As they stepped out of the Hofburg Palace, the midday sun had already begun to heat the cobblestones of Michaelerplatz.
The centuries-old palace complex shimmered beneath the light, each façade revealing the marks of seven hundred years of imperial power and transition. The Baroque dome of the Neue Burg gleamed with gilt trim, while the medieval tower of the Schweizerhof cast a somber shadow that stretched across the square.
Barely half an hour earlier, Shane had walked through Empress Elisabeth's private apartments—the gilt Rococo mirrors, the mother-of-pearl inlaid dressing tables, and the faint scent of lavender still lingered in his senses like an afterimage.
Catterson hailed a two-horse carriage by raising his gloved hand. The driver tipped his hat and drew the reins with a click. Inside, the carriage carried the faint fragrance of oiled leather and mahogany polish, mingled with the earthy smell of horse sweat.
"Where to next?" Catterson asked, unfolding a neatly printed city map he'd taken from the Bristol Hotel.
Shane glanced toward a bakery on the corner, its windows clouded with steam, the aroma of fresh bread drifting into the warm air. "Meldemannstraße," he said suddenly. "The Men's Asylum."
Catterson looked briefly surprised.
"I heard it's preserved much as it was twenty years ago," Shane explained. "A perfect example of early twentieth-century workers' housing."
The carriage rattled through the Innere Stadt, its wheels clattering rhythmically over the cobblestones. Outside, the Art Nouveau façades along the Ringstrasse gleamed in the sunlight—their floral curves and bronze balconies reflecting Vienna's long-lost optimism before the Great War.
In Shane's mind, the streets blurred into the grainy monochrome of an old documentary. He could almost see it: a thin, hungry young man in a threadbare coat, trudging through these same streets in the freezing winter of 1908, a portfolio of failed dreams under his arm.
Rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, the sting of humiliation had been sharper than the cold.
Did that downcast art student—Adolf Hitler—once stand at this very street corner, staring at the Hofburg's grand façade and imagining a different destiny?
The asylum on Meldemannstraße was plainer than Shane expected—a squat, gray-green building, its paint blistered by decades of frost. A rusted gas lamp hung over the narrow doorframe like a relic of a forgotten century.
Inside, an elderly caretaker was polishing a brass ledger clasp with a faded velvet cloth. His thin frame moved with habitual precision.
When Shane asked to see bed number twenty-seven on the third floor, the old man paused, his cloudy eyes narrowing with curiosity.
"Bed twenty-seven," he murmured. "Still as it was in 1910. Few visitors ask for that one."
The cast-iron staircase creaked under Shane's steps as he ascended. The corridor above was narrow, lined with rows of dark green doors, each with a brass number plate dulled by time but glowing faintly under the dim electric lights.
The room for bed twenty-seven smelled faintly of floor wax and stale bedding.
Four iron bunks stood in a cramped line. Between them, thin curtains hung like half-hearted partitions. The walls were yellowed and cracked, and the edge of the small wooden table bore darkened ink stains and splashes of dried paint.
Shane ran his fingertips over the wallpaper near the bed—its rough surface etched with shallow scratches, the kind left by restless hands.
"You seem unusually interested in this sort of place," Catterson said quietly from the doorway.
"Just curious," Shane replied. He withdrew his hand, the coarse dust still clinging to his fingertips.
He looked around the narrow space, the peeling plaster, the iron frame, the weary air of poverty.
Here, in this forgotten corner of Vienna, the seed of something monstrous had once been sown—an ideology born not of power, but of hunger, loneliness, and resentment.
A shaft of sunlight slipped through the grimy windowpane, scattering across the bedframe. Dust motes floated in its path, like fragments of a memory too stubborn to fade.
For a moment, Shane felt an eerie dislocation—as though he were both observer and participant in the same history he had once studied from the cold comfort of another life.
The bronze bells of St. Stephen's Cathedral struck noon as they left Meldemannstraße, their deep chime echoing through the narrow streets of Vienna's old city.
They walked in silence along the Ringstrasse, where chestnut trees cast broken shadows on the pavement. Passing the ornate façade of the Austrian National Library, Shane slowed to a halt.
Sunlight filtered through stained-glass windows, painting shifting patterns of red and blue on the marble floor.
"Can we look inside the ethnology section?" he asked softly at the grand information desk, his voice carrying a faint echo beneath the Baroque dome.
An elderly librarian with graying temples looked up from a ledger. Behind his round spectacles, his eyes reflected the calm of a man who had long watched generations of seekers pass through these halls—each chasing some forgotten truth.
"Of course," he said, rising with quiet dignity. "Follow me."
They passed beneath carved oak arches and along aisles lined with leather-bound volumes. Their footsteps echoed faintly across the parquet floor.
"This is the ethnology section," the librarian said, stopping beside shelves marked 'Ethnologische Studien – Slawische Sprachen.'
"Since the Imperial Council reforms of 1907, this has been a favored place for scholars studying questions of nationality and autonomy."
In the center of the reading room stood a long oak table, its surface worn smooth by decades of use. Deep scratches and ink stains marred the grain like scars of old arguments.
In Shane's imagination, ghosts began to gather there—a bearded Georgian revolutionary hunched over Marx's Das Kapital, while across the same table, a sharp-eyed exile scribbled notes on permanent revolution.
The air of 1908 still clung to the place, faint but palpable.
"Café Central?" Catterson asked as they stepped back into the sunlight. "We might as well try the Sacher torte while we're here."
They strolled down the Ringstrasse, chestnut leaves tumbling in slow spirals. Vienna moved at an unhurried pace, its trams rattling faintly in the distance, its charm undiminished despite the economic unease of postwar Europe.
Inside Café Central, the warm air smelled of coffee, tobacco, and sugar. The carved glass doors swung closed behind them, muffling the street sounds.
They took a window seat, and the afternoon light fell softly through lace curtains.
"Two Sacher tortes and a pot of Imperial coffee," Catterson told the waiter.
Outside, a newsboy was shouting headlines from the Neue Freie Presse. The bold type read: "BRIAND–KELLOGG PACT SIGNED — EUROPE OUTLAWS WAR."
Shane smiled faintly. "Outlaws war," he murmured. "How optimistic."
When the dessert arrived, he sliced gently through the chocolate glaze with his fork. The rich scent of apricot jam rose up, sweet and nostalgic.
And yet, beneath the sweetness, he tasted something bitter.
He thought of the grandeur of Hofburg, the suffocating dormitory at Meldemannstraße, the ink-stained table in the library. All pieces of the same century—each bearing witness to the fall of an old world and the birth of something far darker.
"The old world is dying," he said quietly. "And the birth of the new one will be far more violent than anyone imagines."
Catterson stirred his coffee thoughtfully. "You sound like one of those political pamphleteers."
"Maybe," Shane replied. "But history doesn't care what we believe. It always collects its due."
At the far end of the café, the pianist began to play The Blue Danube. The waltz floated through the room, gentle and melancholy.
Shane gazed at the embroidered pattern on the tablecloth, thinking of the future awaiting him back in New York—and the question that haunted him most: when history divided the world once more, on which side would he stand?