It was the late evening of June 26, and the summer sun still refused to die.
Only minutes earlier, Oskar had told himself that when danger came, a man moved.
Yet for several long minutes, he did not.
He sat deep within the great armchair of his third-floor study, staring at the letter lying between his boots upon the carpet where it had fallen.
Warm summer light poured through the tall windows behind him, painting the private family wing in gold as if nothing in the world could ever truly go wrong. Outside, the gardens breathed softly beneath the evening heat. Somewhere among the trees, birds continued singing as if they had not heard that the century was standing upon a knife.
Oskar was dressed simply, as he usually was within the privacy of his own apartments. A clean white shirt, Prussian-blue trousers and black leather boots. No medals. No ceremonial coat. No sword. Nothing that suggested he had expected the evening to involve anything more serious than finishing whatever remained upon his desk before joining his family.
But sitting there in that quiet room, Oskar did not feel like the Iron Prince.
He felt… lost.
His eyes returned to the letter.
Then to the date.
And slowly, horribly, he understood what Ferdinand had done.
The letter was already days old.
It had not arrived before the journey. It had arrived after it had effectively begun. Ferdinand was already in Bosnia. The manoeuvres were already underway, and by waiting until almost the last possible moment to write, his friend had made certain that Oskar would have very little opportunity to interfere.
The bastard had known exactly what he was doing.
Oskar leaned back and closed his eyes.
The clock in his head wouldn't stop. Routes, schedules, trains, telegraphs. The distance to Bosnia. The mathematics of hours. The ugly question of whether he could arrive in time—whether he could arrive at all.
Again and again he ran through the possibilities.
Send a telegram. Send two. Have Father send one. Demand the visit be cancelled. Threaten. Beg. Offer a reward. Offer troops. Offer secrecy.
But every calculation eventually returned him to the same conclusion.
Bosnia was too far, and he had too little time.
He might still be able to warn Ferdinand. He might still be able to influence what happened from Germany.
But actually reaching Sarajevo himself before the twenty-eighth?
That was something else entirely.
For perhaps the first time in years, Oskar knew exactly where history was going and could see no obvious way of getting there ahead of it.
Then the darker thought came—uninvited, poisonous, rational in the way only evil rationality could be.
What if he lets it happen?
If Ferdinand and Sophie died… did it truly have to become war? Was the world really so fragile that one death—however significant—must ignite an inferno? He could still pressure Vienna to restrain itself. He could still press Germany to refuse the blank cheque. He could still hold Russia back through other channels. He could still—surely—keep the catastrophe contained.
Everything was different now.
Germany was different. Austria-Hungary was stronger. The Balkans had changed. Alliances had shifted. The world Ferdinand might die within was no longer the same world in which Oskar remembered him dying.
Perhaps history could take Ferdinand… and nothing else.
He hated himself for thinking it.
But rulers did not have the luxury of thinking like ordinary men. Ordinary men could mourn and call it virtue. Rulers had to count the dead before they existed. Rulers had to decide whose life mattered more when the equation became impossible.
And if the price of peace was one life—two lives—then perhaps… perhaps it was simply another sacrifice on the road to a better world.
He sat with that thought, staring at the letter on the floor, and felt something cold and heavy coil inside his chest.
Then the door burst open.
Small feet slapped across the floor, fast and reckless, and two voices screamed with bright, happy violence.
"Father!"
They crashed into his legs like cannonballs—two little bodies barely more than three years old, laughing so hard they could scarcely breathe. Grel and Gael clung to him with small hands, begging at once, talking over each other.
"Come play!" "Outside!" "Sun is still up!" "Ice cream!" "Before it goes away!"
Oskar looked down at them—and something in him twisted.
Two boys growing too quickly, platinum-blond hair like winter sunlight, eyes wide and untouched by anything the world hid behind treaties and uniforms. They had no idea what stood waiting in Sarajevo. No idea what men would do in the name of pride and revenge. No idea what a single bullet could open.
His mouth pulled into a bitter smile that tried to be warm.
Then another figure appeared in the doorway—taller than the twins, controlled, already wearing responsibility like a coat.
"Grel. Gael." The voice was sharp with practiced authority. "You know the rules. This is Father's study. You don't disturb him when he's working."
The twins groaned and whined and half-hid behind Oskar's legs, but they listened—because the one speaking was their eldest brother, and he carried surprising weight despite being only eight years old and scarcely a month from his ninth birthday.
