The gallows swayed in Bukhara. A teacher dangled from the rope, his crime not rebellion but writing Turkish words in Latin letters on a chalkboard. Russian soldiers jeered, forcing villagers to stare until dusk. When the crowd dispersed, Crescent Eyes agents slipped into the square and carved words beneath the corpse:
Biz Türküz. Biz bir milletiz.
We are Turks. We are one nation.
Within days, the report reached Istanbul. Selim laid it before the Sultan in silence. Abdulhamid read the account twice, his hands tightening on the parchment until it crumpled.
"The Tsar," he said at last, "has declared war not on men, but on letters. If he fears our script, then it is more powerful than his cannons." He handed the parchment back. "Strike at his officers. Strike at his supply lines. For every child he terrorizes, make his soldiers tremble in the dark."
Selim bowed low. "It shall be done."
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But while shadows moved eastward, the empire's heart was already reshaped by the decree Abdulhamid had proclaimed months before.
In Anatolia, primers printed in the new Turkish script arrived by the wagonload. Whole villages gathered when officials opened the crates, marveling at the bold letters. Teachers drilled children in classrooms hastily built of timber, their voices echoing words once foreign to them:
Ana. Vatan. Millet.
Mother. Homeland. Nation.
In Bursa, an Armenian boy stumbled over the words. His father, arms crossed, frowned in the doorway. "This tongue is not ours." But the teacher, under the protection of two soldiers at the door, only pointed back at the page. "It is the tongue of your Sultan, and the tongue of your children's future. Read."
The boy obeyed, halting at first, then stronger. The father's jaw tightened. He said nothing.
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In Mosul, another kind of scene unfolded. Arab conscripts drilled under the blazing sun, rifles on their shoulders. Their sergeant barked commands in Turkish, and those who hesitated were punished with lashes.
One young man spat defiantly, shouting in Arabic. The sergeant's whip cracked across his back. "You will answer in Turkish," he roared. "There is no Arabic here. There is only the Sultan's tongue."
Some cursed under their breath, but when the battalion marched at sunset, they marched in rhythm to Turkish commands. Their chants, rough and awkward, still formed Turkish words. The Crescent Eyes watching nearby noted it carefully: The army teaches faster than the schools.
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Resistance was real and fierce. In Diyarbakır, Kurdish aghas gathered their tribesmen, declaring they would not send children to "Turk schools." They burned crates of primers in a village square. In the Balkans, Greek priests whispered that the Sultan sought to erase their heritage. Pamphlets printed in Salonika condemned the reform as tyranny.
But Abdulhamid did not summon them for debate as he had once done. He sent soldiers. Schools reopened under guard. Teachers returned, escorted by rifles. In villages where aghas defied him, their lands were seized and redistributed to loyal families.
"This is no longer discussion," Abdulhamid told his council. "The time for persuasion has passed. Those who resist the empire's unity resist the empire itself. And I will treat them as I treat traitors."
The chamber fell silent. None dared answer.
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Posters now bloomed across the empire—on mosque walls, in marketplaces, even nailed to the doors of reluctant churches. Bold black script proclaimed:
Bir Millet. Bir Sultan. Bir Gelecek.
One Nation. One Sultan. One Future.
The Crescent Eyes reported that children recited the slogan like a prayer. Traders in Baghdad hung signs in Latin letters. Even reluctant priests found themselves reading Turkish notices aloud when their congregants asked what they said. Slowly, inevitably, the script seeped into every corner of daily life.
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But in the east, the Tsar struck harder.
Villages in Samarkand were burned. Russian patrols executed men found with primers, leaving their bodies in the streets as warnings. A mosque that had doubled as a school was torched, Qur'ans tossed into the fire.
Crescent Eyes retaliated in kind. A Russian colonel infamous for his brutality was found with his throat cut, his body slumped across his own desk. Supply caravans vanished into the desert, later reappearing in Turkic villages with food and books. Barracks awoke to find slogans carved into walls and banners unfurled at dawn: the crescent and star painted in blood.
