By the winter of 1943, Adrian Söllner had become indispensable to the Sacred Security Bureau. His office on the third floor overlooked the Virelia railway yard, where the boxcars arrived and departed with a regularity that matched the ticking of the clock on his desk. He had an assistant now, a pale young man named Ernst Kestler, who had been transferred from the League’s youth hostel programme and who regarded Adrian with a mixture of awe and trepidation. Kestler fetched the incoming dispatches, sharpened the pencils, and maintained the index cards that cross-referenced every manifest with its corresponding destination code.
Adrian himself rarely left the office. He ate his meals at his desk, a plate of bread and soup brought up from the refectory. He slept in a cot in the adjoining storage room more often than he slept in his rented lodgings. The work had grown immense, a living thing that demanded constant feeding. The manifests were no longer handwritten; the Bureau had acquired three new typewriting machines, and Adrian had taught himself to type with a rapid, mechanical precision that Kestler openly admired.
“You are the heart of the operation, Chief Clerk,” Captain Rheinhardt had told him during a brief inspection visit. “Every train that runs on time, every shipment that reaches its destination—it all begins with your office.”
Adrian had accepted the compliment with a nod. He did not allow himself to dwell on what the trains carried, or where their destinations truly lay. When a thought threatened to surface—a memory of the incineration report, a flash of the covered lorries in the mist—he crushed it with the same disciplined efficiency he applied to a misplaced decimal. The work was his sanctuary. As long as he kept his hands moving and his columns balanced, he did not have to think.
The first consignment of what the Bureau called “ritual supplies” arrived on a Tuesday in late January. A memorandum from Captain Rheinhardt instructed Adrian to establish a new ledger, separate from the regular manifests, to track the procurement and distribution of items designated as “Incense for Final Unction.” The items were to be ordered from a chemical supplier in the northern city of Kreuth, and they were to be shipped directly to the resettlement camps under the highest security classification.
Adrian read the memorandum twice. The phrase “Final Unction” was familiar from his seminary days; it referred to the anointing of the dying, a sacrament of passage. He did not ask why the camps required industrial quantities of such a substance. He created the ledger, ruled the columns in his neatest hand, and began to process the requisitions.
The first order was for two hundred kilograms. Adrian filled out the purchase form, checked the arithmetic, and forwarded it to the Bureau’s procurement division. When the shipping confirmation returned, he filed it under the tab marked “Ritual Supplies—Eastern Sector.” The words were crisp and bureaucratic. They gave no hint of anything untoward.
Kestler, however, was curious. “What is Final Unction, Chief Clerk?” he asked one morning, peering over Adrian’s shoulder at the requisition slip.
“A sacrament,” Adrian said, not looking up.
“But why do the camps need so much of it? Are there that many people dying?”
Adrian’s pen paused for the briefest instant. “The camps are in the war zone. Conditions are difficult. The Bureau provides for the spiritual needs of the resettled population.”
Kestler nodded, apparently satisfied. He was a devout boy, raised on the Prelate’s broadcasts and the League’s catechism. He had no reason to question the official explanations, and Adrian did not offer any further detail.
The requisitions increased in the spring. Three hundred kilograms in March. Five hundred in April. By May, the camps were consuming over a ton of Incense for Final Unction each month, and Adrian’s ledger had grown to six pages. He processed each order with the same meticulous care, verifying the quantities against the camp commanders’ requests, flagging discrepancies for Captain Rheinhardt’s attention. Once, he noticed that the C-7 camp had ordered fifteen percent more incense than its reported population figures seemed to warrant. He wrote a polite memo to the camp’s administrative officer, requesting clarification. The response came back promptly: the camp had received an unexpected intake, and the additional supplies were urgently needed.
Adrian adjusted the figures and filed the memo. The matter was closed.
It was around this time that the weekly “Ascension Reports” began to arrive on his desk. These were typed lists, transmitted by courier from each camp, bearing the seal of the Sacred Security Bureau and the signature of the camp commandant. They consisted of a single column of numbers, arranged by date, with a total at the bottom. The heading, printed in bold capitals, read: CONFIRMED ASCENSIONS.