Imperiel stepped in properly then, already trying to carry himself like something considerably older, and his eyes went immediately to the letter on the floor.
He crossed the room, knelt, picked it up, and placed it into Oskar's hands with the solemn care of someone returning a fallen weapon.
"Father…" Imperiel's voice dropped. The boy's eyes had already caught the signature, the name written like a seal at the bottom. "Are you alright? It's from Ferdinand—what did he say? Did something happen?"
Oskar's mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Behind him the twins were still bright with summer and ignorance, still living in a world where names meant only warmth.
"Uncle Ferdinand!" one of them squealed the instant he heard it, grinning as if the word itself was a promise. "Is Uncle Ferdinand coming too? To Norway? Like last time!"
The other gasped, eyes wide. "Yes! Uncle Ferdinand! Uncle Ferdinand!"
Uncle.
The word hit Oskar harder than the letter ever could.
For a heartbeat his earlier thought—the cold, monstrous thought that perhaps Ferdinand could be sacrificed for the greater good—flashed through him again.
And died.
Because this wasn't a headline. It wasn't a diplomat. It wasn't a chess piece.
It was family.
A man his children loved. A man whose laughter lived in their memories. A man whose death would not be "contained" inside politics, but would tear straight through a household—straight through many small hearts that trusted the world to be safe.
Imperiel glanced down at the letter again, then back up at his father, confusion tightening into real fear.
"Is he coming?" he asked quietly. "Is that what this says?"
Oskar felt something in him fracture—and in the same moment, something else hardened.
For a second he nearly told them everything. Nearly let the dread spill out into the room like smoke.
But he swallowed it down like blood.
"No," he said. His voice was steady only because he forced it to be. "Ferdinand isn't coming this time."
A pause—just long enough for the twins' faces to fall.
"…Maybe next time," Oskar added, and hated how thin it sounded.
Imperiel's brows knit. "Then why are you— Father, what's wrong? What's happening?"
The twins had gone quiet now too, sensing the shift without understanding it, their small smiles fading as if the air itself had turned colder.
Oskar looked at all three of them—at the oldest trying to be brave, at the youngest suddenly uncertain—and the decision finished forming inside him like iron cooling in a mold.
He realized that this was his moment of action. Not tomorrow, not after another telegram, not after another calculation.
Now.
Oskar rose. He pulled Imperiel close, one firm hand at the back of the boy's neck, steady and grounding.
"I'll be back soon," he said quietly. "You're in charge until I return."
Imperiel nodded, trying to stand taller than his eight years allowed.
Oskar knelt before the twins. They threw themselves into his arms without understanding why the embrace felt tighter than usual.
"Ice cream later," he told them, forcing a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Father has important work."
They believed him. Children always did.
"I'm going to make sure your Uncle Ferdinand is alright," he said.
As if that were all. As if it were not the hinge upon which a century turned.
He stood, and this time, he did not hesitate. He stepped out of the study and into the corridor like a man walking into a storm he had already survived in another life.
Karl was there, exactly where he always was when fate tried to get clever.
Leaning against the wall. Revolver at his hip. Eyes sharp, awake, already measuring the angle of the coming disaster.
"So," Karl said quietly without drama. "It's about that time."
Oskar stopped.
Karl tilted his head, studying Oskar's face the way a banker studies a signature.
"You're going to Sarajevo," he said. Not a question. "To make sure history doesn't repeat itself."
"Yes."
It came out flat, final, like a door locking.
Karl pushed off the wall at once. "Then let's go."
Oskar almost smiled—almost.
"Not this time."
Karl blinked. "What?"
"You stay," Oskar said. "You hold things together here."
Karl's jaw tightened as if those words physically offended him.
"You cannot be serious." He took a step closer. "What would you do without me? We built an empire together. We survived an assassination together. Africa—everything. We're partners, Oskar. You and me against the world."
Oskar's expression softened—but only in the way a lion might soften when it looks at the cub that insists it's old enough to hunt.
"I know," he said. "And that's why you're staying."
Karl's brows twitched. "Because you think I can't handle it?"
"Because you're precious to me," Oskar replied simply. "And because Heddy and the children would never forgive me if something happened."
Karl's throat worked once. He didn't like how personal that sounded. He didn't like how final it sounded.
He jabbed a finger toward Oskar's chest. "And what about you? You still have scars. Your right hand—your body—don't act like you're invincible. What happens if you fall?"
