In April 2027, Russia vanishes from our reality and reappears in a world where magic has replaced the laws of physics. As wyverns and dragons rule the skies, the nation plunges into chaos: famine, panic, and separatism threaten to tear it apart. In the face of collapse, President Mikhail Romanov attempts to restore order, forging the nation in the fires of a new, brutal reality.
Isolated and alone, Russia launches reconnaissance missions and makes first contact with the Principality of Qua-Toyne, hoping for peaceful coexistence. Instead, they face the aggression of the Kingdom of Louria, a hostile power that sees the newcomers as nothing more than barbarians. Conflict is inevitable.
In the battles that follow, Russia unleashes the overwhelming power of 21st-century technology upon a world where sword, sorcery, and courage have always reigned supreme. This is the story of a civilization's fight for survival, proving its right to exist through superior firepower.
Moscow, Russian Federation. April 29, 2027. 6:55 PM Moscow Time.
The Kremlin was bathing in the warm, golden light of the early spring evening. By late April in Moscow, the sun still sat well above the horizon at this hour, casting long, sharp shadows from the high walls. Below the bulletproof, vibration-dampened windows of the office, the centuries-old cobblestones of Red Square, thoroughly scrubbed by municipal sweepers, were entirely free of winter debris. In the Alexander Garden, breathing easily after the long freeze, vibrant emerald grass was flourishing in the drying soil, and newly unfurled leaves on the lime trees signaled the definitive end of the cold season. Moscow, grand and bustling, lived in the mounting, nervous anticipation of its most sacred civic ritual—the May holidays. On Tverskaya Street, long strings of tricolors were already fluttering in the breeze, and heavy vinyl banners, gleaming from the recent citywide washings and bearing the laconic phrase "Happy Victory Day!", swayed slightly above the ceaseless, dense flow of evening traffic.
An organized, highly pressurized chaos reigned in the office of the President of the Russian Federation. On the polished Karelian birch desk, a neat stack of stiff crimson folders bearing the classification stamp "Special Importance" formed a formidable paper wall. On the screen of a heavy, encrypted government terminal—specifically manufactured for the highest echelon by the "Aquarius" plant and heavily modified by the FSO’s cyber division—data tables from a closed General Staff briefing flashed continuously, detailing the logistical nightmares of moving heavy tracked armor onto the capital's streets. A massive vintage grandfather clock by the master clockmaker "Raketa" counted down the minutes to a scheduled secure closed-circuit conference (ZKS) with the Siberian and Ural governors via its deep, steady ticking.
Mikhail Viktorovich Romanov, who had assumed the highest office of the state barely two months prior, sat deeply entrenched in a high-backed leather armchair, drumming his fingers rhythmically against the armrest. His face, sharply handsome but not yet heavily marked by the grim attrition of long-term rule, reflected a complex cocktail of intense, processing concentration and a faintly bubbling irritation. Preparations for the nation's main holiday were following their traditional, obstacle-ridden course: defense contractors were engaged in an inter-agency war with the mayor’s office over multi-billion-ruble compensation for street asphalt slated to be torn up by T-14 Armata tank treads, while logistics algorithms for the drone airspace had failed a major stress test yesterday morning. He wore a crisp white shirt; his impeccably tailored dark blue jacket was draped with deliberate carelessness over an adjacent chair—an unspoken but recognized signal to his immediate staff that the ceremonial part of his day was dead, and the grinding, nocturnal state machinery had taken over.
The sudden, piercing shrill of the ATS-1 special communication telephone—the heavy white receiver dedicated exclusively to existential national security crises—shattered the heavy silence. Instantly, anticipating the severity, Romanov didn't flinch. Instead, he narrowed his eyes just as the reinforced oak door of the primary office was pushed open.
There was no panicked bursting; the Federal Protective Service (FSO) simply didn't allow for it. However, the breach in protocol was equally shocking in its nature. Entering with rapid, rigid steps was his senior executive aide, Andrey, flanked immediately by the austere, unsmiling Head of the Presidential Protocol, an FSO shift commander, and a technician carrying a specialized portable hardened secure module, a massive black casing distinct from the everyday equipment. Andrey’s typically flawless suit looked hastily readjusted, his face bloodless.
"Mikhail Viktorovich," Andrey’s voice was remarkably tightly wound, straining desperately against his military-civilian bearing to keep from fraying. "I sincerely apologize for circumventing the vestibule security, but Sector One of the National Defense Management Center just authorized an Alpha-Level override."
The President slowly set down a heavy silver fountain pen, pausing precisely over the edge of the classified aviation fly-past chart. The frustration immediately dissolved into cold, analytical hyper-vigilance. He studied the men filling his office.
"What has happened?" Romanov asked. The room's temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. "And why are you bringing me an encrypted brief by hand instead of it popping on my master dashboard? Did an aviation test fail over a populated area?"
"No, Mr. President. It is fundamentally different." Andrey drew a breath that hitched despite his control. He activated the portable terminal on the conference table. The screen pulsed with severe crimson vectors representing the National Emergency Grid. "This is a direct report synthesized by the Main Intelligence Directorate, the FSB, and Roscosmos. We have an advancing terrestrial anomaly. It generated in the extreme north, near the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, and is expanding into our mainland territory at catastrophic speeds."
