Oskar lay in the dim hospital room, December moonlight pooling cold and silver across his sheets.
Bandages wrapped his ribs like a cage.
Half-healed wounds pulsed with every breath.
And his right hand — the one that had slammed his father's desk — bled anew through torn wrappings.
The guards had half-carried him back.
The doctors had scolded him.
The nurses had threatened to tie him to the bed.
None of that hurt as much as the conversation he'd just had.
The folded newspaper lay beside him like a knife, its stark headline glaring up from the white paper:
GERMANY FOR GERMANS — NEW NATIONAL LAW PASSES REICHSTAG
TO TAKE EFFECT JANUARY 1st, 1907
He had argued.
He had protested.
For the first time since arriving in this world, he had truly stood against the Kaiser.
And he had lost.
He felt small — smaller than at any point in either of his lives.
Smaller even than that starving truck driver crouched in a muddy Ukrainian trench, listening to drones buzz like metal hornets overhead.
Here, in a warm hospital bed of the German Empire's capital, he felt:
No power.
No authority.
Only guilt.
A crushing, suffocating guilt.
It felt like history had slipped out of his fingers…
and he hadn't even realized he was losing his grip.
What do I do now?
What can I even do?
He draped an arm over his eyes.
Maybe — maybe he could personally buy property from those who wished to leave, give them enough money to start new lives elsewhere.
He could ease their burden.
Give them a soft landing.
But from a hospital bed, with torn muscle and half-clotted wounds…
he couldn't do much more than imagine half-solutions.
And even that felt like cowardice.
A weak excuse.
The thought that Germany would now have "fewer minorities to persecute"…
that Germans abroad might face "less hatred" if they returned home…
It felt like swallowing ash.
He knew it was a lie he told himself just to breathe.
Because in truth, he had failed all those people:
Men who had set up shops and hoped for stability.
Women who had woven new lives in German towns.
Children who had been born on German soil believing it was their home.
Now they were packing their whole lives into suitcases…
just to flee a country that had once welcomed them.
Was he truly changing the world?
Or had he — blindly, stupidly — made everything worse?
This wasn't the first time that doubt gnawed at him.
But now, for the first time, it felt like a beast large enough to swallow him whole.
He did not hear the door open.
Only when someone gently pulled a chair beside his bed did he lower his arm.
"Priest Arnold…?"
Arnold smiled softly, his face half-shadowed by the lamplight.
"Your Highness," he said quietly. "I feared I would find you awake."
Oskar swallowed hard, his voice hoarse.
"Did… someone send you?"
"No," Arnold said. "God did."
Oskar groaned. "Please don't start with divine visions. I am not in the mood."
Arnold chuckled.
Not mockingly — warmly.
"No visions. Only… concern. You are troubled. Deeply. I could almost feel it in the air outside your door."
Oskar looked away.
Arnold leaned slightly forward.
"Your Highness, may I speak plainly?"
"You always do," Oskar muttered.
Arnold folded his hands.
"Then allow me to tell you what I see. You are unhappy because your good intentions have met the wall of reality. You have tried — harder than any prince in living memory — to lift your people, to unify them, to make peace… to build a world that does not yet exist."
He paused.
"You are hurt because you thought you could save everyone. And now you feel that you cannot."
Oskar's jaw tightened.
Arnold continued softly:
"When I was a boy, I was difficult. Mischievous. Stubborn. I got into trouble often. And each time, my father — a hard but honest man — punished me. I hated him for it. I shouted, I cursed, I swore he was cruel."
He smiled sadly at the memory.
"And one day, he told me:
'I am your father, not your friend.'
Do you understand what he meant, Your Highness?"
Oskar frowned tiredly. "That fathers get to hit their children?"
Arnold chuckled again. "No. He meant that a father's duty is not to please his child. A father's duty is to guide him — even when it hurts. Even when the child screams that he hates him."
He met Oskar's eyes.
"And that, Your Highness… is also a ruler's duty."
Oskar stiffened, as if struck.
Arnold pressed on gently, but firmly:
"You wish to please everyone.
To heal everyone.
To protect everyone.
This is noble. Holy, even. But it is not how leaders rule."
He motioned to the folded newspaper beside the bed.
"You disagree with your father's law. Perhaps rightly. But you must understand: he did not make this decision to wound you. He made it to protect the nation as he understands it. And perhaps… perhaps God placed him in that role because he is able to make decisions you cannot."
Oskar's voice cracked.
"I just wanted— I just wanted everyone to be safe. To live together. To learn. To… understand each other. Isn't that the right thing?"