For the first time, Oskar's eyes sharpened into something colder. Not fear, but calculation.
"If I fall," Oskar said softly, "then Germany cannot afford a second of confusion."
Karl stared.
Oskar stepped in close enough that only Karl could hear the next words clearly.
"I've already instructed the Eternal Guard to answer to you if something happens to me." His voice didn't tremble. It didn't plead. It stated a procedure. "You will take full control of the Oskar Industrial Group, you will protect my family and the nation. You become the wall."
Silence hit like a slap.
Karl's face drained. His eyes went glassy, the stubborn anger in him suddenly robbed of oxygen.
"What are you saying?" he whispered. "Oskar… it's just one assassin, right? So why are you speaking like—like you'll die?"
Oskar exhaled through his nose, and for a moment there was something almost gentle in him—something human.
"I don't intend to fall," he said. "But I'm not a boy anymore. I'm responsible for more lives than my own. So I prepare for the worst."
He let the words settle, then added, quieter:
"Promise me."
Karl swallowed. Then nodded once—sharp, forced, final.
"I promise."
Oskar held his gaze.
"Good."
Karl's voice cracked slightly despite his best efforts. "Then be careful."
Oskar's eyes didn't flinch.
"I will."
They both knew that was a lie.
And as Oskar turned, small figures watched from behind the half-open door. He knew they were there, yet he did not look back.
He moved.
Something inside him seemed to switch from prince to weapon. His heart hammered, heat surged through his chest and spread through his limbs, and suddenly the enormous man was tearing down the third-floor corridor of the family wing with frightening speed.
Near the closed double doors leading out of the private wing, a young maid had opened one of the great windows to let the warm summer air through. Absorbed in her work, the poor girl barely noticed him coming. She heard only the rapidly approaching thunder of heavy footsteps, turned—and saw more than two metres of Crown Prince charging toward her like a bull.
She dropped to her knees with a scream.
Oskar did not slow. He vaulted clean over her and threw himself through the open third-floor window like a professional diver.
For one impossible heartbeat, the Crown Prince of Germany was nothing but a white shirt, blue trousers and black boots cutting through the golden evening light, falling from the palace like a man who did not believe gravity had any authority over him.
Then he struck the gravel path below hard, rolled across one shoulder, crashed through several garden plants and the edge of a hedge, then came immediately back onto his feet and kept running.
Near the main doors of the palace, two Royal Guards turned sharply toward the commotion, rifles already in their hands. For half a second they seemed to believe some impossible intruder had burst into the gardens and was charging toward the main drive.
Then they recognised him, the Crown Prince.
Above them, faces began appearing at the palace windows—guards, maids, servants and members of the family drawn toward the growing noise.
Oskar barely noticed.
He cleared another tall hedge in a single bound and burst onto the long driveway stretching from the palace entrance toward the distant iron gates. He had barely begun running down it when he heard the thunder of hooves.
Oskar looked across the grounds and saw Shadowmane coming.
The old black stallion had broken from the stables behind the palace and was charging toward him as though he had somehow sensed that his master needed him.
Shadowmane was a beast of a horse—not unnaturally tall, but immensely broad and compact, more than eight hundred kilograms of chest, neck and muscle moving with frightening speed. His black coat flashed beneath the dying sunlight while his mane streamed behind him.
No groom had called him. Oskar had not whistled. Shadowmane simply knew.
The stallion swept toward him, and Oskar never broke stride. He caught a fistful of mane and vaulted onto Shadowmane's bare back in one practiced movement.
Horse and rider surged forward together, over a tonne of flesh and muscle hammering down the palace drive, Shadowmane's hooves scattering gravel and sending dull vibrations through the ground beneath them.
Behind Oskar, the great palace doors burst open.
Captain Carter of Third Company came running out between the Royal Guards, staring after him in disbelief.
"Your Highness—where are you going? What is happening?!"
Oskar turned only long enough to look back.
"No time," he said. "I must go."
Then he faced forward again.
Carter hesitated for perhaps half a second.
"Third Company!" he roared. "Mount up!"
The palace erupted into motion.
Eternal Guards scattered toward whatever transport they could reach fastest—horses, motorcycles, motorcars—men grabbing equipment and shouting for drivers as they struggled to organize themselves quickly enough to follow their prince.
Oskar saw them and smiled, then his eyes moved toward the palace.
