As Oskar fell, he felt four small impacts.
Like needles.
Four blunt, burning punches drove into his flesh almost too quickly to understand. For an instant they were not even pain, only pressure and heat, followed by a violent ringing in his ears that pushed the rest of the world strangely far away. Then gravity caught him and tore him from the saddle, and his body finally began registering what had happened.
For the fraction of a second in which he hung in the air, Oskar saw the assassin below him screaming in pure animal terror as Shadowmane's shadow swallowed him.
Then the hooves came down.
There was a crunch, nothing dramatic, only bone yielding beneath enormous weight as the young man's face disappeared beneath black fur, muscle and fury.
And strangely, absurdly, that was what struck Oskar deepest.
Not the blood. Not the bullets burning inside him. Not even the knowledge that history had somehow found him again.
Only one question rose from somewhere hollow inside him.
Why?
Why had this young man—why had any of them—chosen this?
Why return again to iron, blood and suicide, as though history demanded the same old sacrifice, only now with even more bodies piled upon those that had come before?
Had they not seen what was changing around them?
Had they not felt it?
Oskar had never promised paradise. He had never promised endless riches or some impossible world where every man possessed everything he desired. The Earth itself did not contain enough resources for that lie.
He had tried to promise something simpler.
Peace. Security. A home worth living in. Food upon the table. Children who could grow without hearing gunfire beyond the hills. A life in which dignity was not some distant dream reserved for aristocrats, but something ordinary people could reasonably expect.
So why was this happening?
Why could they not understand that he and the men beside him were not their enemies? That Oskar had tried—genuinely tried—to become a prince for the people rather than merely another prince above them?
And Ferdinand...
Ferdinand was no tyrant. No butcher of nations. He had spent years trying to hold Austria-Hungary together through reform rather than the whip. He spoke of representation, compromise and giving the Empire's many peoples room enough to breathe. Where others demanded force, Ferdinand had repeatedly argued for restraint.
He had chosen compromise over conquest.
He had chosen peace when pride would have been easier.
And still it had not been enough.
Why?
What had Oskar missed?
Where had he misstepped?
What flaw in everything he had tried to create—what blind spot in his dream of a better world—had once again brought men here, to a street filled with smoke, bodies and blood?
Then he hit the ground.
The cobblestones struck his back hard enough to tear every trace of air from his lungs. The ringing in his skull deepened, and for a moment the summer sky above him fractured into shifting pieces of white and blue.
He could not feel his legs.
Nothing.
Only emptiness below the waist.
Oskar lay there staring upward while smoke rolled across the street and screams bled faintly through the metallic haze inside his head.
Then his vision shifted, to the car.
It sat only a short distance away, smoking and ruined, its polished bodywork dented and scarred by bullets. Blood ran slowly down one side in dark, narrow lines.
Ferdinand was inside. Sophie was inside. Perhaps both were dead.
Something inside Oskar went cold.
History—stubborn, spiteful history—had refused to bend.
For several seconds he felt nothing. Not pain. Not anger. Only a hollow helplessness, as though everything he had built across eleven years had somehow led inevitably back to this street, this blood, this ugly turning of the same wheel.
Perhaps this was simply how events were meant to unfold. Perhaps all his factories, medicines, armies, roads and grand ideas had only changed the scenery around an ending that could not itself be changed. Perhaps none of it mattered.
Then something moved at the edge of his vision.
Shadowmane.
The stallion circled back toward him, bleeding heavily and trembling with exhaustion. One flank was dark and slick, his breathing came hard through flared nostrils, and every step showed the pain running through his wounded body.
Any ordinary horse would have fled. Any sane creature would have run from the gunfire, smoke and exploding streets. Shadowmane did not.
Instead he remained beside Oskar, always beside him. And in that simple, wordless loyalty, something shifted.
Whatever Oskar believed about destiny, history or the endless stupidity of mankind, there were still beings in this world who had chosen him. People and creatures who depended upon him, trusted him and remained beside him without demanding speeches or explanations.
How could he lie there and surrender while they still stood?
No. There was still a chance, however small or bitter it might have been. He only had to push a little farther. Endure a little longer.
Oskar planted one hand against the cobblestones and forced himself upright.
Pain struck all at once.
His shoulder burned. His side screamed every time he breathed. His legs shook beneath him as sensation returned in sharp, ugly waves, and somewhere inside his body four bullets reminded him that they had not disappeared merely because he had decided to stand.
Still he moved.
Then, before he properly saw or heard anything, he felt it. A cold prickling at the base of his skull.
Danger.
Oskar threw himself sideways, just as a rifle cracked. The bullet tore through the space where his head had been a heartbeat earlier and shattered against the cobblestones, spraying chips of stone across the street. Oskar rolled hard into the smoking side of the A-class and looked upward.
A man stood upon a rooftop, rifle in hand. The assassin worked the action frantically, eyes widening when he realized the shot had missed.
Oskar did not hesitate.
He dropped to one knee and drove his fist into the cobblestones. Stone cracked beneath the blow.
