In the sealed colony of Gravenholt, where the lights flicker and the distribution lines never end, Erich Vogel returns home a fallen man. Demoted from his post at the Union Coordination Bureau and haunted by the failure that put him there, he finds his childhood friend Annelose waiting on the platform—and a colony worn thin by rationing, failing machinery, and the quiet desperation of people pushed to the edge.
His father, the former chairman, greets him with silence and a question he cannot an
The Wanderings of the Righteous - Collapse Ring — The Night of Discarding One's Name
The air in the underground sector had long since passed beyond cold—it sank into people's lungs like heavy mud.
Gravenholt's underground sector. Since that night of searing flashes and earth-shaking thunder that had burned the surface, the seasons had turned to winter. In the second-layer residential reserve, some twenty thousand people—past the limit of what the space could hold—huddled together. Condensation had frozen on the walls, a thin film of ice dulling the pale blue lights. The lamps, already dimmed to ration power, had thinned further since yesterday, and darkness gaped at the far ends of the corridors.
The ventilation had stopped.
No—more precisely, there was no longer any power left to run it.
People piled thin blankets atop one another, pressing close as if to share what warmth their bodies held. Still the cold seeped down to the marrow. More and more were coughing; the children had lost even the strength to cry. The air stagnated, thick with the mingled stench of sweat, waste, and a faint note of rot that blanketed the whole of the underground.
Erich Vogel stood in the temporary command post set up deep in the second layer.
His black hair was cropped short and neat, but its luster was entirely gone, and the shadows beneath his gray eyes had darkened past the color of skin into something like a bruise. Only his spine was still straight. He kept it straight. On the desk lay supply inventory sheets and requisition forms from the engineers' guild, and, jumbled atop them, the report that had arrived just this morning—the one announcing the complete shutdown of the circulation core.
"Erich."
Annelose Kirchner called to him from beyond the partition. Her black hair, which fell to her shoulders, was tied back, but the stray curls sprang out as though frozen stiff. Her brown eyes were bloodshot with fatigue. Unconsciously, her fingers traced again and again the old braided cord bracelet at her left wrist.
"A formal reply has come from the Werkstatt."
She set a single sheet of paper on Erich's desk. It bore the seal of the engineers' guild office, the Werkstatt. Erich picked it up and scanned it quickly.
The contents had not changed from before. An immediate halt to the prosecution of violators. A review of the rationing priority law. And a freeze on the enforcement of banishment sentences. Unless these were accepted, they would not lift a finger to repair the circulation core—so it said.
"...How serious is Günther Hartmann about this?"
Erich's voice was dry. The back of his throat was sticking shut with the cold air.
"He's serious. All fourteen members of the engineers' guild have signed this reply. Erich, there's no time left. The water, the electricity—at this rate—"
Her voice trembled faintly. Erich looked at her face. She was always like this. Caught between opposing sides, believing both were right, searching for an answer that would hurt no one, and in the end getting nowhere. That honesty of hers was now strangling her.
"This isn't a request. It's blackmail. The engineers' guild is holding the colony's lifeline hostage to force a political concession. If I swallow something like this, the rationing system itself collapses. In the next disaster, no one will be protected."
"But if we go on like this, people are going to die here and now."
"I won't let them die. This is what I've decided."
Erich set the reply down on the desk as though slamming it.
"All members of the engineers' guild are to be made targets of prosecution on suspicion of dereliction of duty. Issue the notice. If they continue their sabotage, they'll face suspension of rations and a banishment vote. Even they must value their lives."
Annelose was speechless. Her lips moved faintly, but no sound came. Her brown eyes gazed straight into Erich's gray ones. What floated there was no longer trust. Nor was it fear. Only a deep sorrow.
"...I understand. I'll deliver it."
With that, she turned her back. Erich could not move until that back had vanished beyond the partition.
(I'm not wrong. This is what I decided.)
He repeated it in his heart. But the words no longer rang as strongly as before.
Night came.
More precisely, there was neither day nor night in the underground sector. But the rationing hour was, for the people, their "morning." And that rationing hour was supposed to have come.
A long line had formed before the distribution station. Everyone clutched their ration cards. Yet the station's windows remained firmly shut.
"What's going on?!"
"Open up! Give us water!"
Shouts began to rise from every direction. One of the distribution officers poked his head out from behind the window.
"Please, calm down! We're currently restoring the system—"
"The system?! My kid's running a fever over here!"
The man at the head of the line pounded his fist on the station door. Thud, thud—the dull sound echoed through the underground. The card readers had gone completely silent when the power failed. Biometric authentication, ration-point verification—nothing worked. The distribution officer could only stand there.
The machine meant to distribute fairly was dead, and the humans meant to pretend at fairness simply trembled.
"My card still has points on it! Look!"
The man slapped his ration card against the window. Another man cut into the line.
"Hey, don't cut!"
"Shut up! I was here first!"
A brawl broke out. Fists sank into faces; blood sprayed from noses. Screams. Roars. And then someone threw his body against the station door. The old hinges shrieked and gave way.
With a crash, the crowd surged in.
"Food! Give us food!"
"Wheat! The Kornspeicher's wheat!"
