It's well past midnight, 4th of October, 1931. Capitaine Lucien Voclain peers from the treeline, eyes fixed on the dim outlines of Swedish defenses encircling the towering Gate, one full kilometer tall, silent and inert. It looms against the stars like a cathedral raised by gods.
He is the field commander of Operation Perce-Neige—the French military's most secret and daring endeavor to date. The objective: seize control of the Northeastern Gate at Mårdudden, Sweden, and activate it using an untested experimental device.
"The defense looks feeble," he mutters, raising his binoculars. Searchlights cut lazy arcs through the mist, occasionally sweeping over sandbags, pillboxes, and nervous conscripts.
His thumb brushes the wedding ring on his finger, a gold band enclosing a tiny portrait of Margaux Voclain. For luck, he lies to himself.
A burst of static crackles in his earpiece.
"All troops in position," comes the voice of Lieutenant Faucheux.
Voclain presses his transmitter. "Operation is a go."
Moments later, dark silhouettes emerge from the forest. French commandos advance like shadows through the pine-scented night, weapons slung low, their footfalls muffled by the mossy ground.
Cracks of suppressed gunfire break the silence as advance teams silently neutralize sentries. Combat engineers move in to breach fences and disarm traps.
"Southern entrance seized," one voice reports. "Eastern entrance secure." "Western entrance holding. Awaiting orders."
"Proceed to phase two," Voclain orders.
At the southern gate, Lieutenant Adrien Faucheux signals his men forward. Their boots crunch gravel as they advance deeper into the Swedish compound. Faucheux's hand clenched around the lighter in his pocket, a gift from Voclain after Lyon. 'Lucky', he'd joked, But not tonight
A floodlight blazes to life and shine its blinding light on his men.
"PLAN B!" Faucheux barks.
Gunfire erupts, short and sharp. Suppressed rifles crack in the darkness as bullets tear through crates, floodlights, and men. Swedish defenders scramble from bunkers, returning fire in a chaotic frenzy.
"We're spotted!" Adrien yells over his radio.
"All units, prepare for artillery support," the reply crackles.
A moment later, the hills behind them thunder with explosions. French mortars rain destruction onto the Swedish positions. Pillboxes buckle. Trenches erupt. Searchlights blink out in clouds of dust and fire.
Voclain watches from the ridgeline, eyes steely as the defensive lines collapse.
"All units, advance."
His men charge, morale bolstered by the artillery's devastating effect. They surge past smoldering sandbags and broken wire, dispatching stunned survivors with ruthless efficiency.
As they breach the inner perimeter of the Gate containment facility, they find steel walkways twisted like vines, enormous cargo crates half-buried in gravel, and thick power conduits trailing from long-dead generators. Whatever had once powered the site was now still and cold.
"Area secure," Adrien reported.
Within minutes, the low rumble of diesel engines echoes across the plateau. A specialized flatbed truck rolls in, escorted by an entire platoon. Beneath its tarpaulin rests the heart of the mission.
La Clé.
Developed by the French Special Research Division, La Clé is a prototype "reactive harmonizer" barely tested beyond a lab. Its purpose is to emit a variable-frequency pulse and "coax" the dormant Gate into synchronization and if the theories are true, activation.
As the tarp is pulled back, several of the soldiers instinctively step away.
"Mon Dieu," one whispers.
The machine hums faintly, lined with concentric copper coils and glowing filaments. Technicians swarm around it, bolting it into place on a reinforced platform directly beneath the Gate.
Voclain checks his watch, its 04:47 AM almost time to extract.
""Achtung, all commandos! Rally at Camp Adler, 30 Minuten! Keine Diskussion, exfil jetzt! Schnell! Allez, marsch!"" he commands.
The commandos begin withdrawing, headed back toward the extraction area. Only the scientific team remains behind, setting up tripod-mounted recording devices and calibrating La Clé's systems.
Minutes pass, the commandos already marched a long while.. but the air feels wrong.
La Clé begins to glow. A deep thrumming shakes the ground as the harmonizer pulses in ascending tones, each one stronger than the last. The Gate responds.
A faint shimmer appears across its metallic surface. Then another. A dull blue haze ripples across the ancient structure.
A silhouette lifts their head
The Gate implodes.
The upper portion disappears in an instant, folding in on itself like a collapsing canvas. In its place, multiple Möbius strips, miles wide, made of twisting strands of something that resembles both fabric and light. It spirals inward endlessly, forming a massive, otherworldly torus.
A crimson aurora flashes across the sky. Radio signals cut out. Compass needles spin.
"Seigneur, sauve-nous tous.." one of the scientists prayed. "We're seeing a topological... OH MON DIEU."
The strips spin faster and faster. Its texture becomes impossible to follow, like staring into an optical illusion given life. Some commandos who had paused on the ridgeline to watch are frozen in awe. Others begin to run.
For the researchers, time stretches. Every heartbeat feels like a lifetime.
Then.
BANG.
A silent flash. A breathless minute. Then a howl of death as winds move faster then sound towards the gate, pulling everything it can clench in its inexistent hands, forming a massive super cyclone with winds faster then Neptune's before.
Ignition.
Everything within the massive cyclone Ignites no matter if its flammable or not. The scientific team vanishes in an instant. Steel, concrete, flesh, and soil, all erased by the plasma surge.
At six kilometers, the cyclone's vacuum hits the retreating soldiers like a divine hammer. They scream and stumble, some ablaze, others collapsing as their skin blisters and peels. Trees ignite. The sky turns red.
Even seventy kilometers away, French naval ships begin to warp and blister under the thermal bloom, like a second sun rising in the north. Hulls melt. Windows crack. Men scream.
The Gate is destroyed.
In its place, a broken gate, a molten crater, a flaming cyclone, and the growl of fire.
Over in Turku, Finland, early risers step onto balconies and porches, drawn by an bright glow to the north. For a moment, it seems as though the sun is rising in the wrong direction.
In one of the house a person sits in their couch, hands tremblingly clenching a cup of coffee, as they watch the enormous cyclone of fire spinning in the distant.
"Miksi täällä... ei taas..." said a hoarse, smoke-scarred whisper, like a man who's seen hell too many times.
A silhouette sighs
The bright glow slowly dimmed down as the Cyclone of fire dissipates, leaving a massive ruin gate still standing menacingly in a massive lake of molten glass.