Time rolled toward winter.
By late October, the air over Berlin and Potsdam had turned sharp and cold, though snow had not yet settled. The trees in the city parks were painted in yellow and brown; their leaves clung stubbornly to branches or crunched underfoot on the avenues.
For once, Oskar's pace had slowed.
Not because he wanted rest,
but because his money had finally, firmly said "no."
Despite the enormous profits pouring in from books, board games, comics, the lottery, safety equipment, beauty products, and motorcycles, the Oskar Industrial Group was expanding faster than even its own success could comfortably fund.
His first synthetic plant was still under construction, and he already had plans for seven more. German Energy was buying ships and building tanks. Volksbau needed capital. Muscle Motors wanted more factories. Greenway wanted more forests. The railway acquisitions quietly swallowed cash like hungry animals.
Even with nearly incomprehensible income, Oskar's ledger had begun to look… tight.
He took it as a good sign.
The main pillars of his world-changing plan were now in place, or at least outlined in foundations:
Consumer goods touching everyday life
Health, beauty, safety, fitness
Steel, engines, oil, housing, trains, ships
And beneath it all, a very Oskar-specific logic:
First strengthen Germany,
especially ethnic Germans,
then use that strength to slowly pull the rest of the world toward a single shared language and, hopefully, less reason to kill each other.
In Austria–Hungary, he'd already begun to expand — not just exporting goods, but setting up branches where the only real hiring criteria were:
no criminal record,
ability to speak German fluently,
Protestant or Catholic background.
He saw it as generosity with a plan:
"If you want the benefits, join the team.
My team is Germany.
If you become German, I will treat you like family."
He genuinely believed that to help the world, he had to help his "own" people first.
You fix the home before you fix the neighbourhood.
Language was the crux.
In his old world, almost everyone knew at least a little English.
Here, he quietly hoped that perhaps everyone might one day know at least a little German.
Especially in Austria–Hungary, where too many tongues had led to too many misunderstandings and too little unity. If he could get them speaking German as a shared second language, maybe, just maybe, life and war would be less disastrous.
But as fast as he tried to push the world forward, reality pushed back through ledgers and bank statements.
So, bit by bit, Oskar was forcing himself to step back from daily crisis mode and let the professionals handle things — managers, engineers, administrators, and of course Karl.
That gave him time to return to one smaller obsession that had haunted him ever since that freezing, miserable train ride where he'd saved a little girl from choking on bread.
The railways.
He wasn't ready to rebuild the entire system — not yet — but he could start buying.
Through carefully constructed shell companies and quiet negotiations, he had begun acquiring shares in private railway companies. In each case, his target was the same: at least 60%.
Enough to control their boards.
Enough to force through upgrades:
warmer third-class carriages,
better lighting,
safer brakes,
standardized couplers,
reliable timetables.
Trains that didn't treat poor families as cargo.
Shareholders were generally cooperative. They all knew that having their lines absorbed into the Oskar Industrial Group meant access to:
new technology,
unquestioned advertising power,
and the halo of Oskar's popularity.
Even if they held fewer shares, those shares might soon be worth far more.
From the window of the German Welfare Lottery headquarters — now effectively the nerve center of the Oskar Industrial Group — Oskar could look out past Karl's overburdened desk and see the Brandenburg Gate of Potsdam standing proud in the distance.
He liked that view.
He liked imagining his trains gliding through that city, warm and bright, full of people who didn't hate their journey.
He was still lost in the vision when reality struck him in the shoulder.
Or rather, a ballpoint pen did.
The pen bounced off his coat, leaving a thin mark.
Oskar blinked and looked up.
Karl was standing in his high chair behind his own desk, face twisted in outrage, one little hand still outstretched from the throw.
"That's it!" Karl burst out. "Enough is enough, Oskar! I am done with this back-breaking work every damned day!"
He slammed both palms on his desk, making papers jump.
"I'm hungry, I'm tired, and I have a pregnant wife at home who is asleep in our bed without me!"
Oskar set his own pen down slowly, scratching his chin.
"But Karl, my little man… while we've bought a good portion of the private rail network, it's still nothing compared to the state lines. Father refuses to modernize them because he says it's too expensive. And we don't have spare funds at the moment either."
He brightened suddenly.
"So I was thinking — maybe we should finally write that book about the forbidden love between a teenage girl and a thousand-year-old vampire, plus a jealous werewolf. We could call it The Eternal Lover—"
"Absolutely not!" Karl roared.
He clambered up onto his desk and stomped his boots on the wood like a furious toy soldier.
"That idea is insane! I am not allowing something so weird to be published under your name. It would ruin you! No decent woman is going to like that, and no decent man either. If anything, write German Man, Volume 3 about him taking the fight under the earth. Not some ridiculous undead love triangle!"
Oskar looked mildly offended.
In his past life, the Twilight books had made ridiculous amounts of money.
Surely in this era too, readers would lap up overdramatic romance between a brooding immortal, a moody wolf, and a confused human girl.
He flipped through a financial report instead and grinned as a thought hit him.
