While Oskar held his youngest children and pulled ridiculous faces at them—crossing his eyes, puffing his cheeks, making low, rumbling noises that sent the infants into fits of laughter—the women around the table laughed with him.
It was an absurd sight.
A man built like a siege engine, legs thick as pillars, trying to balance three small bodies across his lap while Sereniel gurgled happily and Aureliel kicked with determined enthusiasm, clearly convinced that gravity was a challenge meant for others. Even little Arnold, jealous of the attention, wriggled his way closer until Oskar sighed and adjusted his grip again, surrendering to the inevitable.
Bertha laughed outright. Tanya covered her mouth, eyes bright. Anna shook her head with a fond, helpless smile.
And then—
Another figure entered the cafeteria.
The Eternal Guard at the door shifted just enough to acknowledge him before letting him pass. A tall man in a dark overcoat stepped inside, snow dusting his shoulders, his expression tight with restrained irritation.
Erich von Falkenhayn.
He had spoken with the Kaiser after Oskar left the palace.
And he was not pleased.
Without ceremony, Falkenhayn took a chair and pulled it close to Oskar, the movement sharp and purposeful.
"Your Highness," he said quietly, "forgive the intrusion. May we speak?"
Oskar glanced up, already reading the tension in the man's posture.
Before he could answer, the women reacted.
Bertha clicked her tongue under her breath. "Honestly," she muttered, not bothering to lower her voice, "can't they let him sit for five minutes without dragging him back into politics?"
Tanya huffed in agreement. "At this rate, I fear Oskar will become a fond memory rather than a presence."
Anna, calmer as always, gave them both a look. "He is the Crown Prince," she said softly. "And besides, Tanya, he's been with us both for nearly the entire week. You were barely able to walk yesterday."
Tanya opened her mouth—
Bertha answered for both of them.
"No, not good enough."
The words were decisive. Although for Bertha, who had been ignored recently by Oskar it meant much more, she didn't want to just have her husband. Bertha wanted him.
Oskar and Falkenhayn both heard the women's words.
Oskar cleared his throat and deliberately looked at the children in his lap, a silent reminder about where they were. The women huffed and looked away, though Heddy—cradling Balin and Éowyn nearby—smiled apologetically at him.
Only then did Oskar turn back to Falkenhayn.
"Your Excellency, Minister of the Army," he said politely. "My apologies. Please—speak."
Falkenhayn hesitated, glancing around at the café's guests, then leaned in closer until his chair nearly touched Oskar's. The children on Oskar's lap immediately noticed the newcomer and pointed at him with delighted interest.
Falkenhayn ignored them with effort and lowered his voice.
"Your Highness," he whispered, "Moltke and Prittwitz went far too far today. Pressing you like that—forcing you into such a wager—was reckless."
"I know," Oskar replied calmly. "They wanted to provoke me."
"Yes—but you shouldn't have stepped into the trap," Falkenhayn said, worry plain in his eyes. "You've placed your position at risk."
Oskar smiled faintly.
"I have confidence in the Eighth," he said. "It must hold. If it doesn't, the war is lost anyway. And I'm not relying on the army alone."
Falkenhayn frowned.
"You mean…?"
"I'm strengthening the foundations," Oskar said quietly. "Police forces. Infrastructure. Internal security. If the Russians ever step onto German soil, they'll discover it isn't an empty stage."
Falkenhayn believed him.
That was the problem.
As Minister of War, he knew the numbers. He knew the Russian army's size. He knew how fragile plans became when reality pressed down hard enough.
Still, the moment had passed.
He exhaled slowly. "May God protect you, Your Highness."
Oskar chuckled softly. "He seems to have gone to great trouble to put me here already."
Then his tone shifted—just slightly.
"Your Excellency," Oskar continued, "when the Eighth proves itself—not if, but when—you should consider what must follow."
Falkenhayn's eyes sharpened.
"Moltke has held the post of Chief of the General Staff too long," Oskar said. "He no longer adapts. When he is proven wrong, there must be consequences."
Silence.
"If the opportunity arises," Oskar added, "you would be the natural successor."
