Glass shards glittered across the carpet like ice.
A vase lay in pieces by the door. A chair was on its side, one leg snapped. Papers were scattered everywhere, ink splashed across a family photograph where a much smaller, thinner Oskar still smiled beside his brothers.
Crown Prince Wilhelm stood in the middle of the wreckage, chest heaving.
Another report. Another success. Another day where everyone whispered the same name with admiration and awe.
Oskar.
First the navy. Then the shipyards. Then the factories, the workers, the books, the comics.
And now, even the army—his army—had begun to soften toward the Fifth Prince.
To Wilhelm, it felt like a noose tightening around his neck one polite handshake at a time.
He grabbed the nearest object—a crystal decanter—and hurled it into the fireplace. It shattered with a satisfying crack, but the rage in his chest barely moved.
Three years ago, he thought he had solved this problem.
He could still see it if he closed his eyes: a narrow palace stairwell, their footsteps echoing. Fifteen‑year‑old Oskar in front of him, tall for his age but still soft, still useless. No medals, no achievements, no inventions. Just a pretty, disappointing boy trailing behind his brothers.
No one had been watching.
On impulse—or spite, or curiosity, he still wasn't sure which—Wilhelm had given a hard shove between the shoulders.
He'd expected a stumble. A frightened look. Maybe a bruised knee and a lesson learned.
Instead, Oskar had gone down like a felled tree, head striking stone with a sickening crack.
Blood had pooled beneath that still, pale face.
For a few frozen seconds Wilhelm was sure he was staring at a corpse.
He'd reacted instinctively, quickly:
Oskar had "tripped."
The servants believed it. The doctors, after being called too late, had believed it. Even Mother hadn't questioned it—she hadn't even stayed. No one wanted to sit beside the bed of a useless, dying son.
Only the maid Tanya had remained, weeping and praying.
There had been no pulse.
Wilhelm was certain.
And yet—
After hours of lying there like a broken doll, Oskar had opened his eyes.
Not the same eyes.
Wilhelm had gone to the bedside once with a knife hidden in his sleeve, intending to finish what he'd started before the boy could recover and speak. But when he leaned over and hissed, "Time to die, Oskar," the boy had just blinked up at him and grinned stupidly.
"My man," he'd said. "Nice day."
Not fear. Not accusation. Just that strange, unfamiliar slang and an easy smile.
Wilhelm had backed away then. Killing him in his own bed, with guards and servants having seen him enter, was madness. And besides…
That wasn't the same Oskar anymore.
For a year after, Oskar had been a joke—a shambling embarrassment calling people "my man," training in the gardens, eating like a madman, scribbling incomprehensible diagrams in some foreign script and then in ugly, barely legible German. Everyone laughed. The more ridiculous the Fifth Prince became, the more perfect Wilhelm looked in comparison.
He finished his studies. He married well. He drilled with the army, built connections, played his role.
He was the Crown Prince. The future Kaiser. The safe choice.
And then, without warning, the joke stopped being funny.
The scrawny little brother turned into a nearly two‑meter wall of muscle.
The idiot with strange speech suddenly started pouring out inventions that no one else in Europe could even imagine:
new engine layouts for battleships
triple turrets
synthetic fibres like "nylon"
plans to make oil and rubber from coal and plants
Any one of these things would have made a normal man a legend.
Oskar tossed them out between gym sessions and baby care.
Wilhelm's lip curled.
He had tried, in his own way, to imitate it. He'd sat at his own desk, trying to think of a new weapon, a new engine, a book—anything that could rival First Aid for Dummies, German Man, or those damn houses and lotteries. But he had no idea where to even start.
How does one just invent a new engine? Or a new material? Or a fully formed children's book full of medical knowledge?
It didn't make sense.
And then there were the children.
Three little miracles with unnatural hair and eye colours—violet, silver, pale gold—nothing like Oskar himself, nothing like anyone else he could find in all of Berlin. Wilhelm had quietly sent people to look. There were no such men or women with those features in Germany. None.
It felt wrong.
Unnatural.
Unholy.
His thoughts circled back, again and again, to the same moment: Oskar lying dead at the foot of the stairs, and then rising again.
He died. I know he died. So what, exactly, woke up in his body?
The first time the thought came, he dismissed it as madness.
The fiftieth time… it started to feel like truth.
"Oskar," Wilhelm muttered, breathing hard, staring at the smiling face in the cracked family photograph. "You're no brother of mine. You're a demon wearing his skin."
He clung to the idea because it made everything easier:
Oskar's impossible strength. His flood of inventions. His unnatural children. His charisma with the people.
If Oskar was possessed—if some devil had crawled into him the night he "returned from the dead"—then Wilhelm wasn't a jealous brother.
He was a chosen instrument of God.
The one man willing to do what must be done.
His hands stopped shaking.
Slowly, an eerie calm settled over him.
Crown Prince Wilhelm sat down at his desk, pushed aside the broken glass, and dragged out a fresh sheet of paper.
His quill hovered for a moment.
Then he began to write.
A short letter. Polite, on the surface. Urgent, between the lines.
It was addressed to Schwerin in Mecklenburg—to his father‑in‑law, Grand Duke Frederick Franz III. The estate there had men who understood "delicate matters." Hunters. Veterans. Officers without scruples.
Wilhelm didn't write Oskar's name directly.
He spoke of a "threat." A "corrupting influence." Someone who must be "removed quietly for the sake of the Empire."
He sealed it with wax, hands steady now, and summoned his most trusted confidant.
"This must reach my father‑in‑law personally," he said. "No one else. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Your Highness."
When the door closed and he was alone again, Wilhelm walked to the window.
Night pressed against the glass, heavy and black. Somewhere out there, in Berlin, Oskar was no doubt kissing his golden children goodnight, embraced by two beautiful maids who should never have been allowed near a prince's bed.
Wilhelm clenched his fists.
"Oskar must die this time," he whispered to his reflection.
"Only when he is gone will Father stop using him to shame me. Only then will my throne be safe."
He repeated it several times, like a prayer, until the last traces of hesitation faded from his face.
Then another thought crept in. A sweeter one.
All that wealth.
All those factories, shipyards, shops, books, lotteries.
The vast river of money flowing through Oskar's hands.
"If he dies without a will," Wilhelm murmured, "Father will control it all. And after him… I will. With that money, I can fund the navy properly. Buy the army the best guns, the best railways, the best uniforms. Once I hold the purse strings, they will all support me."
His voice grew brighter, almost feverish.
"In the next war, I will crush the British, the French, the Russians. I will go down in history greater than Frederick the Great, greater even than Alexander. The world will remember my name."
And after a moment, darker still:
"And once Oskar is gone… his women will be mine to "save," their children wiped away. No more mockery of God's order. No more demonic spawn."
He could see it all so clearly in his mind—
the grieving Emperor, robbed of his favorite son;
the righteous Crown Prince, stepping forward to "comfort" Tanya and Anna;
the nobles and generals rallying around him as he poured Oskar's stolen fortune into ships and guns;
the priests preaching that the demon prince was punished and the empire cleansed.
Wilhelm laughed softly.
Then louder.
Until the sound echoed off the walls, half‑triumph, half‑madness.
In his own mind, the decision was made.
He was no longer just a jealous brother scheming in the dark.
He was convinced he had found his calling:
to kill a demon, seize his gifts,
and save Germany in the process.
Whether the rest of the world agreed…
…would be a question for another day.