April 1862 broke with storm clouds over both land and sea.
In the West, Union columns surged into Tennessee and northern Mississippi, while in the far South, blue-coated regiments crowded transports and steamers, bound for the mouth of the Mississippi itself.
Louisiana trembled as Union soldiers waded ashore near New Orleans, bayonets fixed and gunboats looming like steel sharks upon the water.
The Confederacy's lifeline along the river seemed imperiled, and Richmond called desperately for reinforcements.
But Elias's gaze had shifted eastward.
Louisiana would burn in time, but Virginia was where the Union meant to crush the rebellion outright.
There the Greybacks would strike once more.
The Peninsula Campaign ground forward in mud and misery.
General McClellan's great host—over 120,000 strong—crawled up the long tongue of land between the James and York Rivers, seeking the very gates of Richmond.
Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston fell back, step by grudging step, until his men stood near Williamsburg, the old colonial capital, their heels pressed against the road to the Confederate heartland.
To stiffen the retreat, Elias dispatched six thousand Greybacks, drawn from the seasoned veterans and newly summoned hosts alike.
They marched east in silence, their uniforms immaculate, their rifles polished like glass.
The Confederates, gaunt from weeks of retreat, looked upon them with awe.
"Stone-faced bastards,"
one Virginian muttered,
"but God help the Yankee that stands in their way."
By May, Johnston had 32,000 Confederates entrenched around Williamsburg.
Brigadier General Joseph Hooker led nearly 40,000 Federals against them, pressing hard, hoping to crush the rearguard before Richmond could be reinforced.
The morning of May 5th dawned wet and grey.
Union artillery opened with a rolling thunder that shook the very ground.
Hooker's divisions advanced, banners snapping, bands blaring, muskets gleaming under the drizzle.
The Confederates braced themselves for another bloody retreat.
But Elias's Greybacks had other ideas.
Rex led two thousand of them into the forward rifle pits, their bayonets already fixed.
They held fire until the Union lines closed within a hundred yards.
Then the pits erupted in smoke and flame.
Dozens of bluecoats fell in the first volley, cut down before they could even bring muskets to bear.
When the survivors staggered closer, Rex gave a single word:
"Steel."
The Greybacks surged from the earthworks like wolves, bayonets flashing.
They drove the first Union line back in brutal hand-to-hand struggle, corpses piling in the mud.
Hooker's men reeled at the ferocity of it.
One captain, bleeding from a shattered jaw, later croaked:
"They weren't men. They didn't break. They didn't breathe. They came on like the dead."
Elsewhere on the field, Varga led his scouts through the tangled forests on the Confederate right.
His Greybacks moved like shadows, slipping between trees, their rifles cracking with merciless precision.
Union skirmishers simply vanished, picked off before they knew they were hunted.
Panic spread among Hooker's flank companies, reports of "phantoms in the woods" reaching headquarters by noon.
By midafternoon, the battle became a grinding contest.
Hooker threw regiment after regiment into the Confederate works, only to see them repulsed with staggering losses.
The Greybacks formed the hinge of every defense, standing shoulder to shoulder with Texans, Georgians, and Alabamians alike.
Elias, watching through the tether, exulted.
Each Union charge was another rent in their strength, another turn of the screw.
Still, Johnston's orders were clear: this was not a battle to win, but a battle to delay.
By evening, the Confederates began a methodical withdrawal toward Richmond.
The Greybacks covered the retreat, fighting yard by yard, refusing to give ground easily.
At one point, a Union brigade nearly broke through, threatening to cut off the Confederate rear guard.
Rex personally led a counterattack with three Greyback companies, driving them back with such violence that Union survivors left their wounded behind in terror.
One Southern colonel clasped Rex's hand afterward, whispering hoarsely: "God bless you and your devils."
Night fell at last.
Hooker's men held the field, but it was a field of ruin.
Nearly 5,300 Union casualties littered the mud—dead, dying, and broken with so many more wounded and fleeing from the battle.
The Confederates lost only around a thousand, while Elias suffered the greatest losses with over one hundred of his men falling in this one battle, and more importantly, nearly every regiment withdrew intact, ready to fight again.
Richmond would fight another day.
The Richmond papers spun it as a triumph.
"Williamsburg," one crowed, "proves the Yankee cannot match Southern valor."
Another praised "the mysterious riflemen who fight like demons and vanish like mist."
None spoke openly of the Greybacks, though soldiers whispered the name in their camps, voices hushed as if invoking spirits.
For Hooker and his men, it was a bitter victory.
They had driven the Confederates back, but at a cost that chilled them to the bone.
Officers wrote of strange troops in grey coats who neither tired nor faltered.
"If the whole rebel army were such,"
one Union colonel confessed,
"then God help the Republic."
Meanwhile, far away in Louisiana, Union forces pressed deeper inland, securing New Orleans by month's end.
The Mississippi, Father of Waters, threatened to split the Confederacy in two.
Yet even as that disaster unfolded, Elias's hand in Virginia had shifted the balance.
Richmond breathed easier.
Davis's government, once trembling, steadied itself anew.
Elias smiled in his hidden sanctum.
The Greybacks had bled the Union badly, and though the Confederates retreated, they had not broken.
The war would stretch longer, darker, more ruinous.
That was his design.
And still, more hosts waited across the sea.
More ironclads rocked in hidden harbors.
The iron tide had not crested.
Williamsburg was but another stone in the bloody road.
The true storm was yet to come.