Falkenhayn's breath caught.
The idea had lived in his mind for years—but hearing it spoken so plainly was another matter entirely.
"Your Highness," he said carefully, "I will do whatever you require."
"For now," Oskar said, "watch Moltke. I don't fear open opposition. I fear quiet interference."
Falkenhayn nodded at once. "I'll see that he causes you no trouble."
Oskar inclined his head.
"Good."
Then he reached into his coat and produced a folded sheet of paper.
"One more thing," he said, handing it over. "I need these men transferred to the Eastern command as soon as possible."
Falkenhayn unfolded the list.
Three names.
He frowned.
"I don't recognize them."
"That's normal," Oskar replied lightly. "You will."
Falkenhayn read again:
Fritz Erich von Manstein
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian
Erwin Rommel
Young officers. Barely known. Almost invisible.
In another timeline, they would reshape war itself.
Here—now—they were seeds.
"I'll find them," Falkenhayn said at last.
"I know you will."
von Falkenhayn lingered a moment longer.
There was something else in his expression now—curiosity mixed with unease, the look of a man who sensed that the ground beneath his feet was broader than the room he stood in.
"Your Highness," he said at last, lowering his voice again, "there is another matter I wished to ask about."
Oskar glanced up, Sereniel yawning softly against his chest while Aureliel's fingers tangled in the fabric of his sleeve.
"Yes?"
"I've heard… rumors," Falkenhayn continued carefully. "That you are planning a journey to Africa. To German Cameroon, specifically."
Oskar's mouth curved faintly.
"And not merely a visit," Falkenhayn added. "There are reports of construction. Fortified settlements. Three of them."
He hesitated, then spoke the names as if testing whether they were real.
"Southern Bauxi Town. Central Bauxi Town. Northern Bauxi Town."
He frowned.
"Why?" he asked. "And why Bauxi?"
Oskar chuckled quietly.
"Well," he said, almost casually, "because those towns will supply me with all the bauxite I could ever need."
Falkenhayn blinked.
"Bauxite?"
"Yes."
Oskar shifted the babies slightly, careful, practiced, as if explaining global strategy and rocking children were simply different levels of the same task.
"Aluminum," he continued. "Light. Strong. Essential for modern engines, modern frames, modern flight. Aviation will not remain a novelty, Your Excellency. It will become decisive."
Falkenhayn frowned deeper.
"Aluminum is… rare," he said cautiously. "And difficult to refine."
"Which is why most people don't bother," Oskar replied. "Yet."
He lifted his eyes.
"The deposits in northern Cameroon are substantial. But they are distant. Isolated. Between them and the coast lies terrain, wildlife, and people who must be treated as partners rather than obstacles."
Falkenhayn studied him.
"And you intend to go there yourself?"
"Yes."
The word was simple. Final.
"The local peoples need to see who they are dealing with," Oskar said. "Not a clerk. Not a contract. Me. Authority is easier to accept when it has a face."
He paused, then added mildly, "I will not be going immediately. Everything is already prepared. This is not a reckless venture."
Falkenhayn wanted to ask more.
He had many questions.
But Oskar waved them away gently—and, with impeccable timing, offered him a plate.
"Cake?"
Falkenhayn stared.
It was fruit cake—dense, dark, layered with berries and sliced strawberries that still tasted faintly of summer despite the snow outside.
"I've already eaten one entire cake," Oskar added matter-of-factly. "You may as well help with the second."
Falkenhayn, Minister of War of the German Empire, found himself accepting a fork.
"…Thank you," he said.
He did not quite know how this had happened.
But the cake was excellent.
And that, somehow, ended the conversation.
Not because the questions were answered—but because Oskar had decided they were not.
---
They did not stay much longer.
The hour was late, the children tired, and the warmth of the cafeteria was beginning to give way to yawns and drooping heads. One by one, coats were fetched, infants bundled, prams wheeled out under the watchful eyes of the Guard.
Bertha left with visible reluctance.
Heddy too, though she hid it better.
