CHAPTER 4: Bones and Bells

Skulls, Souvenirs, and St. Stephen’s Cathedral

We did what any pair of impulsive, under-caffeinated investigators would do when facing the weight of a possible international conspiracy.

We went to church.

Not just any church. St. Stephen’s Cathedral. The jagged, gothic monster planted in the center of Vienna like a rusted blade through time. Its spire claws the sky at 136 meters, and it looks less like a house of worship and more like a medieval panic attack built out of obsidian and guilt. No part of it says peace. Every inch says, God is watching. And He’s not thrilled.

We didn’t speak much as we walked toward it. Just that quiet trudge of two people trying to remember how to exist in a place that doesn’t know them yet. The city was awake—barely. Trams hummed. Shop signs flickered. The cold air stung. And then we turned the corner, and there it was.

St. Stephen’s doesn’t appear so much as arrive—like it’s pushing back against the skyline itself. It's not just big. It's brutal. Covered in ornate stonework, sharp angles, and a roof tiled so meticulously it feels smug. The whole structure looks like it’s on the verge of cracking open and whispering something that will unravel you.

So naturally, we decided to climb it.

I don’t know how many steps there were. The official number is 343. It felt like ten thousand. The stairwell is narrow. The air is stale. The walls curve and press. It’s a spiral, which means you can’t see where you’ve been or where you’re going—just the next step. Always the next step.

Around step 50, I questioned the decision.

Around step 100, I questioned my sanity.

Around step 200, I stopped questioning and started bargaining with a god that didn't give two shits about the pain in my quads

By the time we reached the top, my legs were shaking, my lungs were wheezing, and the blood in my head had formed a high-pitched scream I could only hear when I stood still.

And then I looked out.

Vienna.

All of it. Laid out beneath us like a warning. So neat. So precise. So old. It didn’t shimmer. It didn’t sparkle. It loomed. This was not a city trying to impress you. This was a city that had already buried empires and was willing to wait for yours.

I leaned against the stone wall and stared. The rooftops, the ring roads, the baroque daydreams—it all blended into one vast, unmoving truth: we were not in control of any of this.

There was no sound. Not really. Just the occasional cough from another tourist realizing too late they’d made a grave mistake in footwear.

Eventually we descended.

Slower this time. Silent. Not out of reverence, but because something about the view had taken our voices with it.

At the bottom, we found the line for a tour of the catacombs. We didn’t even speak to each other. Just walked down the stairs into the bowels of the cathedral.

If the tower was all about perspective, the catacombs were about proximity.

Skulls. Femurs. Stacked. Disorganized. Sterile and endless. Bones from plague victims. Priests. Royal weirdos. Tourists gasped. The guide whispered. Everything echoed.

I made eye contact with a skull. I don’t know whose. It didn’t matter. The room was full of them. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. One on top of another, laid to rest, moved, stacked, forgotten, rediscovered, sanitized, monetized. Death on display. Neat death. Labeled. Tour-ready.

It hit me somewhere between chambers—right in the chest, like a dropped elevator.

We weren’t in a cathedral. We were in a filing cabinet for the dead.

And not just any dead—the kind who built things. Burned things. Ruled. Fled. Hid. Prayed. Died again in memory.

We climbed back out into the sunlight wordless.

Not because we were spooked. But because the contrast was too much. Above, the city buzzed. Tourists laughed. Below, it was all still there—just older. Just quieter.

And maybe that’s why we came here first.

Not to find answers.

But to remember the stakes.

We were chasing something that had roots in the Cold War, fingers in a thousand graves, and a pulse that might still be beating under the surface. Vienna knew. St. Stephen’s knew.

And now, so did we.

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