Several of his women had appeared upon the steps and at the windows above, some holding infants while children crowded around them, watching their father disappear down the drive. Servants and Guards stood among them, all staring after him in bewilderment.
Higher still, framed within one of the palace windows, stood his parents. Oskar met his father's gaze then and simply nodded.
Wilhelm understood.
For weeks he had tried to reassure his son about Sarajevo, telling him Ferdinand would be protected, that precautions had been taken, that everything would surely be fine. But after all Oskar's warnings, all the strange preparations and all the years he had spent speaking of some catastrophe waiting in the summer of 1914, Wilhelm needed no explanation for what his son was about to do.
His enormous fool of a boy was going to do something reckless again.
Then Shadowmane thundered through the open palace gates and into Potsdam's Royal District.
They tore along the broad roads at extraordinary speed, overtaking a group of young men riding motorcycles and swerving between motorcars whose drivers barely had time to react.
Ahead stood the guarded iron gates marking the edge of the Royal District, where Royal Guards checked papers while vehicles passed slowly in and out.
The guards heard them coming, but there was no time to open the gates and Shadowmane never asked them to.
The stallion gathered himself beneath Oskar and launched. For one breathtaking heartbeat, horse and rider seemed almost to fly—Shadowmane's black body stretched over the iron gates, mane streaming behind him, while the white-shirted Crown Prince passed above the astonished Guards below.
Then Shadowmane came down hard on the other side.
His hooves struck the asphalt with such force that the impact shuddered through the road and sent one nearby guard stumbling backward. And then they were in Potsdam.
People stopped at the sound of them. Motorcars slowed and pulled aside. Buses full of passengers came almost to a halt while pedestrians turned toward the pounding of hooves as the enormous Crown Prince tore through the evening streets upon a black stallion moving faster than many of the automobiles around him.
For a moment there was only shock. Then recognition spread almost instantly.
Children pointed. Heads appeared at windows. A policeman standing beside a roundabout simply stared. Men rose from café tables and pedestrians stopped upon the pavements while Shadowmane drove through the traffic with terrifying confidence, weaving between vehicles and leaping whatever could not move aside quickly enough.
Even with Oskar's nearly two hundred kilograms upon his back, Shadowmane moved with astonishing speed.
Ahead, pedestrians were still crossing the road when they heard the pounding of hooves and turned toward the approaching stallion. Several froze. Others screamed and scattered, but there was no need. Shadowmane gathered himself beneath Oskar and launched cleanly into the air.
For one breathtaking moment, the enormous black stallion seemed to hang above the crossing, legs tucked beneath him, mane streaming through the evening air while Oskar leaned low against his neck. Then Shadowmane struck the asphalt beyond with a tremendous crack and surged onward almost without breaking stride.
Gasps and shouting followed them down the street, but Oskar scarcely heard any of it.
Potsdam blurred around him as he drove Shadowmane toward Berlin and the railway station beyond. Buildings, motorcars, buses and startled faces passed almost too quickly to distinguish, while the stallion threaded through the traffic with an instinctive confidence that made horse and rider seem less like two separate creatures than a single black shape cutting through the city.
Oskar had only one thought left.
He had to go, and that was all.
He alone remembered what was waiting in Sarajevo. He alone knew what June 28 might become, and if there remained even the smallest chance that he could stop it, then he had to try. And perhaps the world had changed enough that it might not happen, but perhaps it had not.
Oskar could not remain in Potsdam and gamble upon that hope.
So Shadowmane ran.
That night, the German railway system descended into chaos.
Telegraph messages raced ahead from station to station while passenger services were halted, freight trains pushed hurriedly onto sidings and signals changed across entire stretches of track. Timetables that had been planned weeks in advance were abandoned within minutes as one extraordinary report travelled south even faster than the locomotive itself.
The Crown Prince of Germany had commandeered a train.
There was no royal carriage, ceremonial escort or comfortable compartment behind him. Oskar had taken only the locomotive and its coal-and-water tender, while Shadowmane stood upon the mound of coal behind the cab, his enormous black body strangely steady despite the violent motion beneath his hooves.
Oskar drove the engine himself.
The locomotive thundered south through the darkness with its firebox blazing and sparks streaming behind it, while railway officials farther down the line received increasingly frantic instructions to clear everything from his path.
Third Company followed as soon as its men could organize another train, but they never caught him.
The night of June 26 disappeared beneath the wheels, and by the morning of the twenty-seventh Oskar was still racing south, exhausted already but unwilling to surrender even a minute.