His fingers forced themselves into the broken mortar and ripped a chunk loose as though tearing a rotten tooth from a jaw. His knuckles split, blood ran down his hand. Then he crushed the stone into small fragments that burst between his fingers.
Oskar hurled them upward.
The broken pieces scattered in flight like crude grapeshot. Several struck the assassin across the face with brutal force, cutting skin and smashing against teeth and eyes. The man screamed, staggered backward with both hands raised—and disappeared behind the roofline.
Oskar exhaled through clenched teeth.
He hated this, the blood, the killing, the necessity. He hated that once again the only language left to him seemed to be force.
Then movement caught his eye.
At the mouth of an alley to his right, an assassin stepped into view holding something squat and dark between both hands.
Not a bottle, not a grenade, but some crude cylinder wrapped in cloth and wire, with a trigger fixed near the top.
A bomb.
The man looked almost as ruined as the street around him. His face was pale beneath his hat, his breathing ragged, his eyes fixed upon Oskar with the terrified hatred of someone who had watched too many impossible things happen in too little time.
A rider who would not stay down. A horse that trampled men like some creature from legend. A wounded giant who tore apart streets with his bare hands.
The assassin found the only explanation his frightened mind could accept.
Monster.
He screamed the word with spit flying from his mouth.
"Die, you monster!"
His arm drew backward.
Shadowmane lowered his head for a charge, wounded muscles tightening beneath his black coat.
Oskar, still on one knee with blood soaking what remained of his shirt, reached for another piece of broken stone.
Then a child's cry broke from the house behind the assassin—high, frightened and muffled by the closed door.
A heartbeat later, that door burst open.
A woman came flying through it barefoot, hair loose and blouse only half-fastened. She did not spare Oskar, the wrecked automobile or the bodies in the street so much as a glance.
She saw only the man with the bomb.
"No!" she screamed.
She threw herself at him.
The impact nearly knocked him from his feet. Her hands locked around his wrist just as his thumb pressed down upon the trigger, and suddenly the two were wrestling desperately over the device, the assassin trying to wrench his arm free while the woman dragged it toward herself as though sheer strength could keep him from throwing it.
His face twisted in panic.
"Are you insane—let go! You'll get us both killed!"
Before he could break her grip, another figure burst from the house.
Her husband.
Older, broad-shouldered and still half-dressed, he charged straight into the struggle and seized the assassin from behind, locking both arms around him and trying to force the bomb hand downward.
Then their son came after him.
The boy could not have matched any of the men for strength, so he simply threw himself around the assassin's legs and clung there, using his entire body to keep the man from moving.
Inside the house, the little girl was still crying.
Calling for them.
Oskar stared.
For one stunned moment he could do nothing but watch the whole family pile themselves onto a live bomb in the middle of the street.
Then understanding hit him.
His face changed.
"No—don't—!"
The world flashed white.
The explosion struck with brutal force. Heat slapped across Oskar's face. The pressure hammered through his wounds and threw him half sideways against the damaged automobile. Sound disappeared beneath a single enormous crack that seemed to split the street itself apart.
Then came red, not a mist, not some delicate spray, but a thick, violent sheet of blood thrown outward in every direction.
It painted the stones, the walls and the side of the A-class. It struck Oskar across the face and bare chest, hot and heavy enough that for one stunned instant his mind refused to understand what had touched him.
Blood splashed across Shadowmane as well, streaking his already-dark coat and running in thin rivulets through the black mane.
Then debris began falling. Small, soft impacts against stone. Things Oskar did not want to identify.
Where four people had been struggling only a heartbeat earlier, there was now only smoke, shattered timber and ruin.
The assassin was gone, so was the family, but the girl— The little girl was still crying inside the house. Louder now, more alone than ever before.
Oskar remained on one knee beside the car, the stone still clenched uselessly in his hand. Blood ran from his jaw and mixed with blood that was not his own, dripping from his chest onto the cobblestones beneath him.
For several seconds his mind refused to assemble what his eyes had just witnessed.
He stared toward the ruined doorway. At the smoke curling through it. At the darkness beyond. At the child crying for people who would never answer her again.
Something inside Oskar broke then, not with anger but with disbelief.
They were Slavs, Christians, people who worshipped beneath the same crosses, spoke languages born beside one another and buried their dead beneath the same Balkan soil. Families had married across those supposed divisions for generations until bloodlines tangled together so completely that few could honestly say where one people ended and another began.
They were not strangers fighting some alien invader, they were cousins, neighbours, men who might have shared bread, wine and laughter at the same table a decade earlier.
So why?
Why did they insist upon carving one another apart? Were they truly so different? Or had generations of flags, borders, grievances and stories repeated until they became sacred simply convinced them that they were?
The little girl's crying cut through the smoke once more.
Oskar's hands began to tremble.
Shadowmane snorted beside him and stamped one wounded hoof against the stones, his black coat slick with blood that was not entirely his own.
Around them, the city roared.