Mikhail Viktorovich rose to his feet. The motion was eerily fluid, carrying the predatory tension of a tightly coiled spring. His entire aura shifted—exhaustion vaporized, replaced by the acute, laser-like focus of a seasoned statesman confronted by sudden chaos.
"An anomaly?" he repeated softly, walking slowly toward the large map-display monitors embedded in the wall opposite his desk. "Let's forego the abstraction, Andrey. Has there been an unauthorized ballistic launch? A subterranean seismic weapon test? An incident with an orbital reactor plunging back down?"
"Sir, for the first two hours, nobody knew," the aide rapidly explained, his fingers trembling as he expanded the high-resolution tactical map on the master screen. "The initial disruptions started four hours and thirteen minutes ago, at exactly 2:42 PM Moscow time. The warning centers registered a sudden loss of telemetry from northern early warning radar sites. The General Staff automatically assumed it was highly sophisticated NATO Electronic Warfare (EW) originating from subs in the Barents Sea. Concurrently, the Emergencies Ministry recorded total communications blackouts on the Kola Peninsula and along the Northern Sea Route, assuming extreme localized atmospheric storms."
Andrey zoomed out to show the sweeping northern coast. "But none of those silos communicated effectively because they were blinding each other. Only an hour ago, an AI data consolidation sweep at the Ministry of Defense overlaid all the blackouts. Our satellites—including the military 'Liana' constellation and classified optical assets—are photographing severe, inexplicable spatial distortions occurring strictly within the Earth's lower stratosphere and spreading rapidly downward. Ground stations below it suffer total loss of electromagnetic continuity. But, Mikhail Viktorovich, here is the detail that caused the Alpha override..."
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The map displayed a rapidly bleeding red semi-circle crushing downward from the Arctic. But abruptly, sharply, impossibly—the deep red contour stopped on an invisible diagonal line to the far northwest.
"It hit the land border between Murmansk Oblast and Norway forty minutes ago," Andrey swallowed dryly. "And it stopped. It is expanding in all other directions inward, consuming Zapolyarny and moving toward Petrozavodsk, reaching southward toward Naryan-Mar, engulfing Novy Urengoy... but it behaves like fluid trapped inside an invisible glass mold. The military base at Pechenga is gone, dead to our networks, but three miles across the line in Kirkenes, Norway, NATO installations are functioning perfectly, transmitting bewildered chatter trying to decipher why Russia has gone dark. The anomaly is propagating rapidly inward—calculating a geometric sweep of forty to fifty kilometers per hour depending on latitude. If we map its accelerating vector downward, Vologda, Yekaterinburg, and St. Petersburg will fall into it by mid-morning. It hits Moscow in twenty-eight hours."
Dead, heavy silence permeated the great office, juxtaposed brutally against the cheerful clicking of the grandfather clock. The President pivoted. His cold, calculating eyes burned into the group.
"An anomaly tracing sovereign, internationally recognized political boundaries," Romanov repeated, his tone glacial and lethal. "Do you realize the absurdity of that sentence? Storms, academic phenomena, or physical reactions do not obey the 1947 Treaty of Paris demarcations. Four hours to compile this? If it were an orbital mass-driver or an American localized scalar-weapon, half the country would already be in the Stone Age!"
"With respect, Sir, standard doctrines could not accommodate the data points!" Andrey fired back, driven purely by the extremity of the event. "Director Patrushev and Minister Belousov are locked down in Sector One awaiting your connection. But the leading voice in that room right now isn't military. The head of the Security Council has ordered Academician Kolyshev from the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics to coordinate the quantum data interpretation. They have him patched into your immediate ATS ZKS feed."
Without another word, Mikhail Viktorovich walked briskly to his main communications console. He threw the heavy physical switch linking his office to the secure sub-levels of the National Defense Center. A sharp metallic tone announced a verified uplink.
"Romanov," he barked at the array.
From the speaker emerged an uneven chorus of rustling paper and murmured military voices, swiftly superseded by the raspy, clinically restrained cadence of an aging man clearly thrust vastly outside his administrative comfort zone.
"Mr. President. This is Academician Pyotr Kolyshev." The scientist didn’t waste a single breath on salutations. "Our telemetry contradicts every known law of particle physics, classical mechanics, and general relativity. We are tracking shifting topographical fields where there shouldn’t be any. Whatever originated over the Kara Sea and Novaya Zemlya is tearing at the geometric metric of space-time itself."
"Plain language, Pyotr Vladimirovich," Romanov commanded quietly, but the implicit threat of severe consequences if the man failed to make sense hung heavily in the air. "Is it an attack? Have the Americans achieved some form of high-altitude EM breakthrough?"