Adrian understood the euphemism. He did not flinch when he first read it. By now, his mind had constructed a wall between the words on the page and the reality they represented. “Confirmed Ascensions” were a statistical category, like “Donations Received” or “Membership Renewals.” They required the same handling: verification, summation, and entry into the master log.
He assigned Kestler the task of compiling the weekly totals from all seven camps. Kestler approached the work with his usual enthusiasm, arranging the figures in neat columns and double-checking the arithmetic. Once, he remarked that the Camp Sanctum-7 total seemed exceptionally high for a single week—over two thousand ascensions in seven days. “They must be working very hard out there,” he said.
“Yes,” Adrian replied. “They are.”
The wall in his mind held firm.
In June, a new directive arrived from the Prelate’s office. It was printed on heavy paper, embossed with the crossed wheat and sword, and it announced the formal consecration of the “Chapels of Final Grace” at each of the major resettlement camps. The chapels, the directive explained, were specially designed spaces where the resettled population could receive the sacrament of Final Unction in a reverent and orderly manner. The Prelate commended the Bureau for its dedication to the spiritual welfare of the nation’s guests.
Adrian read the directive with the same detachment he brought to all official communications. He filed it under “Ritual Operations—General,” and returned to his ledger.
That evening, however, a memory surfaced against his will. He was walking through the railway yard, taking a shortcut to his lodgings, when a train pulled in on the eastern line. The boxcars were sealed, their high windows covered with wire mesh. A faint sound emanated from within: a low, rhythmic murmur that Adrian recognized after a moment as singing. The melody was a familiar hymn, one he had sung a hundred times at St. Tatiana’s College: “The Lord Is My Shepherd.”
He stopped walking. The singing continued, muffled by the wooden walls of the boxcars, but distinct. Voices of all registers, men and women and children, blending in a harmony that was at once beautiful and terrible. A guard walked along the platform, his rifle slung over his shoulder, and the singing faltered for a moment before resuming.
Adrian stood motionless. The wall in his mind trembled. He could feel the cracks spreading, the truth pressing against the carefully laid bricks of denial. But he did not let it break. He turned away and walked home, and by the time he reached his door, the wall had been repaired. The singing was only singing. The trains were only trains. He was only a clerk.
The following morning, he arrived at the office to find Kestler in a state of agitation. “Chief Clerk, there is a problem with the C-7 ascension report,” he said, waving a sheet of paper. “The total for the week of the fifteenth does not match the daily subtotals. I have recalculated three times, and there is a discrepancy of twelve.”
Adrian took the paper. He examined the figures, traced the columns with his finger. The error was immediately apparent: a transcriber at the camp had entered 2,147 instead of 2,159 for the Friday count. “It is a simple misprint,” he said. “Write to the camp’s records officer and request a corrected report. We cannot have inaccuracies in the master log.”
Kestler nodded, relieved. “I shall draft the letter at once.”
Adrian watched him go, and a thought drifted through his mind, quiet and poisonous: Twelve souls. But he pushed it away. Souls were not his department. Numbers were his department, and the number was wrong.
The corrected report arrived three days later. The figure for Friday was amended to 2,159, and the weekly total was adjusted accordingly. Adrian initialled the change and filed the report. The master log was once again accurate.
That summer, the Bureau’s operations expanded still further. A new camp, designated Sanctum-9, opened in the northern forest, and Adrian was responsible for establishing its supply lines. He processed the requisitions for Incense for Final Unction with his usual efficiency, drawing up a detailed schedule of deliveries that balanced the camp’s projected intake against the available railway capacity. Captain Rheinhardt praised his work in a memorandum that was copied to the Prelate’s office. “Chief Clerk Söllner exemplifies the quiet dedication that will secure our victory,” Rheinhardt wrote.
Adrian filed the memorandum in his personal drawer, alongside his letter of appointment and a faded photograph of his parents. He did not feel proud. He did not feel anything at all.
The wall was thick now, reinforced by months of routine. But it was not invulnerable. In late August, a piece of paper slipped through a crack.