"But my little man," he said, "doesn't this paper say we have another ten million marks coming from the USA on Monday? Couldn't we use some of that to at least let the writers test the idea? I promise the women will love a vampire romance. And we can adapt it! Make the vampire Vlad the Impaler, the werewolf an Ottoman sultan, and the girl a beautiful village orphan who reads a lot, knows herbs, and tries to cure the vampire's curse so they can live happily ever after—"
Karl's face went grey.
"No!" he shouted. "I want food, not heresy! If I don't eat soon and drink something hot and fall into a bed, I swear I will jump off this desk to my death!"
Oskar looked at the desk, then at the thick carpet beneath.
"…Is that even physically possible?" he wondered aloud.
Karl marched to the edge, toes peeking over.
Oskar moved faster than he usually bothered to. He crossed the room, scooped Karl up like a child, and cradled him against his chest.
"Don't do anything rash, Karl. Fine, fine — we'll go home," he said, laughing.
Karl preened.
"Good. Now put me down."
A short time later, both of them were wrapped in warm cloaks, the office lights turned off, the guards given a nod on the way out.
The streets outside were dark and cold.
"All right, my man," Oskar said, stretching his arms as his breath fogged the air, "let's walk home and get in some free cardio."
Karl shuffled after him, muttering.
"We are the richest… poorest… men in Germany," he grumbled. "Everyone thinks you're a genius tycoon, and we can't even afford a carriage. All our workers ride your motorcycles; I don't even have enough money left to buy one. Our employees have bigger savings than we do!"
Oskar laughed and slowed so Karl could catch up.
"Remember, my man," he said, placing a heavy hand on Karl's head in consolation, "one mark might sound small. But if you waste one mark every day, it becomes a lot over years. If you save one mark every day, it becomes enough for big investments. Then those investments make more money. Then more investments. That's how you grow wealth."
Karl scowled.
"And what's the point of all that if we never use any of it on ourselves?"
"At least the companies' assets are doing well," Oskar said brightly. "And as for that ten million coming from America—"
Karl's eyes lit up.
"Yes? New coat? New uniform? A motorcycle that you promise not to give away?"
Oskar grinned.
"I'll invest it in railcars, so people don't freeze to death on long journeys. And hopefully, you'll support me with your share again like last time. Right?"
Karl deflated.
Of course he would.
Oskar was dear to him. He'd give up almost anything for the mad prince with the endless plans. He just wished, sometimes, that Oskar understood how much he had already done — and that it might be all right to stop at some point.
As if reading his thoughts, Oskar added quietly:
"My man, you know I can't rest until I see 28 July 1914 come and go without fire. If that day passes peacefully, then I'll know I did something right. For now, the world still crawls toward war almost exactly as I remember it. So my work isn't done."
Karl argued, as he always did, that Oskar was doing too much and would break himself at this rate.
In the end, Oskar agreed to "calm down for the rest of the year" —
as long as he could still sneak in a few railway car upgrades.
They walked in silence for a while.
Before long, they reached the small park that formed part of their usual route home — a quiet cut-through with fewer staring eyes and fewer people trying to stop Oskar to gush or complain.
They turned in without thinking.
They had done this so many times that their feet knew the way without asking their brains.
Tonight, it felt just the same.
At first.
They passed under the park's main arch — a recent addition: stone pillars framing a bronze relief of Oskar, head tilted in thought, tiny stylised "ideas" etched as little symbols flying over the arch to the other side, where a smaller metal figure of Karl stood with pen and ledger in hand.
It was all very flattering. The mayor of Potsdam had commissioned it "in honour of the Fifth Prince and his accountant," as he'd put it.
Oskar and Karl didn't even glance up. They just walked under the arch and deeper into the park, cloaks pulled tight against the cold.
That was when it hit him.
The hairs on his arms rose. A chill ran across his skin that had nothing to do with the autumn air. His muscles tightened without reason. For a heartbeat, he felt as if someone had just aimed something heavy and invisible at the back of his neck.
He stopped.
The park was mostly dark. The lamplighter was still making his rounds, climbing ladders with a slow creak, igniting lamps one by one. Patches of yellow light appeared, leaving stretches of shadow between them.
Oskar saw trees, their bare branches moving slightly in the breeze. Shrubs rustled. A few distant silhouettes walked along other paths — nothing unusual there.
And yet—
Something was off.
There were more people in the park than usual at this hour.
Karl, noticing the sudden stop, tugged irritably at Oskar's sleeve.
"What is it now?" he grumbled. "Don't tell me you want to lecture that statue again."
Oskar didn't answer.
He heard footsteps behind them on the street they'd left — a carriage rattling past, a horse snorting.
Then a crash.
He turned.
A man in a long coat had apparently tripped, sending a metal trash bin over. Glass bottles spilled out, clinking across the cobblestones. Another man in a similar coat and cap hurried over to help him up.
To anyone else, a small, clumsy accident.
To Oskar, the broken glass sounded like buzzing.
His skin crawled.
He grabbed the back of Karl's coat and, without really thinking about it, lifted him up like an overstuffed suitcase and strode quickly into the park.
"Hey! Put me down!" Karl protested, flailing. "What are you—?"
Oskar barely heard him.
His gaze wasn't on the path, or the trees, or the men behind them.
