Reincarnated: Vive La France-Chapter 163: "You burned the town, but the square still speaks of him."
Chapter 163: "You burned the town, but the square still speaks of him."
Across the scorched hills of Castilla, smoke still spread in the air, yet the speed of conquest marched forward.
The Unified Column was gone.
Its bones scattered beneath the rubble of Alborán.
The final roar had faded into embers, and Spain trembled beneath the boots of the tanks advance.
In a half-burnt villa outside Cuenca, General Heinz Guderian unfolded a map over a oak table.
Aide-de-camps hovered nearby as Franco entered the room, his polished boots clicking sharply across the stone floor.
"The road to Madrid is clear," Guderian said without looking up. "Valencia fell faster than anticipated."
Franco examined the map, fingers brushing over Alborán’s still-smoking outline. "Then there is no one left to resist."
"No one," Guderian spoke. "But stories."
Franco raised an eyebrow. "Stories don’t shoot back."
"But they linger. And they inspire."
At that moment, a young German officer stepped in briskly, saluting.
"General, reports from the Teruel region. Repeating graffiti discovered. Same message, different towns."
He unfolded a stained sheet of paper.
He fought fire with one hand. We hold with both.
Guderian scanned it, frowning.
He crumpled the paper and tossed it into the fireplace.
"Paint over it. Again."
All across Spain, they tried.
But the stories moved faster than orders could.
In Valencia, a mother clutched her child’s hand and pointed to a wall marked with a black lion, painted by candlelight.
"He stood alone so we would not have to."
In Zaragoza, schoolchildren scratched drawings into the dirt.
One held up a notebook to a passing Falangist patrol.
Inside a rough sketch of a man with a cane and rifle, one eye closed.
The soldier slapped the book to the ground.
"You will forget that name!"
The child picked it up.
"But I already remember it."
In Granada, an old Republican veteran, chained in a prison cell, growled at his guards.
"You burned the town, but the square still speaks of him."
Yet for all the whispers, no army came.
Resistance was scattered, broken, uncertain.
In the outskirts of Barcelona, remnants of POUM argued in candlelit basements.
"We need a plan," hissed one.
"We need a leader," another muttered.
A teenage girl with a scar across her cheek tapped her pistol against the table.
"We need Moreau."
Silence fell.
"He’s gone," someone murmured.
"Maybe," the girl said. "But his way isn’t."
In Madrid, deep beneath the crumbling surface, families huddled in metro stations repurposed as bunkers.
Radios buzzed with noise.
"Columnist cells sighted near Alicante." freeweɓnovel.cѳm
"White armbands seen in Segovia."
"A man in Toledo walks with a limp and commands with fire."
A wounded militia captain turned to the others.
"He stood for us. Now we crawl for him."
Above ground, the war marched on.
Franco’s troops moved like a black tide.
Italy’s air force scorched coastal ports.
German armor cut roads and encircled mountain paths.
In Salamanca, within a cold granite fortress, Mussolini’s envoys passed cigars and clinked glasses.
"The Republic is breathing its last," one toasted.
General Roatta laughed, lifting his drink. "To the final ghost. Buried. Burned."
Guderian remained by the map, pensive.
An aide approached quietly.
"Sir, nothing from Alborán. Still no remains."
Guderian nodded, distracted.
"Then he isn’t dead. Not until I see the corpse myself."
In Paris, silence was the loudest sound.
General Beauchamp entered the chamber of the French Assembly, his coat soaked from rain.
Deputies spoke in whispers, newspapers clutched like shields.
Deputy Armand looked up as Beauchamp passed.
"So," he said flatly, "the fable ends."
Beauchamp didn’t respond.
Armand continued. "The man turned soldiers into a poem. Now the poem is over. Time to return to reality."
Beauchamp paused, his gaze a blade. "He made brothers of rivals. And they died not as fools, but as believers."
Armand smirked. "They died all the same."
"Then I pity you," Beauchamp whispered.
"Because that means nothing in you ever lived."
In London, Winston Churchill stood at a fogged window, report in hand.
Unified Column presumed destroyed. Charles Moreau missing. Fascist forces at 62% control of Spain.
Churchill tapped the paper. "The French were fools to let him burn alone. He was their best field mind in decades."
"He was difficult to manage," the aide said.
"So was every man who ever saved a nation," Churchill muttered.
Across the Atlantic, New York ran the headline in black bold ink.
Moreau Vanishes as Spain Falls.
President Roosevelt sat at his desk, spectacles low on his nose.
He tapped the page twice, thinking.
"Send a message to Paris," he said.
"To who, sir?"
"Anyone with a conscience. Ask if they plan to build a monument."
"And if not?"
Roosevelt looked up. "Then tell them America will."
On Spanish soil, the myth rose more with time.
In Tarragona, a teacher pulled a child aside for drawing a lion on the wall.
"Why do you draw this again and again?"
The child looked up. "Because he fought with no flag. Only fire."
Elsewhere, Falangist troops stormed a cellar near Valencia.
On the walls, dozens of messages had been etched.
One eye sees the dead. The other sees the fire to come.
Another read.
Never kneel. Not again.
In the mountain ranges above Burgos, whispers spread of men and women calling themselves Columnists.
They wore white cloth bands, scratched three claw marks into walls, and refused surrender.
In the valleys, captured radio broadcasts began appearing.
One signal repeated each night.
The ghost is silent.
But the ground still shakes.
In Paris, Beauchamp received a small parcel with no return address.
Inside a burned silver coin and a single line of handwriting.
He still walks.
Deep underground, in a bunker whose blueprints no longer existed, a man leaned over a shortwave receiver.
His shoulder was wrapped tight.
His hand trembled as he adjusted the dial.
A woman’s voice came through the crackling static.
"They say he’s gone. But my dreams remember his footfalls."
In Castellón, a child repainted a lion that had been whitewashed away.
He was not a man.
He was a decision.
And as Franco’s banners spread and Fascist boots trampled what was left of the Republic, something beneath the silence whispered back.
He was not their last leader.
He was their first legend.
