The Winter Palace gleamed like a jewel carved from frost, but Mikhail knew it was hollow. Behind every gilded door and polished marble hall lay rot: mismanagement, graft, incompetence. If the Empire was a colossus, it was one standing on termite-eaten stilts.
And now, he had a key to its foundation.
Count Orlov's intervention had paid off. Nicholas I, freshly crowned and still insecure, was eager to show he could outwit the ghost of his brother. A shadowy advisor with no factional allegiance—only results—was exactly what the Tsar needed.
Mikhail's official title: Deputy Secretary of Imperial Economic Affairs.
Unofficially: the man quietly editing the Empire's future, one policy at a time.
His office was a modest affair—books, charts, ledgers stacked high—but it pulsed with potential. Through a cleverly modified pneumatic tube system (an idea borrowed from his past life), he received filtered reports from Orlov's agents and honest bureaucrats willing to play the long game.
He introduced reforms in whispers:
Audits on state monopolies.
Standardized rail tariffs.
Minor tax incentives for industrial workshops in Moscow and Kazan.
Small changes. Easy to ignore. But they bled into the bloodstream of the state.
[System Update: Economic Node Activation – Proto-Industrial Framework Established] [New Feature Unlocked: Infrastructure & Industry Panel I] [Influence +10 | Innovation Points +25 | Legacy Points +100]
He worked long hours and cultivated longer shadows. Rumors swirled: that he was a bastard, a heretic, a foreign agent. But with each success, a new nickname caught on among the younger clerks:
The Iron Clerk.
One afternoon, a letter arrived sealed in white wax. The handwriting elegant and sharp.
To the young man taming old lions,I wish to meet. You and I are not so different.—Catherine Volenskaya
He froze.
The name was infamous. Catherine Volenskaya—granddaughter of a Polish rebel, daughter of a disgraced general, now the headmistress of a finishing school in Kiev rumored to be a front for a radical salon.
She wasn't just a firebrand. She was dangerous.
[System Notice: Political Event Triggered – Meeting with Catherine Volenskaya] [Choice: Accept Secret Rendezvous | Gain Access to Revolutionary Circles] [Decline and Investigate Her from Afar | Safer, Slower, Less Impact]
Mikhail smirked.
"I'm not here to play safe."
[Choice Selected: Accept Rendezvous] [New Faction Discovered: Slavic Reformist Coalition] [Hidden Agenda Track Activated: The People's Will]
That night, he left the palace in civilian garb, bound for Kiev.
He would meet the woman who saw through his masks.
And either forge a new alliance...
Or court destruction.