Oskar stood in the Kaiser's private office—an ocean of maps and polished wood, heavy with cigar smoke and something sharp and expensive that clung to the throat. Miniature ships crowded the shelves and the mantelpiece, little fleets frozen mid-voyage. Paintings of seas and storm-tossed hulls lined the walls like sermons.
And watching from above it all was Queen Victoria, stern in her frame—Wilhelm's grandmother—her painted eyes fixed on Oskar with the expression of a woman judging a disappointing descendant from beyond the grave.
Wilhelm II stood before the tall windows with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out into the night as if the world would behave if he glared at it hard enough.
He was exactly the contradiction Oskar remembered from documentaries and history books.
Majestic—until you noticed the stiff, unnatural angle of his arm.
Benevolent—until the fuse ran short.
Ambitious—always.
And somehow… chronically unlucky.
To Zhang Ge—now Prince Oskar—he looked like a man marching toward a cliff while insisting he could steer.
At the side of the room, Crown Prince Wilhelm lounged against the wall, arms folded, smiling like a man who had already decided how the evening would end.
Oskar kept his face blank and his mouth shut.
If this were a game, he thought, Wilhelm II was the boss you feared early—loud, confident, impossible to stagger—right up until the late stage, when the real monsters arrived and you watched him crumble.
The Kaiser didn't turn.
He didn't need to.
The room belonged to him.
"Oskar," he said, and the name cracked across the room like a rifle shot, "have you understood your assignment? Or must I repeat it—again? In one week you will report to the Kiel Naval Academy. It will shape your future… and perhaps," he added coldly, "teach you to behave like a proper son of this house."
Oskar's throat tightened.
He didn't catch everything. He never did. But he caught Kiel. He caught the tone. He caught the shape of the sentence: command, not discussion.
Four years.
Four years eaten by drills and etiquette and knots while the future sprinted toward catastrophe. Four years he needed for money, for connections, for influence—for anything that might keep Germany from stepping into history's bear trap with both feet.
He had to refuse.
Even if refusing meant striking a match in a room full of powder.
He drew a slow breath. Then another. He rehearsed the words in his head—German syllables clumsy as stones on his tongue.
He tried anyway.
"My man, I—" He caught himself instantly, heat climbing his neck. "Father… I… not go."
The room went still.
Not a theatrical stillness. A court stillness. The kind that meant everyone had heard him… and everyone was deciding what he had just made happen.
Wilhelm II turned his head by a fraction.
Not much. Just enough to aim the weight of the empire at one overgrown boy who didn't know the rules.
"What," the Kaiser said, very slowly, "did you say?"
Oskar's ears burned. He understood what and say. The rest might as well have been the growl of something in a cave.
He straightened anyway—tall, broad-shouldered, boots planted—forcing himself into the posture of a prince even when his brain was panicking like a cornered animal.
He had prepared a line. A hard line. A simple line. Something masculine and final.
His mouth betrayed him.
"I… will not… sail."
For half a heartbeat the world didn't move.
Then Crown Prince Wilhelm made a sound—half choke, half laugh—and smothered it behind his hand like a polite man hiding a sin.
The Kaiser's expression darkened, slow and heavy, like weather rolling in from the North Sea.
"Oskar!" the Crown Prince snapped, stepping forward with theatrical outrage, as if offended on behalf of every dead ancestor in every portrait. "This is Father's will—the will of the Emperor! You refuse your duty? You would shame the House of Hohenzollern?"
He spoke loudly. Cleanly. Perfect German.
Just enough elegance to make Oskar's crude sentence sound even worse.
Oskar stared at him, blank-faced.
He didn't understand most of it—but he understood the shape of it.
Humiliation. Public. Delicious.
And he understood, suddenly, why the Crown Prince was smiling.
Wilhelm II lifted a hand.
The Crown Prince stopped at once.
The Kaiser crossed to the desk in two measured strides and planted both hands on the wood.
The sound wasn't loud.
It didn't need to be.
"Oskar," Wilhelm II said, each syllable precise, voice low with control that felt more dangerous than shouting, "explain yourself."
Oskar realized, instantly, that this was bad.
No—worse than bad.
He needed a reason. A reason that wasn't the truth.
Not I know the future and you're all doomed.
Not I need money for ships that don't exist yet.
Not please don't let Germany collapse like melted ice cream.
His mind sprinted through German words and found only potholes. His vocabulary was a broken fence; anything important leaked out.
So he did the one thing you never did with a man like Wilhelm II.
He tried honesty.
"Father…" Oskar began, and even saying the word felt wrong in his mouth—like wearing someone else's underwear. But he pushed forward anyway, because there was nowhere else to go.
