow—Joseph.

  They lick the boots of the Kremlin, and call it “liberation”!

  At those words, a wave of dizziness washed over him—the aftershock of adrenaline.

  He could hear his own blood roaring, drowning out every whisper in the room.

  He snapped his head up, staring past the rooftops toward S?o Bento.

  A gust swept down the street, snatching dead leaves into a spiraling vortex that clawed at the sky.

  And into the final paragraph, he poured every ounce of that boiling fury—words pared down to the bone, sharp as divine decree:

  “In this hour of crisis, Portugal needs unity—not debate, not the hollow theater of democracy.”

  We need stability. We need the leader who can drag us from the mire.

  To obey order is to serve the nation.

  To rally behind Salazar is not to worship a dictator—but to save a fatherland on the brink of collapse.”

  The pen stabbed downward—then swept upward in a final, decisive arc.

  “FOR HISTORY HAS SPOKEN: ONLY SALAZAR CAN SAVE PORTUGAL!”

  Jo?o did not lift the pen. He held the pose, eyes locked on the dense forest of ink before him.

  This was no mere text.

  It was a viper—just birthed in this damp, forgotten cellar.

  He began to imagine.

  The manuscript smuggled to a printer. Set in type. Rolled off the press.

  Laid on doorsteps at dawn.

  He saw it: a basement in Alfama, damp and dim. Leftist leaders huddled around a cracked table, hands trembling as they read.

  The orator who once thundered “Freedom!” and “Democracy!” in Parliament—now pale, lips quivering, voice strangled in his throat.

  The journalist who called himself “the people’s voice”—eyes wide behind smudged glasses, filled with terror and helpless rage.

  They would curse. They would tear the paper to shreds.

  But Jo?o knew: it would be the rage of the powerless.

  Because this article struck the rawest nerve of the age—survival.

  It painted the Left as arsonists. And Salazar—as savior.

  A surge of electric triumph flooded his chest.

  The thrill of the puppeteer.

  Here, in this rotting corner of the state, he held not a pen—but the nation’s entire the current of public opinion.

  Slowly, reverently, he tore the page from the notebook—gentle as peeling gold leaf from sacred parchment.

  Folded it. Folded again. Until it became a small, dense cube of pure potential.

  He didn’t tuck it away yet. Instead, he traced the rough edge with his thumb.

  This was more than paper.

  It was his ticket—into the inner sanctum of power.

  就像猎人向黑暗的树林投掷诱饵一样，他知道：

  野兽会来的。

  他们总是跟着血腥味走。

  霉味依然浓重地弥漫在空气中。

  但外面，云层已经散开。

  一缕阳光穿透了阴暗，照在若昂苍白的脸上。

  他笑了——一个灿烂而空洞的笑容，冷若刚从冰中取出的手术刀。

  “这才刚刚开始......”