Published at 19th of February 2026 7:16 am

Chapter 870: Art and Architecture

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The night sky fell upon the city of Innsbruck. Extravagantly carved, blackened bronze street lamps lit the darkness and kept its mire at bay.

A full moon clung to the sky, its light shining upon one particular section of the city. Cars gathered in the streets, chauffeurs escorting their clients toward the venue that awaited them.

Bruno’s motorcade was smaller than one might expect for a man of his position. His security detail was not dressed in full tactical attire. Instead, they concealed bullet-resistant vests beneath finely trimmed three-piece suits.

The men secured the immediate area before opening the door, allowing Bruno and his wife, Heidi, to exit the vehicle’s luxurious interior.

Bruno took Heidi’s hand and drew her close, the two walking together, side by side, leaning into one another as they approached the venue.

Heidi seemed excited, unusually so, as she looked around at the lines gathered in the streets, waiting for entry.

"It has been so long since we last visited the city," she said softly. "I almost don’t recognize it..."

Bruno looked up at the finely constructed gallery before them. Its neo-baroque architecture was in line with many of Innsbruck’s modern developments following his rise to Grand Prince of Tyrol and the expansion of the realm’s infrastructure.

"The city is a testament to what mankind is truly capable of," he replied. "It was the first of Germany’s so-called cities of light; a proof of concept I took painstaking time to orchestrate. And it is far grander than those old models I once had scattered across my desk..."

Heidi rolled her eyes faintly at the memory of her husband in the years following the Great War, consulting endlessly with architects, engineers, and planners of every discipline.

Innsbruck had been redesigned from the ground up; expanded, renovated, and modernized in a way that did not deny its history, but inherited it.

Bruno had learned long ago that cities revealed more about a civilization than its laws ever could. Laws could be rewritten, constitutions could be amended. But stone, once laid with intent, endured.

Streets taught people how to move, where to gather, what to respect. A city either disciplined its inhabitants quietly; or dissolved them into noise and chaos.

Innsbruck had once been a provincial jewel, beautiful but constrained by its age. Now it breathed with deliberate order.

Expansion had not erased its past, nor had it frozen the city in reverence. Instead, it carried its history forward, widened its avenues, reinforced its foundations, and bound its future to forms that would still command dignity centuries from now.

This was what Bruno meant when he spoke of progress; not replacement, nor erasure. But inheritance refined through intention.

A city built this way did not beg its people to believe in it. It simply endured; and in doing so, demanded that its citizens rise to meet it.

The art gallery before them was one of many such additions. One that Bruno had personally financed from his own coffers rather than the state treasury. Upon its completion, he donated it to the city under a single condition; that it forever remain open to the public, free of charge.

Because of this, the building was filled with couples from every age and economic background. At this hour, families were scarce. Instead, it was mostly married couples, or those betrothed and awaiting marriage.

Most were younger than Bruno and Heidi, though a few older pairs could be seen here and there.

They passed through the front entrance without incident. Inside, paintings, sculptures, and every other form of fine art imaginable surrounded them.

Tyrol’s greatest artists were represented here. Their work inherited the legacy of the nineteenth century; realism, depictions of man, woman, and nature in harmony.

The paintings held Heidi’s attention for long moments of silent study. Her expression was not joy, but deep curiosity, lingering longer than most before each piece.

Heidi had not always understood art the way she did now. In her youth, she had thought it a luxury; something ornamental, pleasant, but ultimately unnecessary.

War had taught her otherwise. She had seen what happened when people lost a sense of beauty, when the world became nothing but function and survival. Something in them hollowed out, quietly, long before the body ever broke.

Here, among these halls, she saw something different. These works were not shouting for attention, nor begging to be understood; they waited, confident, and complete. They asked nothing of the viewer except patience.

As she watched the other couples drift from piece to piece, young hands intertwined, older ones resting easily together, she realized this gallery was not a monument to the present, but an offering to the future. A declaration that life was meant to be more than endured.

And, as much as she rarely said it aloud, Heidi understood that this, too, was one of Bruno’s wars; fought not with steel, but with permanence.

Bruno watched her in silence, content to let the moment linger. He had long since learned that conviction spoken too quickly lost its weight. Some truths demanded patience; time to be seen, not argued.

Art like all higher forms of understanding could not be truly understood by a simple glance. And so they moved slowly through the gallery as any other couple might, unremarkable at a glance, save for the quiet gravity that followed them.

Bruno wore a tailored suit of dark wool, immaculate but unadorned. No medals. No orders. Nothing that announced what he was.

Heidi matched him in restraint; elegant, unmistakably wealthy, yet absent any symbol of rank or position. Tonight, they were simply spectators.

She paused before a marble figure and smiled faintly.

"I remember," she said, "when I was young... when those so-called modern pieces first began appearing. I found them distasteful, but I didn’t have the words for it then."

Bruno exhaled softly through his nose and shook his head, almost amused.

"That wasn’t art, my dear."

He turned his gaze back to the sculpture, his voice calm and certain.

"Art exists to reflect the natural beauty of the world and the potential of man within it. That which exists only to negate, distort, or degrade is not art; it is an act of aesthetic anarchy. And just as the beasts of the field have no place in the halls of governance, so too does the anarchist have no place in civilization, for he is its antithesis."

Heidi nodded once in silence, because by now, she understood exactly what he meant.

As Bruno spoke, his eyes drifted; and then stopped.

The marble sculpture before him captured his attention, not because it lacked craftsmanship, but because it possessed too much of it. On a technical level, it was exquisite. On a personal one, it was deeply distasteful.

The subject was unmistakable.

It depicted his rejection of the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg and her affections. Marie-Adelaïde stood carved in marble; young, beautiful, and tragic. Her hand reaching for his chin as he turned away, refusing to meet her longing gaze.

He was not shown in dress uniform, nor adorned with medals as he was commonly depicted in paintings, portraits, and murals across the Reich.

Instead, he wore the fatigues he had donned when he personally airdropped into Luxembourg to lift the siege of its palace from French brigands following the end of the Great War.

The details were immaculate; almost unnervingly so. They stirred memories Bruno had long since buried, memories he had no desire to revisit.

It wasn’t until he felt the warmth of Heidi’s hands clasping his own, and heard the playful lilt in her voice, that he returned fully to the present.

"I must say," she murmured, "you were quite handsome back then... I had almost forgotten how much of a Greek god you were."

Bruno stared at her, looking more offended by the remark than by the cold detachment with which he had been immortalized in stone.

"First of all," he replied dryly, "by blood and culture I would be a Norse god, not Greek, if I were born of divinity and not nobility."

He paused, then narrowed his eyes.

"Second; what do you mean was handsome? Am I not still the same man I was then?"

His accusatory glare and mock indignation caused Heidi to break into a fit of giggles. She alone knew that despite the severity of his tone, his words were meant in jest.

"Bruno," she said between laughs, "you’re old."

His face scrunched as if struck, and then both of them dissolved into quiet, heartfelt laughter, careful not to disturb the peace of the gallery or its patrons.

At last, Bruno cast one final look at the sculpture. He nodded once, an acknowledgment of its tragic beauty, before taking his wife’s hand and leading her onward.

Heidi knew better than to comment further. It was, after all, one of Bruno’s greatest regrets.

The annexation of Luxembourg, and the way he had handled it, remained a scar upon his heart; one that cut nearly as deep as the loss of Erich von Humboldt.

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