"You see, I have big dreams," he said slowly. "Like… Alexander the Big."
He tapped his chest once, as if his ribcage could translate for him.
"My destiny is too big, and school is too small."
He swallowed, tried to build another sentence.
"Yes, you see. I want to make big things. For small men. Make monkeys, so debt go flying away for nation. Then we make… boom-boom. You will like, happy day's ahead."
He heard it as he said it.
It sounded like a caveman explaining philosophy.
For a heartbeat, both the Kaiser and the Crown Prince simply stared—like they'd been handed a letter written in mud.
Then Wilhelm II's face began to change.
Red.
Darker.
Then a color that belonged on warning flags and battlefield maps.
"Enough!" Wilhelm II said, voice trembling—not with confusion, but with contained rage, "Oskar you are a prince of the German Empire. Your future is service. Duty. Honor. Your brothers accepted theirs without question—and so will you!"
He slammed his fist onto the desk.
Ink jumped. A glass trembled.
"Or do you intend to dishonor our name?" the Kaiser snapped. "Do you even understand what you are doing? I warn you Oskar, if you do not go to the Academy and learn to behave like a normal prince again, then I will have no choice but to place you under house arrest until you stop humiliating us!"
Oskar's stomach tried to climb out of his body.
Abort. Abort. Abort.
His face stayed still—too still. The blank princely mask he used whenever he didn't understand half the room and hoped nobody noticed.
Beside him, Crown Prince Wilhelm looked like he was about to die from laughter.
"This," the Crown Prince murmured, almost kindly, "is the point where you apologize, little brother."
Oskar knew he should fold. He knew he should nod and say yes and pretend obedience.
But he looked at the two men—both shorter than him, both so confident in a world he knew would burn—and something stubborn in him refused to bend.
So he doubled down.
And his mouth—traitorous, suicidal—reached for the only "strong" line it could find.
"I will not kneel," Oskar said, slow and firm. "Real men build their own bridges."
It landed in the room like a dropped plate.
The Crown Prince's shoulders shook. He had to cover his mouth.
The Kaiser went very still.
When Wilhelm II spoke again, his voice was quieter—and somehow that was worse.
"Oskar," he said, "you have disappointed me. Deeply."
He stepped closer, gaze hard.
"I had hoped you were practicing to become a proper prince again. But it seems you have spent your time accumulating muscle instead of intellect."
There it was.
Not just an imperial judgment—something heavier. The cold weight of a father's disgust, wrapped neatly in the language of duty.
Oskar felt it hit his chest like a physical blow.
He had expected this moment.
He just hadn't expected to detonate it with a badly translated action-movie quote.
The Kaiser straightened, every inch the man in portraits.
"Prince Oskar of Prussia," he declared, "you will report to the Kiel Naval Academy in one week. You will remain there for four years. You will return only with my permission."
His eyes pinned Oskar like a nailed insect.
"And until the day you leave, you will be confined to this palace. Do you understand?"
Oskar dipped his head.
He wanted to scream: I'm trying to save this empire.
But he didn't trust his German not to turn that into something stupid.
So he said nothing.
Silence was safer for now.
Wilhelm II dismissed him with a sharp wave, as if swatting away a fly that had learned to speak.
"Oskar. OUT."
Oskar turned stiffly and walked toward the door.
Two steps.
Then—because the universe hated him—one last line slipped out on instinct, in the same stupid tone he used on servants and soldiers and anyone he wanted to reassure.
"…I'll be back."
The Crown Prince made a strangled sound.
The Kaiser's eye twitched.
Oskar didn't wait to see whether the room decided to laugh or execute him. He left.
And, on the way out, he hit his head on the doorframe.
Hard enough that the sound echoed.
Perfect.
Outside the study, the corridor was quiet—guards standing like statues, faces politely blank, pretending they hadn't heard the entire imperial meltdown.
Karl stood against the wall with his arms folded, wearing the expression of a man watching a carriage roll directly toward a cliff.
One look at Oskar's face told him everything.
"So," Karl said dryly, "how many centuries of Hohenzollern heritage did you insult this time?"
Oskar exhaled, long and hollow.
"All of them."
Karl patted his arm with the solemnity of a priest.
"Well. Good news: you have a week before they ship you off to sailor-school. Bad news: you'll be locked in here until then."
Oskar groaned.
Karl nodded as if confirming a medical diagnosis.
"Don't worry," he said. "I'll smuggle you snacks from the world beyond these walls. And perhaps a book titled How Not To Speak Like a Cursed Statue."
Oskar stared into the middle distance, eyes empty, voice grave.
"Failure… is not an option."
Karl blinked once.
"Oh, excellent," he said. "Another one-liner."
He sighed.
"We're all doomed."