He was looking up.
At the stars.
The buzzing in his ears grew louder. Familiar.
Like a mosquito or a wasp.
Like a swarm of metal.
His mind slid sideways.
For a moment, he wasn't in Potsdam anymore.
He was in Ukraine, in his first life:
Night sky over a dark road.
Headlights off.
Truck bouncing over ruts.
The beeping of his anti-drone device screaming in his ears.
The high-pitched whine of small engines overhead.
He remembered seeing the silhouette of a UAV up above probably watching him. And then he remembered the first drone hitting the ground in front of his truck when he braked just in time — the explosion showering earth and sending a piece of shrapnel flying through his windshield nearly taking his head off.
He remembered the second drone slamming into the side of the vehicle, blowing out a section of the cargo — bottled water and flour vaporised in a flash. The truck rocking violently as a result.
He remembered wrenching the wheel, plunging off the road, into a ditch, through trees, the device still screaming, trying to outrun a third.
He remembered the sheer animal terror of being hunted from the sky.
And then the relief when a friendly drones intercepting the attackers, giving him just enough time to limp his smoking truck into an old barn and hide until dawn.
Those images flickered behind his eyes like a broken film strip.
"Your Highness—! Oskar—! Snap out of it, you big gorilla! Let me go!" Karl's voice cut through the fog.
Oskar blinked hard.
The buzzing faded.
He realised he was standing on a dirt path, under a low stone bridge, still holding Karl in one hand. He had run off the main path without realising it, instinctively choosing solid stone overhead instead of trees — as if the bridge could protect him from invisible artillery.
Sweat chilled on his spine.
His heart hammered.
"…Sorry," he muttered, setting Karl down gently.
Karl dusted himself off, muttering about "crazy princes" and "overtraining the brain."
Oskar wasn't listening.
He was staring back the way they came.
Far down the path — and just off it, behind trees — he could see shadows that didn't look like they were taking leisurely walks through the park. The shadowy figures were merely standing still. Watching and waiting for something.
At first he thought he was imagining it.
Then one of the "shadows" shifted from one leg to the other, the posture of someone standing too long in the cold.
The feeling of unease coiled tighter.
They were being watched.
Not by curious citizens.
By something else.
Karl, still brushing dirt from his coat, grumbled, "What has gotten into you? You're acting crazy again. Do I need to slap sense into—"
Oskar turned his head the other way and his stomach dropped further.
The other side of the underpass was no better.
Only the faint light of the moon reached here, and for the first time he felt truly boxed in.
It was the same suffocating feeling he'd had once among trenches and ruins, surrounded by wounded men and advancing enemies. No obvious escape. No time.
Karl's voice dropped to a whisper now, instinct finally catching up.
"We should have just stayed at the office," he muttered. "You always get weird when it's too dark."
Oskar lifted his right hand slightly.
"Shh."
For a moment, there was only the faint rustle of leaves and the distant creak of the lamplighter's ladder.
Then came the sound.
Creak…
creak…
creak…
It was the sound of wheels, rusty, uneven sound's.
A silhouette rolled slowly toward them along the dirt path.
At first glance, it was almost comical:
A man in a wheelchair, wrapped in thick coats and scarves, a cap pulled low. A blanket over his legs. Behind him, another man pushed the chair with steady, careful steps, head bowed, hat brim shadowing his face.
It should have looked harmless.
Human.
Sad, even.
It didn't.
The pusher's coat was long, and clothes seemed ordinary, but a little too clean, too neutral — like a costume assembled from the idea of "someone you wouldn't notice."
Karl squinted.
"What the hell? At this hour?" he whispered.
"Exactly," Oskar murmured.
The wheelchair creaked closer, bumping over small stones, until it stopped a few meters away.
The "old man" in the chair didn't look up at first. His gloved hands rested on a folded map laid across his knees.
When he finally raised his head, his voice came out with a thick, heavy accent — German words wrapped around something not quite right.
"Entschuldigen Sie, mein Herr," he said. "Excuse me, sir. I am tourist. Visiting Berlin with my grandsons. Can you tell me how to go to the Brandenburger Tor from here?"
On paper, the line was almost perfect.
Almost.
Oskar felt his pulse spike.
The wrong accent.
The wrong phrasing.
The wrong timing.
In the wrong place.
All wrapped in that screaming instinct in his bones:
Danger.
For a fragment of a second, habit took over. His mouth almost started to form:
"You go straight and then—"
His entire body shuddered.
Every hair on his arms rose.
He took a quick step back, dragging Karl with him by the sleeve.
Karl opened his mouth to ask what was wrong.
He didn't get the chance.
The "map" on the old man's lap lifted just a fraction.
From beneath it, something slid into view — metal, blackened with oil, catching a sliver of moonlight. The gloved right hand that held it was suddenly not old at all.
The revolver came up in a smooth, practiced motion, barrel lifting toward Oskar's chest.
Oskar's mind crystallised into two clear, unsentimental words, "Oh shit."
"Your Highness, get out of the way!" Karl shouted.
"Die, Your Highness," the assassin snarled, dropping the pretense and he pulled the trigger.
Bang.