Two months later.
The high summer of Montenegro softened into late August.
Valleys shimmered gold with drying hay, while mountains lay hidden beneath a veil of haze. In Cetinje, court life carried on in its usual circular rhythm, as though the world beyond the walls could never intrude—arguments over tariffs, taxes, petty rivalries between noble houses.
For Elias Kaine, these weeks had been a performance in restraint.
Where once he had spoken with bold authority, now his words came halved, clipped, muttered. Conversations that might have bent toward strategy and war he steered toward weather patterns, grain yields, or dull accounting. He laughed a little too loudly at the Baron's stale jokes. He lingered near the rear of the chamber, a shadow among ledgers and papers.
It worked.
The whispers cooled. The Prince's piercing gaze drifted elsewhere. Even the Baron began treating him less like a threat and more like reliable furniture—useful, but uninspiring.
Exactly as Elias intended.
Because while his public self dulled into mediocrity, the shadow-self was sharpening into steel.
At Zabljak, the transformation was absolute.
The second MCV had deployed above Nikšić, its skeletal frame unfolding into a hidden compound buried in pine ridges and cloaked with false façades. Within weeks it had sprouted barracks, refinery, ore silo, even a telegraph office.
Two refineries now fed the machine. Ore Miners clattered along mountain paths, carts groaning with copper and iron. Engineers tunneled galleries beneath the compound, carving secret vaults for reserves.
And the system rewarded the effort:
[Daily Credit Growth: 1,524]
But money was only a means. The true prize had finally arrived.
An army.
Two thousand strong.
No longer a handful of infiltrators masquerading in Montenegro's regiments, but a disciplined legion: riflemen, engineers, medics—missing only artillery for now. Elias trusted the Russians to provide plenty once war began, and if not, his own factories would eventually make up the shortfall.
What had begun as a few hundred men guarding the bases was now swelling into columns. Fresh recruits drilled under the eye of hardened veterans. They carried kit that made Balkan conscripts look like ragged peasants: forged muskets with standardized barrels, packs uniform in size, boots matched in cut. It was not quite a modern army, but close enough that any Ottoman regiment would feel the difference in the first exchange of volleys.
From a ridge, through Eagle Vision, Elias watched them train. Powder smoke drifted among the pines. Commands cracked across the lines. Volley fire thundered in synchronized bursts, three ranks deep.
For a moment, he felt the surreal weight of it—an exile from the twenty-first century, building an army in 1853, preparing for a war that history itself had not yet written.
And the war was close.
Telegraph wires thrummed with reports almost daily now:
[Intercept: Russian Troop Redeployment – Crimea][Intercept: Ottoman Mobilization – Danube Frontier][Intercept: British Fleet Sighted – Eastern Mediterranean]
The pieces were falling exactly as memory foretold. Russia would provoke. The Ottomans would resist. Britain and France would hurl themselves in, eager to check the Tsar. The Crimean War was only weeks—perhaps days—away.
That was the window.
Montenegro could not field an army without courting disaster. But Elias could. His legion would slip into the war disguised as Slavic volunteers. History would remember them, if it remembered them at all, as nameless auxiliaries. Elias knew better. They were the seeds of empire.
On the eve of departure, he summoned his officers into the war room beneath Zabljak.
They filed in without sound: veterans scarred by drill, engineers promoted for discipline, medics who had learned to wield scalpel and rifle alike. Fifty men, the spine of two thousand. Maps sprawled across the table, their corners pinned with ore ingots. Candlelight guttered across penciled lines—paths eastward through the passes, into Serbia, then south where Russian and Ottoman lines would clash.
"We will not march as Montenegrins," Elias told them. His voice was calm, deliberate. "The court must not know. You will call yourselves volunteers, sympathetic to the Tsar. But you answer to me. Always."
No one objected. Loyalty had long since been forged—part by system, part by Elias himself.
"Your mission is survival and distinction," he continued. "Strike when others falter. Hold when others break. Show the Russians what true discipline looks like. You are not two thousand scattered men—you are one legion. You are the Iron Hand. And soon enough, the world will feel your grip."
Dawn.
The valley above the base filled with men.
Two thousand in ranks, rifles gleaming in the sun. Engineers clustered near the rear, medics with white-banded arms along the flanks. The flags were plain—crosses and Slavic sigils, carefully stripped of Montenegrin identity.
Elias stood upon a rough wooden platform. The mountain wind tugged at his coat as he looked out across the sea of faces. He had never addressed soldiers before—not like this. His words in the past had been for boardrooms, for arguments. Now, they would decide morale in the crucible of war.
"Men of the Iron Hand," he began. His voice carried across the still air. "You march into a war the world believes belongs to kings and emperors. But it does not. It belongs to you."
A ripple passed through the ranks.
"The Tsar will call you volunteers. The Sultan will call you invaders. History may call you mercenaries. But I call you something else. I call you the first soldiers of a new age."
He let the silence linger before pressing on.
"You are not rabble. You are not conscripts. You are trained. You are disciplined. You are loyal. When others break, you will hold. When others falter, you will advance. The Iron Hand does not bend. It does not hesitate. It closes—and it crushes."
A murmur became a cheer, then a roar. Elias raised his hand, commanding silence once more.
"You will bleed. Some will not return. But every drop spilled lays the foundation for what comes next. For the day when this legion no longer hides in shadows. For the day the Iron Hand is known to the world—not as whispers, but as conquerors."
The roar surged again, echoing off the ridges until it shook the valley itself. Goats scattered. Stones tumbled loose down the slopes.
Elias let the sound wash over him. His army. His creation.
"Forward, Iron Hand," he commanded. "March to destiny."
Drums beat. Boots struck the earth in unison. The columns wound through the passes, banners snapping in the wind.
From the ridge, Elias watched them go, the realization settling deep in his chest.
The war was beginning. His war.
And history would never be the same again.