Germany passed around him in smoke and speed. Saxony vanished behind the locomotive, then came the imperial frontier and the rolling country of Bohemia, while stations flashed past almost too quickly for the railwaymen standing beside them to do more than stare. Wherever Oskar went, telegraph offices warned the next junction in advance, passenger trains waited silently upon sidings and stationmasters watched the Crown Prince of Germany tear through their platforms without slowing.
As he drove deeper into Austria-Hungary, the panic simply moved with him.
Word spread rapidly through the imperial railway system that the German Crown Prince was coming south at extraordinary speed and that no train, official or timetable was to obstruct him. Lines were cleared, signals opened and water and coal prepared wherever they might be required.
The locomotive became a spectacle long before Oskar reached Bosnia.
Farmers working near the tracks stopped when they heard the distant whistle. Villagers emerged from houses and stations to watch the engine appear beneath a column of smoke, racing across the countryside with a gigantic black stallion standing upon the coal behind the cab while an equally enormous, soot-blackened prince worked inside.
By the afternoon of June 27, Oskar's white shirt had become grey with coal dust. Sweat ran through the soot upon his face, and exhaustion had begun settling heavily into his arms and shoulders, yet he continued feeding the fire and forcing the locomotive harder whenever its speed began to fall.
The machine was suffering for it.
The boiler ran dangerously hot. Metal rattled beneath the strain, bearings heated and rods hammered with an increasingly violent rhythm, while the entire locomotive trembled whenever the rails became uneven. It had never been designed to endure such punishment for so many hours.
Oskar knew that. He also knew the date.
As evening fell over Austria-Hungary, June 28 drew steadily closer.
The country around him changed as the railway entered rougher terrain. Hills rose beside the tracks, valleys narrowed and the line began curving more sharply around slopes and rivers. Darkness settled over the countryside while the locomotive continued south beneath a trail of smoke and sparks, its firebox glowing red inside the cab.
By then Oskar was filthy, exhausted and running almost entirely upon determination. Every rational instinct told him that the locomotive needed rest and that the increasingly difficult track demanded caution.
He ignored both.
Somewhere ahead lay Bosnia. Beyond Bosnia lay Sarajevo. And with every hour that passed, the morning he had feared since 1903 came closer.
The locomotive raced deeper into the hills.
Warning signs began appearing beside the railway as the line approached a particularly difficult stretch—a hard bend wrapped around the side of a slope before continuing onto a bridge over the river below.
Oskar saw them, and he understood what they meant, but he still did not slow enough. He was simply running out of time.
"Come on," he muttered through clenched teeth, one hand still upon the controls. "Just a little farther."
The locomotive entered the curve too fast, and almost immediately the wheels began shrieking against the rails.
Oskar looked up as something shifted beneath him.
The engine lurched violently toward the outside of the bend, its weight suddenly fighting against the track rather than following it.
Behind him, Shadowmane roared.
"Oh, shit."
Oskar reached for the brake, but too late. The locomotive lifted from the rails.
For a fraction of a second, the entire machine seemed to hang strangely beneath him. Then steel tore against steel with a scream loud enough to swallow every other sound.
The engine struck the edge of the bridge approach and twisted sideways, dragging the tender after it. Coal erupted into the darkness while Shadowmane disappeared from Oskar's sight.
Then the locomotive went over.
Oskar was thrown violently across the cab as the world rotated around him. Iron folded. Glass shattered. Steam burst from ruptured pipes in a white cloud as engine, tender, horse and prince plunged down the slope toward the riverbed below.
The crash shook the valley.
A moment later came an explosion, brief and violent enough to illuminate the surrounding hills before darkness returned.
Then there was silence.
Far below the railway, scattered flames began appearing among the twisted remains of the locomotive. Steam hissed from somewhere inside the wreckage while black smoke climbed slowly into the night.
Nothing else moved.
Hours continued passing. Eventually the eastern horizon began to brighten.
June 28 had arrived.
Far away, Sarajevo was beginning to wake. Within hours Franz Ferdinand would climb into his automobile, while young men carrying pistols and bombs waited somewhere along the route.
And behind him, beside a river beneath the hills of Austria-Hungary, the locomotive carrying the one man who truly understood what that morning might become lay shattered and burning.
The day Oskar had feared for eleven years had finally come.
The hour of judgement was now only hours away.
And the century held its breath.