Arnold nodded.
"It is a right thing. But perhaps not the right thing for now."
He leaned closer, voice quiet but unwavering:
"Your Highness… You think kindness is always good. You think mercy is always right. That if you simply give people opportunities and time, they will all become harmonious, peaceful, united."
He shook his head gently.
"This world is not heaven. Not yet."
He pointed to Oskar's chest — the bandages still stained red.
"You nearly died. Why? Because some men hated you more than they loved peace."
Oskar looked away, eyes burning.
Arnold lowered his voice even further.
"Let me tell you another truth, Your Highness — one most people refuse to admit:
Doing good for the sake of feeling good is still selfish.
A true friend, a true ruler, a true father… sometimes must choose the harder path. The unpopular path. The painful path. The one that does not make him happy, but the one that is needed."
He touched the Bible hanging at his chest.
"Christ healed. Christ preached peace. But Christ also spoke harsh truths, overturned tables, and embraced the cross because it was necessary. Kindness is good. But wisdom… is learning when kindness alone will fail."
Oskar whispered:
"So you're saying I'm wrong."
Arnold shook his head immediately.
"No. I am saying you are young. And great rulers mature not by success, but by loss."
He stood, placed a warm hand on Oskar's shoulder.
"You have vision. You have greatness in you. You will change the world — I believe that with my whole soul. But you must stop trying to save everyone at once. You cannot heal the whole world in a single year. Not even Christ did that."
He turned toward the door.
"And remember, Your Highness…
Your people — the Germans — they do not need you to be their friend.
They need you to become their father."
He bowed his head.
"A father does what is right. Not what is easy. Meditate on this."
He moved toward the exit — then paused. Then turned back with a quiet smile.
"Ah… there is one more thing I should tell you."
Oskar blinked. "What now? Another sermon?"
"In a way," Arnold chuckled. "But a shorter one."
He lifted a finger, quoting in a warm, measured cadence:
"Remember this, for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under the heaven. There is a time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to pluck out that what has been planted. And there is a time for learning, and a time for ruling."
— Ecclesiastes 3:1
He let the scripture settle between them like falling snow.
"Your Highness, do not rush your destiny. Do not try to do all things at once. Your time will come. God does not plant a seed in winter expecting fruit in spring… yet fruit does arrive, in its appointed year."
Oskar exhaled, unsure.
Arnold's smile deepened with a strange, almost glowing confidence.
"And as for seasons… I believe a new one begins tomorrow."
Oskar frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," Arnold said, eyes twinkling,
"that your women — Lady Tanya and Lady Anna — look ready to give birth within hours.
Probably tomorrow, the 21st of December.
A most auspicious season for a prince's children to enter the world."
Oskar's eyes widened. "Tomorrow?! Are you sure?!"
Arnold nodded. "As sure as I am that I will be present to baptize them."
He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice.
"And as for other matters… the future of crowns and scepters…"
He glanced meaningfully at Oskar.
"…that season too will come. Sooner than you think."
Oskar blinked. "I— what? Father Arnold—"
Arnold added softly, with an almost reverent awe:
"Christ came once, Your Highness…
and scriptures teach that another will rise to guide humanity into a better age."
He touched his heart.
"And I confess… sometimes I wonder if he already walks among us."
His gaze locked onto Oskar.
"Waiting only to see himself as he truly is."
Oskar froze. His mind blanked.
"Wait—are you implying—"
But Arnold only winked, utterly serene.
"Rest, Your Highness. Tomorrow brings miracles. The future will give you thrones."
And with that maddening, cryptic flourish, he slipped out the door.
The silence that followed was so absolute Oskar could hear his own heartbeat.
He muttered:
"…He did not just say what I think he said."
He stared at the ceiling.
"Crazy priest. Damn, I probably shouldn't have spoken to him so openly about aliens. The man's insane now."
He covered his face.
"…Right?"
But the absurdity shattered a moment later as reality returned like a hammer:
"WAIT—THE BABIES!"
He sat up abruptly — pain flaring, stitches pulling.
"GUARDS! GUARDS, GET IN HERE!"
The Eternal Guard burst through the door, armor clinking, hands on rifles with bayonets fixed.
"Your Highness! Are you under attack?!"
"Yes—no—maybe—JUST LISTEN!"
He dragged himself upright against the pillows.
"I believe, Tanya and Anna might be giving birth — tomorrow! Bring them here.
Here, to the hospital. NOW. Before they start in my bedroom again!"
The guards exchanged glances.