It was a fragment of a letter, discovered by Kestler while sorting a bundle of documents that had been returned from Camp Sanctum-7 due to water damage. The fragment was torn at the edges, the ink smeared, but the words were legible. It was written in a child’s unsteady hand:
—Mama says we are going to the chapel tomorrow. We have to wear our best clothes. I am afraid, but she says the angels will sing for us. I will try to be brave. Please, if you find this, remember my name. My name is—
The rest was torn away.
Kestler handed the fragment to Adrian without comment, his face pale. Adrian stared at the childish writing, and the wall shuddered. He could hear, in the silence of the office, the faint echo of a hymn drifting across the railway yard. He could smell, for just a moment, a sweetness on the air that was not incense.
He placed the fragment in a folder marked “Damaged Documents—Pending Disposition.” He did not speak of it again, and Kestler did not ask.
That night, Adrian knelt before his crucifix for the first time in months. He did not pray. He simply knelt, his eyes fixed on the plaster face of the Saviour, and waited for a sign. No sign came. The crucifix was silent, as it had always been.
The next morning, he returned to his ledgers. The names continued to arrive, and he continued to write them. The requisitions continued to flow, and he continued to process them. The trains continued to run, and he continued to hear the singing, faint and distant, in the hours before dawn.
And then, in the autumn of 1943, the war began to turn. The newspapers, which had once proclaimed imminent victory, now spoke of strategic withdrawals and heroic defences. The Prelate’s broadcasts grew more strident, calling for a final, supreme effort against the forces of darkness. Captain Rheinhardt’s visits became less frequent; rumour had it that he had been reassigned to the front.
Adrian remained at his post. He did not follow the news from the front. He did not speculate about the future. He filled his ledgers and balanced his columns, and the days passed in a grey, uninterrupted stream.
One evening in November, a sealed dispatch arrived from the Prelate’s office. It was addressed to Adrian personally, and it bore the highest classification marking he had ever seen: SACRED DIRECTIVE—FOR IMPLEMENTATION ONLY.
He opened it with steady hands. Inside was a single sheet of paper, bearing the Prelate’s signature and a brief order: all existing documentation pertaining to the resettlement programme was to be destroyed, effective immediately. A schedule of incineration was appended, specifying which categories of files were to be burned first. The manifests were Priority One.
Adrian read the order twice. He looked at the filing cabinets that lined his office walls, the cabinets that held four years of his life’s work. Thousands of pages. Tens of thousands of names. He thought of the fragment of the child’s letter, still in its folder. He thought of the corrected ascension report, the twelve missing souls. He thought of the singing in the boxcars.
He called for Kestler. “We have new orders,” he said. “Begin clearing the cabinets. The documents are to be prepared for disposal.”
Kestler’s eyes widened. “All of them, Chief Clerk?”
“All of them.”
The two men worked through the night, hauling files to the basement furnace. The fire roared, and the paper curled and blackened, and the names vanished into ash. Adrian fed the flames without pause, his face illuminated by the orange glow. He did not speak. He did not think. He fed the furnace until his arms ached, and the cabinets stood empty.
When the last file had been burned, he returned to his office and sat at his desk. The dawn was breaking over the railway yard, pale and cold. The boxcars stood motionless on the tracks, their doors hanging open. No trains had run that night.
Kestler stood in the doorway, his face haggard. “It is done, Chief Clerk.”
Adrian nodded. “Go home and rest.”
Kestler hesitated. “What will happen now?”
Adrian did not answer. He was looking at his desk drawer, the one where he kept his personal papers. Inside, beneath the letter of appointment, was a single folder he had not burned. It contained the corrected ascension report from C-7, the fragment of the child’s letter, and a handwritten note that Adrian had written to himself, months ago, in a moment of weakness: I knew. God forgive me, I knew.
He did not know why he had kept it. Perhaps it was an insurance policy. Perhaps it was a confession, waiting for a priest who would never come. Perhaps it was simply the last remnant of the man he had once been, before the ledgers had consumed him.
He closed the drawer and locked it.
Outside, the first snow of winter began to fall, covering the railway tracks, covering the ash, covering everything. Adrian sat alone in the silence, and waited for the future to arrive.
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