The Tsar's officers called it rebellion. But Abdulhamid knew better. It was awakening.
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One night, Selim entered the Sultan's private study, carrying a bloodstained letter smuggled from Bukhara. Abdulhamid read it slowly:
"They burned our school. They hanged our teacher. But we still remember the letters. We still speak the tongue. Tell our Sultan that even if they kill us all, our children will write his words in the dust with their fingers."
Abdulhamid closed his eyes. He saw not just the Central Asian plains but the decades of his first life—Stalin's purges, Turkic names erased, voices silenced.
Not this time.
"This people will not be erased again," he whispered, so quietly even Selim almost missed it. "Allah has given me this chance, and I will not fail it."
He looked up, his voice steel. "Send word to the Crescent Eyes. The Tsar wants blood and ashes? Then let him choke on them. But never forget—the true war is not fought with knives, but with letters, with schools, with the tongue. Keep planting them. Even in ashes, seeds grow."
Selim bowed. "Yes, Majesty."
Yet even as ashes smoldered in the east, fire was kindling in the heart of the empire. Where Russian bayonets tore down schools, Ottoman hammers rose; where villages whispered lessons in secret, cities thundered with the clang of steel. Abdulhamid understood that shadows and letters alone could not secure the future—factories, oil, and railways must march beside them. And so, as Crescent Eyes waged their silent war in the steppes, the Sultan turned his gaze to Anatolia and Mesopotamia, where the forge of empire now awaited the spark.
Smoke rose above the Golden Horn, not from fires of ruin, but from furnaces roaring like beasts. The Imperial Arsenal thundered day and night, its hammers striking steel that rang across the city like war drums. The streets around the factory filled with workers—men once bound to plows, women who had never left their villages—now blackened with soot, their hands strong with industry.
Abdulhamid walked the factory floor flanked by Selim and a team of engineers. Sparks flew around him, furnaces glowed red-hot. A young apprentice, no more than fifteen, held up a rifle barrel he had just polished. The Sultan took it, inspecting the clean spiral grooves within.
"A fine bore," Abdulhamid said, handing it back. "The empire's enemies will one day hear this boy's work on the battlefield."
The engineers bowed deeply, pride lighting their soot-streaked faces. The Sultan knew this pride was as valuable as steel.
But even as factories grew, whispers of sabotage reached his ears. Foreign merchants in Smyrna funded strikes among dockworkers, spreading lies that the factories would "enslave" free men. In Bursa, a textile mill was set ablaze, its flames blotting the sky. The Crescent Eyes uncovered crates of English gold hidden in the cellars of agitators.
Abdulhamid's answer was swift. For every factory burned, three new ones were commissioned. Soldiers stood guard at gates, bayonets gleaming. Crescent Eyes infiltrated worker groups, unmasking traitors who served London or Vienna. When the textile mill in Bursa was rebuilt, the workers themselves volunteered to patrol it at night, carrying rifles supplied by the state.
"They thought to frighten us," Abdulhamid declared in the rebuilt hall. "Instead, they have given you the honor of guarding the empire's breath. Factories are not of iron and wood. They are of blood, sweat, and faith. They burn brighter than any fire."
The workers roared in reply.
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Far to the south, in the deserts of Mesopotamia, a different kind of fire was found. Black oil seeped from the ground near Mosul, coating the earth with its tar-like sheen. Villagers once cursed it as filth that poisoned wells. But Abdulhamid, with the foresight of centuries, saw an empire's future in those dark pools.
He dispatched engineers with secret orders: construct a refinery, guarded day and night by Crescent Eyes disguised as laborers. Officially, it was a "tar works" for road-building. Unofficially, it was the first refinery in the Islamic world.
Selim inspected the site himself, his cloak dusty from travel. He reported to the Sultan: "Majesty, the black fire burns hotter than coal. When fed to engines, it drives pistons stronger than steam."