One cleared his throat. "Your Highness… it is midnight."
"THEN MOVE FASTER!"
They saluted so hard their helmets nearly fell off.
"As Your Highness commands!"
Within seconds they were gone — sprinting through the hospital halls to summon Oskar's women, his midwives, his children, and half the palace staff.
Oskar collapsed back in bed, breathless, exhausted…
But for the first time all night, he smiled.
"Tomorrow…" he whispered to himself.
A new season indeed.
And so, just as Priest Arnold had foretold, the very next day—
21 December 1906
—the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year—
A new season came.
Not in the sky, where winter already ruled…
but in the bright, busy wards of the Royal Military Hospital of Potsdam.
Before the sun fully rose, the corridors were already alive.
Nurses hurried with steaming basins.
Doctors whispered prayers.
Midwives prepared linen and boiling water.
The Eternal Guard stood like bronze statues outside the birthing suite, hands on hilts, eyes forward.
And Priest Arnold walked among them with the serene smile of a man who had simply checked God's calendar and arrived early.
Inside the room:
Tanya was in labor.
Anna joined her shortly after.
Oskar — pale, aching, stitched up in half a dozen places — had dragged himself from his sickbed and been seated between theirs. Not to command. Not to interfere.
But simply to be there.
He held their hands.
Murmured encouragement.
Ignored the way his newly healed muscles trembled every time he leaned forward.
Outside, Luise tried valiantly (and mostly failed) to wrangle the three one-year-olds — Imperiel, Juniel, and Lailael — who took turns crying for their mother or slapping the palace maids with stuffed toys.
Hours passed.
Daylight faded.
Snow thickened outside.
Pain rose and fell in waves until even the walls seemed to breathe with it.
It was the Solstice — the darkest point of the year — after which light begins to return.
And at last, just past moonrise…
A cry split the night.
Then another.
And a third.
Three new voices entered the world.
Two sons.
One daughter.
Perfectly mirroring the first time fate had blessed him — one boy and two girls — except now reversed:
Tanya bore two sons.
Anna bore a daughter.
Tiny, perfect things with pale hair and uncanny violet eyes like their older siblings.
Oskar watched from his chair, breath caught in his throat, tears stinging despite himself.
He had told Priest Arnold, quietly, shakily:
> "You name them.
You foresaw this night — you should have that honor."
Arnold, trembling with gratitude, lifted the firstborn son — Tanya's child — and held him toward the lamplight, whispering:
"Liorael."
He who shines with dawn.
He lifted the second — Anna's son — and proclaimed:
"Azarael."
He whom God has helped.
And last, the tiny midnight daughter, fierce in her first breaths:
"Mirael."
She who carries wonder.
The names rang softly through the room like bells muffled by snow.
The Kaiser and Empress entered only moments after the final child was placed in its mother's arms.
Wilhelm II did not speak at first.
He only looked —
at Tanya exhausted but triumphant,
at Anna tearful and radiant,
at the three infants swaddled together like newly fallen stars.
His expression softened.
"Congratulations," he said at last, voice gentler than anyone expected. "All of you."
He stepped forward, touched Liorael's forehead, then Azarael's, then Mirael's, murmuring the ancient Hohenzollern blessings.
When Oskar repeated the children's names aloud, the Kaiser's eyelid twitched — barely perceptible — but he said nothing this time.
The Empress discreetly wiped her eyes.
"Add their ceremonial names to the registry," Wilhelm II instructed. "Tonight, Germany will hear that on the darkest night, light was born to the House of Hohenzollern. It will give the people hope."
For a moment, he and Oskar faced each other in silence — the warmth of birth overshadowed by the cold unresolved argument from the day before.
Neither spoke of politics.
Neither needed to.
Not tonight.
When the Kaiser left, he paused at the door and glanced back once more — something like pride flickering across his stern features.
When all the officials, nurses, and midwives finally withdrew, the lamps dimmed low.
Oskar lay in a wide hospital bed — Tanya asleep on one side, Anna on the other, three newborns nestled in the crook of their arms, and at the foot of the bed…
…Imperiel, Juniel, and Lailael sat perched like chubby owls staring at their new siblings with wide, reverent awe.
Outside the window, snow drifted softly past the glass.
Inside, warmth and life and a strange, heavy peace filled the air.
A father.
Three newborns.
Three toddlers.
Two women who loved him.
And a future brighter — and more uncertain — than any prophecy could have predicted.
Oskar let his eyes flutter closed, breathing in the heat of the room, the softness of his family gathered around him.