"No human civilization has the energy grid required to sustain what we are observing," Kolyshev’s voice faltered a fraction of an inch into utter disbelief. "Sir, imagine spacetime not as an emptiness, but as a stretched piece of fabric. The fabric within the expanding borders of this zone is literally 'boiling'. At a molecular level. We’re losing the carrier waves not because of jamming or signal degradation, but because the foundational frequencies themselves are falling apart and dissolving into structural white noise. Radar ceases to work because photons behave like sludge within that perimeter."
Kolyshev inhaled a ragged breath. "We confirmed the topological mapping boundary five minutes ago over the Finnish sector near Sortavala. This 'event horizon' spreads, collides perfectly with our sovereign border coordinates, and physically refuses to propagate beyond it, yet rapidly pours further south over the interior. It acts dynamically. Almost artificially programmed to exact GIS border coordinates of the Russian Federation. Furthermore, within the consumed zones, physics are becoming... horribly flexible."
Mikhail Viktorovich shot a dark, searching look at his trembling aide.
"Failsafe reactors shut down due to complete logical collapse of automated algorithms," the Academician pressed on into the silence. "Electronic towers just… fall asleep. No electromagnetic pulse (EMP), no ionization signatures. Simply erasure of logic processing. But the organic impacts... people still connected on hardened underground landlines near Apatity are feeding us reports of profound sensory breakdown. Spatial dissonance. Vertical dimensions feeling condensed, distances between points becoming elastic."
"Mass localized hysteria," the President immediately offered the easiest psychological countermeasure, almost praying the man would grasp the lifeline. "Isolation dread brought on by power blackouts."
"If only," Kolyshev answered, his voice descending to a terrified whisper. "An independent local branch's physical camera drone recording from a remote drilling station in Norilsk was pulled from the regional subnet mere moments before that server blacked out. The video has been validated for structural anomalies by neural networks, meaning there are no digital alterations. Mr. President... the camera documented the primary drill shaft on the frozen tundra warping backward and physically bending forty degrees without stress fracturing the metal. An incoming logistical snow-tractor suddenly froze motionless in its tracks, with exhaust gas halted entirely in the air around it, before violently stutter-stepping twenty meters forward like skipping film. These are objective deformations of chronological sequence and physical properties, confined explicitly strictly to the state boundaries of our homeland."
Romanov remained statuesque by his desk. He looked at the immense map of Russia covering the expansive LCD wall, and for the first time in his brief tenure, the massive continental giant, spanning eleven time zones and hoarding the most immense natural fortifications in the world, seemed frighteningly hollow and fatally trapped. A suffocating cage mapped by geopolitics, executing its occupant using broken physics.
The president leaned down, his face dangerously close to the sensitive microphone embedded in his desk's wood surface. Every ounce of indecision vanished, stripped away by the sheer monolithic scale of the apocalypse hurtling toward them. He had a duty, absurd as the threat may be.
"Understood," Romanov's voice crystallized into absolute zero. The administrative bureaucrat had died; the war-time executive was breathing into the microphone. "Andrey. FSO will initiate 'Protocol Zarnitsa.' Move my operational administration down to Sector One immediately. You have three minutes."
The president turned his head back to the comm link. "Kolyshev, General Staff, whoever is still actively drawing breath and making tactical decisions over there: Implement total continuity contingencies—evacuation logic paths, high-altitude interceptions utilizing un-guided tactical assets... anything that lacks logic circuits and still functions. Isolate regional command so localized generals can authorize defense and containment on the fly."
"Mr. President..." Kolyshev stammered through the connection.
"Listen to me carefully, Pyotr Vladimirovich," Romanov cut him off ruthlessly. "I no longer care about reports every hour detailing what it isn’t. I require theories on what the hell it is, and mathematically what happens to the structural composition of a human city if that collapsing wave rolls straight into it. The Kremlin’s doors will lock in fifteen minutes. I will reconnect with you from deep command at 19:40. Retain contact with our collapsing borders for as long as they exist."
Romanov unceremoniously slammed the override switch, breaking the connection in an electric pop.
The large office rapidly cleared out as security operators implemented immediate deep-relocation contingencies. Finally alone for twenty fleeting seconds, the President took a deliberate walk back toward the bulletproof glass windows. Below him, oblivious to the fact that standard reality was unraveling in real time, Moscow still bathed beneath its warm glow, celebrating the encroaching twilight. Taxis honked beneath neon signs, pedestrians bustled in cheerful throngs preparing for the long May weekend.
An army couldn't reach them here. Economic sanctions had bounced off their colossal resilience. But they were facing an omnipotent, formless butcher equipped to alter existence, tearing down everything within their man-made frontiers with exact malice.
"A targeted physical distortion of a sovereign map," Mikhail Viktorovich muttered coldly into the echoing glass pane, an icy smirk catching the corner of his hardened face. His hand came down heavily upon the polished marble window-sill. The sudden, immense pressure of his knuckles snapped the underlying lacquer with a dry, sharp pop. "So be it. We will fight utilizing whichever fundamental realities we still command."
Far to the distant North, behind the serene crimson sunset washing over the Kremlin’s gleaming spires, an unfathomable geographic shadow continued dragging a creeping, invisible chaos straight towards the heart of the Moscow. Tomorrow's dawn promised an altogether different planet.