The people rushed deep into the station, toward the food storehouse—the Kornspeicher. The distribution officer was trampled underfoot. Someone stepped on his hand. The sound of bone snapping was swallowed by the screams.
Erich arrived on the scene with a handful of guards.
"Everyone, stop! This is not distribution—this is looting!"
His voice rang through the underground. For an instant, the crowd's movement halted. But only for an instant.
"Erich's here!"
"It's your fault we're in this mess!"
"You're the one who squeezed the engineers!"
The roars turned on Erich himself. In that moment, from the depths of the station—from the section where the lights had gone out—flames leaped up.
Someone had lit a fire in place of the lamps, and it had caught on the stacked burlap sacks.
"Fire!"
"The wheat's burning!"
The flames stained the underground darkness red. Smoke filled the space where ventilation had stopped. People fled screaming in every direction. Erich stood rooted to the spot, staring at the blazing food storehouse.
(Ah. So this is the order I tried to protect.)
The heat of the fire scorched his cheeks.
The riot lasted until dawn.
When it was finally put down, the burned stores came to roughly forty percent of the wheat the colony needed to survive the winter.
Annelose stood motionless before the charred ruins. Soot smudged her face, and her brown eyes gazed vaguely at the smoldering wreckage, as though she had lost sight of something.
"If only I could have done something sooner."
She murmured it in a hoarse voice.
"It isn't your fault. My judgment brought this about."
Erich stood beside her. But his eyes were fixed past the ruins, into the depths of the dark.
"Erich, please. Talk with Günther. Hear the engineers' guild's demands. If only the water came back—if only the electricity came back—we could still rebuild."
She gripped his arm. Her hand was cold as ice.
"...You'll mediate, then?"
"That's all I can do. Neither side is wrong. But at this rate, everyone will die. Let's think it through together. Please."
Her voice was wet with tears. Erich gently removed her hand.
"Understood. Set up a place to talk. But my judgment won't change."
A room in the Rathaus. Because the central administration building's office stood above ground, both lighting and heating had failed, and their breath clouded white.
Erich and Günther Hartmann sat facing each other across a long table. Annelose stood between them and spoke in a trembling voice.
"Today is an informal discussion. Please, hear each other's positions to the very end."
Günther Hartmann was a seasoned engineer in his sixties. His white hair was thin, deep wrinkles carved into his face. But his eyes alone burned sharp as a pale blue flame. As leader of the circulation maintenance guild, he was a man who had guarded Gravenholt's lifeline for forty years.
"Erich Vogel. Your notice was to prosecute every member of the engineers' guild for dereliction of duty."
Günther's voice was low and quiet. But that quietness rang all the colder for it.
"It's the truth. You refused to begin repairs and threw the demands back at me. That is dereliction."
"Dereliction, is it. And what do you think the circulation core is?"
Günther shook his head slowly.
"The circulation core is not a machine. It is the very life of us engineers. Every one of those fourteen you mean to prosecute has lived for this colony, putting the core ahead of their own families. And you've judged them as near traitors to the state. Is that what your righteousness amounts to?"
"If I grant your demands, the rationing system collapses. If I overlook violators and gut the priority law, more people die in the next disaster. My judgment is not wrong."
Erich's voice was decisive. But he could not meet Günther's eyes.
"You're always like this. 'I'm not wrong.' 'This is what I decided.' But tell me, Erich—whose righteousness is yours? Is it for the residents? Or is it only the righteousness of a man who can't bear to admit he was wrong?"
"...Silence."
"Struck a nerve, have I. Ever since you banished Casper, you've clung to your own righteousness. But what did that righteousness protect? The wheat burned. The water stopped. The residents stopped believing in you. And still you say you're not wrong?"
"I said silence!"
Erich struck the table with his fist. The dry sound echoed in the cold air.
"If I hadn't evacuated everyone underground, more people would have died that night. My judgment saved seventeen thousand lives. Do you deny that?"
"That night's judgment may not have been wrong. But every judgment after it was. You were exalted as a hero, and you convinced yourself you could never be wrong. And then you prosecuted and banished everyone who defied you, one after another. What you protected wasn't the residents. It was the idol of your own righteousness."
Günther rose to his feet.
"The engineers' guild is leaving the underground sector. Restoration of the circulation core is already impossible. By your righteousness, this colony will die. Those are my final words."
Leaving that behind, he walked out of the room.
Annelose stood frozen between the two of them. The blood drained from her face.
"Erich..."
"...Get out."
Erich's voice was low, wrung out.
"I'm not wrong. This is what I decided."
Annelose tried to say something. But no words came. In that moment, she understood, as though she were being torn apart, that the answer that would hurt no one had never existed from the start.
Slowly, she left the room.
The underground sector, once the engineers' guild had gone, was no better than a graveyard.
Ventilation had stopped entirely; the air stagnated, rank with stench. The water supply had ceased too, and people licked the condensation from the walls to wet their throats. In the darkness without power, contagious disease—high fever and coughing—spread in the blink of an eye.
The doctors and nurses of the clinic "Quiet Lamp" did all they could with dwindling medicine, but the infection would not stop. The dead increased every day.
The people no longer waited for Erich's orders.
Some moved to other sectors on their own. Some tried to escape to the surface. Some barricaded themselves in the ruined residential blocks. Even Annelo
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