Somewhere in the back of his mind…
Arnold's voice whispered:
"A new season begins."
And Oskar believed it.
The days after the birth passed like a bright dream.
Newspapers across the Empire spoke of the three miracles born on the darkest night of the year — of how, on the Winter Solstice, the Iron Prince's children had arrived "like a sign of a new dawn for Germany."
Some called them the Solstice Children.
Others called them the Six-Point Crown — three older, three younger, like a living star blessing the dynasty.
People rejoiced.
Not everyone did.
On 24 December 1906, Empress Augusta Victoria raised the matter carefully over coffee in the palace drawing room.
"Perhaps," she ventured, eyes on the fire, "Wilhelm could join us for the Christmas reception. It might be… noticed, if the Crown Prince disappears entirely from public view. He could at least come to see the newborns. The people might be reassured."
Wilhelm II stared into the flames for a long time.
Then shook his head.
"No," he said. "He stays where he is."
"But—"
"A man," the Kaiser said quietly, "who sends assassins against his own younger brother has no place at my table on Christmas Eve. And from what I hear of his… behaviour at Babelsberg, I do not trust him near newborns. Or Oskar. Or the maids, or well anybody really."
Augusta Victoria closed her eyes.
"All we can do," Wilhelm said, "is pray that God heals his mind in time."
The answer — polite, formal, and firm — went back to Babelsberg Palace along with the news of the three new grandchildren.
Crown Prince Wilhelm received it late in the afternoon.
He was already bruised and bloodied; he had spent the morning attacking the newly brought in furniture.
Chairs overturned. A table cracked. His knuckles were torn open, his shoulder ached, and his ribs throbbed where he had misjudged a kick to a cabinet.
He had told himself it was training.
Training for the battle against the demon.
Then the letter arrived.
He tore it open with raw fingers.
Read it.
And something inside him twisted a little further out of shape.
"My father…" he slurred that night, bottle in hand, pacing across the carpet. "My own father… throws me away like a broken toy. Christmas… Christmas… and he chooses that demon Oskar and his… his satanic brats over his firstborn son…"
He tipped the bottle back and drank until he couldn't feel his tongue.
"Strip my title, will you?" he muttered. "Give it to him? To that… beast from the pit?"
Rage and self-pity tangled into a knot too tight for reason to untie.
He stumbled outside, swaying. Guards moved to stop him; he shoved one, bit another on the hand, hurled the empty bottle at a third.
"Out of my way!" he shouted. "I am the Crown Prince! You will not cage me like an animal!"
Snow lay thick over the estate, sparkling faintly under the clear winter moon.
"Where's my damned horse?" he bellowed.
Stable hands hesitated, horror in their faces as the Crown Prince staggered into the stalls, grabbed the reins of a white stallion, and pulled himself into the saddle without bothering with a cloak or even proper boots.
"Your Highness—!" someone started.
He dug in his heels.
The horse bolted.
The guards ran for their mounts, cursing, grabbing ropes as if preparing to lasso him if they had to.
Riding in deep snow was dangerous even when sober.
Drunk, in the dark, in winter… it was almost suicidal.
Wilhelm rode like a man trying to outrun his own thoughts.
Across frozen ground.
Through carefully tended shrubs.
Over hidden stones the gardeners had marked in summer.
He roared at the cold air, at the empty fields, at fate itself.
For a brief, reckless moment, he almost felt like he was back in his youth — free, wild, untouchable.
Then the stallion's forelegs punched into a deep drift concealing a rut and a half-buried rock.
The horse stumbled—
lurched forward—
and went down hard.
Wilhelm had no proper seat, no saddle grip.
He flew.
He crashed not into soft snow, but against the side of one of Babelsberg's stone garden walls with a sound that made even the pursuing guards flinch.
For a moment, the world held its breath.
The horse scrabbled back up, snorting, shaken but mostly unharmed.
The Crown Prince did not rise.
The guards dismounted and ran, boots skidding on ice.
"Your Highness! Your Highness—!"
They reached him.
He was on his back in the snow, limbs at wrong angles, blood already spreading beneath his head like a dark halo.
He was still breathing.
But there was something in the way his eyes stared — unfocused, glassy — that told every man there the same thing:
The person who had ridden out into the winter night…
…would not be the same man carried back in.
They lifted him as gently as they could and rushed him toward the house, shouting for doctors, for bandages, for anything.
Snow drifted slowly down over the hoofprints, over the broken drift, over the place where the horse had fallen.
Over the last moment Wilhelm had ever truly been the man he believed himself to be.