Abdulhamid's lips curved in a rare smile. "Then let the world burn its coal. We will fuel the future with Allah's hidden gift."
But secrecy was vital. Britain's agents in Basra already sniffed around, bribing sheikhs for land rights. Abdulhamid ordered Crescent Eyes to spread rumors of plague in the region, deterring curious foreigners. Meanwhile, barrels of oil were quietly shipped north to Istanbul, where modified locomotives tested the fuel in silence.
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Assimilation continued alongside industry.
Newspapers in Latin Turkish flooded the provinces, their pages filled with patriotic stories. In Baghdad, a crowd gathered around a boy who read the latest paper aloud—something impossible only months before. The headline shouted:
Bir Millet, Bir Sultan, Bir Gelecek!
One Nation, One Sultan, One Future.
At the same time, sermons in mosques shifted. Imams received standardized booklets, instructing them to preach not only faith but unity. Friday prayers began with verses in Arabic, but the sermons ended in Turkish. The faithful at first blinked in confusion, but repetition carved new habits.
Resistance flared. A Kurdish imam in Diyarbakır refused, preaching in Arabic instead. Within days, he vanished, carried off by men no one dared name. The next Friday, another imam stood in his place, reading the sermon in Turkish. The lesson was clear.
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But foreign powers saw opportunity in discontent.
Russian agents fanned revolt in Central Asia, supplying rebels who opposed not the Tsar, but Istanbul's influence. British diplomats whispered to Arab notables that the Sultan meant to erase their language. French consuls courted Christian minorities with promises of "protection."
Even within Istanbul, ministers quarreled. Some begged caution. "Majesty, if we push too hard, the Balkans will erupt again. We cannot force Albanians and Greeks into Turks overnight."
Abdulhamid's answer was cold. "They erupt already. I offer them a place in the future. If they refuse, let them drown in the past."
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Then came the night of fire.
In Salonika, saboteurs set the new printing press ablaze. Flames consumed paper and ink, books curling into ash. Crowds gathered, some cheering, others weeping. The saboteurs melted into the night.
By dawn, Crescent Eyes had captured two men. Under interrogation, they confessed: agents funded with Austrian coin. The Sultan ordered their execution at the very site of the burned press. As their bodies swung, workers cleared the ruins. Within a month, a larger press rose in its place, fed by oil-fueled engines instead of steam.
Abdulhamid stood before it at its inauguration, voice ringing:
"They think to silence us with fire. But every book they burn, I will print a thousand more. Every press they destroy, I will build one greater. Words are fire, and fire spreads."
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Even as he spoke, letters from Central Asia arrived—bloodstained, desperate. Villages destroyed. Children orphaned. Yet within them, hope glimmered.
"We write your letters in the sand when our books are burned."
"We teach our children by whisper, when schools are destroyed."
"Tell our Sultan we will endure. Tell him we will live as Turks."
Abdulhamid read them alone, late at night, candles flickering. He remembered the future he had left behind—decades of silence, where no Turkic voice was heard east of the Caspian. He clenched the letters until wax dripped on his fingers.
Not again.
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The empire bled, but it also breathed fire.
Steel poured from factories. Oil filled barrels. Rail lines cut across Anatolia like veins of iron. Schools drilled Turkish into young minds. Soldiers marched in unison, no matter their birth.
Abdulhamid stood on the balcony of the palace, the city before him lit by factory chimneys and the glow of oil lamps. The Bosphorus shimmered in the dark. He raised his hand, rifle gleaming in it, the same steel forged by his people.
"We have shed blood in the Balkans. We have built in fire and ash. And now we march not as Greeks, not as Arabs, not as Kurds—but as Turks, united. Let Europe look upon us and tremble. Let the Tsar watch his empire rot from within. The age of ashes ends. The age of fire begins."
The crowd below roared, voices surging like thunder.
And in Central Asia, whispers spread of a Sultan who not only defended faith but gave his people a future, written in fire and letters. The Tsar's hangings, the burnings, the raids—none could silence the idea now.
The east was awakening.