Soon, the Angel Cafeteria returned to its quieter rhythm, the Eternal Guard remaining in place as the last guests drifted home beneath falling snow.
---
The following day, letters arrived from Königsberg.
Hindenburg wrote first—formal, controlled, but unmistakably furious on Oskar's behalf. Ludendorff's letter followed, sharper, more direct, expressing both concern over the wager and anger at how openly Moltke and Prittwitz had moved against him.
Oskar read them both carefully.
Then replied in the same tone to each:
Do not worry. Focus on the work. The Eighth must become what it must become.
---
A month later, further news arrived.
Two young officers reported to the Eastern Army Inspectorate.
Fritz Erich von Manstein.
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian.
Both were second lieutenants.
Both were confused.
Both had stared at their transfer orders as if they were misprints.
Rommel, Falkenhayn reported apologetically, could not be found in the rolls. After a moment's thought, Oskar realized why—he had not yet formally enlisted.
Soon enough, Oskar thought.
Manstein and Guderian were summoned personally.
Oskar assigned them directly to the General Staff of the Eighth, under Ludendorff's supervision, and promoted each of them one rank without ceremony.
They were to observe.
To learn.
To help dismantle and rebuild an army.
In another world, Oskar knew exactly what these names would come to mean.
Here—now—they were only seeds.
But seeds, he reflected, if planted early enough, could grow differently.
He intended to teach them personally.
Not only how to win wars—
—but how to avoid becoming monsters in the process.
And somewhere beyond Europe—beyond maps inked by tired men, beyond borders carved from old grudges—Africa waited.
Not the Africa of lecture halls or missionary pamphlets, but the real one: red earth that stained boots and hands alike, rivers that cut through jungle and savannah, and lands where the soil itself carried a quiet promise. Bauxite. The red soil. The foundation of light metal and lighter machines. The material future of flight.
Soon enough, that soil would feel the weight of a German prince.
And not alone.
When the time came, Oskar would go with Karl—the giant and the dwarf, as Berlin wits would inevitably joke—one bearing vision and authority, the other discipline and patience. Together they would step onto the coast of German Cameroon, not as conquerors chasing trophies, but as negotiators of a different kind of empire: one built on agreements, labor, and the careful opening of the earth itself.
Three fortified settlements would anchor the route inland.
Southern Bauxi Town by the sea.
A central strongpoint where river and rail would meet.
And far to the north, near the deposits themselves, a final outpost pressed into the red soil.
There would be wildlife.
There would be peoples.
There would be long roads where none yet existed.
And Oskar intended to meet all of it face-to-face.
---
But Africa was not the only distant horizon quietly approaching.
While armies reorganized and engines were tested, Europe's bookshelves were about to be ambushed.
Not by treatises.
Not by philosophy.
Not by sober histories.
But by something no one in 1909 was prepared for.
Soon, in lending libraries and shop windows from Vienna to Paris, discreet volumes would begin to appear—wrapped in dramatic covers, passed from hand to hand with guilty smiles.
Twilight — Volume I.
A story imagined—so the rumor would whisper—by Prince Oskar himself, yet penned under a pseudonym by a young English academic named Ronald Tolkien, whose prose carried a strange mythic weight that felt far older than his years.
The tale would be outrageous.
A Serbian healer girl with impossible gifts.
A Romanian prince cursed with immortality.
An Ottoman sultan who was something else entirely.
Christian and Muslim.
Vampire and werewolf.
Two empires circling one woman who believed—foolishly, stubbornly—that healing was stronger than hatred.
There would be longing.
There would be jealousy.
There would be politics disguised as romance and romance disguised as prophecy.
And scandal.
Oh, there would be scandal.
Priests would scoff.
Professors would dismiss it as nonsense.
Fathers would forbid it.
And women—young and old alike—would read it anyway.
Because sometimes a story didn't need permission.
It only needed timing.
---
Oskar, for his part, would smile and say nothing.
Africa would give him the metal to lift machines into the sky.
Books would give him something else entirely:
a way to change how people dream.
And in a world standing on the edge of war, both would prove far more dangerous than anyone yet understood.