Oskar left the Kaiser's office with a calm face and a tight chest.
The heavy doors shut behind him, and for a few steps he managed to keep the mask on—princely posture, controlled breathing, a dutiful nod to the guards.
Then the corridor swallowed him.
And the mask cracked.
Acting.
The word scraped inside his skull like sand under a bandage.
His father had spoken it cleanly, formally, as if it were nothing.
Acting Crown Prince.
A title with a hook in it.
Not a crown—
a leash.
Oskar walked faster, boots striking stone, mind racing in sharp little bursts.
What did a Crown Prince actually do?
In theory: represent the Empire when the Kaiser could not. Attend councils. Receive ministers. Sign ceremonial decrees. Smile for foreign dignitaries. Speak at parades. Visit factories. Calm panic. Promise the future with a steady voice.
In practice: become a symbol strong enough that the nation didn't fracture when the Emperor sneezed.
And Oskar could do that.
He was already doing that—without the title.
Which was exactly why the "acting" part made his blood warm with resentment.
Because it meant:
You may carry the burden.
But you are not allowed to own it.
He should have felt victory.
Instead he felt trapped between two cliffs—one called succession law, the other called his father's pride.
And he understood something else now, with a clarity that made him want to laugh:
Wilhelm II had not appointed him because he loved him.
He had appointed him because the Empire needed him.
That was not the same thing.
Oskar turned down the private palace corridor toward his quarters, already imagining the relief of his own door.
Tanya's voice.
Anna's calm presence.
Six little monsters crawling, biting, giggling—pulling at his fingers like he was a climbing frame.
Home.
And then—like fate refusing to let him breathe—someone stepped out of a side corridor and blocked him.
Grand Admiral von Tirpitz.
He stood perfectly composed, hands behind his back, moustache sharp as a blade.
As if he had been waiting.
Oskar stopped. Forced his face into neutrality again.
"Marshal," he said politely.
Tirpitz's eyes swept over him once, assessing. Measuring.
Then the old sea wolf gave a short nod.
"Your Highness," Tirpitz said, "congratulations."
Oskar's smile didn't reach his eyes.
"I suspect," he answered, "you already know the word attached to that congratulations."
Tirpitz's moustache twitched.
"Acting," he said. "Yes."
The way he said it—flat, disgusted—made Oskar's shoulders loosen a fraction. At least Tirpitz understood the insult for what it was.
Oskar kept his voice calm.
"It's not nothing," he said. "It gives me access. Influence. A seat. A hand on the wheel."
"It gives you responsibility," Tirpitz corrected. "And lets you be blamed if things go wrong."
Oskar's eyes narrowed slightly.
Tirpitz stepped closer—just enough to make this private without needing to whisper.
"Listen carefully," he said. "The Navy will support you openly. The War Minister will support you when it benefits him. The Chancellor will sell the story you need sold."
He paused.
"But your father did not give you a crown."
Tirpitz's gaze sharpened.
"He gave you a test."
Oskar didn't respond.
Tirpitz continued.
"'Acting' means: you do the work, you take the heat, you carry the Empire's public face—while your father keeps the right to remove you the moment it becomes inconvenient."
Oskar's jaw flexed.
"And if Wilhelm wakes?" Oskar asked quietly.
Tirpitz's eyes went cold.
"Then men like Moltke will crawl back to him like rats to a familiar hole," Tirpitz said. "And your 'acting' title will be used as an excuse to put you back in your place."
Oskar's fingers curled slightly.
Tirpitz watched him carefully, as if checking whether the young prince would flare up like a furnace.
Instead Oskar exhaled once, slow.
"So what do I do?" he asked.
Tirpitz's expression softened—not warm, but sincere in his own brutal way.
"You do what you always do," he said. "You build. You win. You make yourself so useful that removing you becomes impossible."
Oskar's eyes flicked up.
"And the word 'acting'?"
Tirpitz's moustache twitched again.
"You kill it," he said simply.
Not with violence.
With inevitability.
"With results," Tirpitz clarified. "With the kind of achievements that make the Reichstag nod, make the people cheer, and make your brothers choke on their own envy."
He leaned in one last inch.
"And you remember this, Your Highness: the throne is not won by wanting it. It is won by being the only man left who can hold the Empire together."
Oskar stood still for a long moment, the corridor quiet around them.
Then he nodded once.
"Thank you," he said.
Tirpitz stepped back, satisfied.
"The Navy stands with you," he said. "Not because you are kind. Not because you are young. But because you are dangerous to our enemies."
He turned to leave, then stopped.
"And Oskar…"
Oskar looked at him.
Tirpitz's voice dropped, almost grimly amused.
"Go see your women. Kiss your children. Sleep if you can."
His eyes hardened.
"Because from tonight on, the Empire will not let you rest again."
And then he was gone, boots echoing away down the hall.
Oskar stood in place for one heartbeat longer. Then Oskar continued down the corridor towards his chambers.
The Eternal Guards straightened as he passed. He returned their salute with a simple nod—nothing ceremonial, nothing performative. Just acknowledgment. Just trust.
Then he reached the door.
His door.
The moment it opened, warmth spilled out to meet him.
Soft lamplight.
The familiar scent of clean linen and faint herbs.
Quiet breathing. Small sounds of sleep and life.
Tanya and Anna were already there, waiting—not standing at attention, not asking questions, not demanding explanations. Just present. Just home.
And the children.
Six of them now.
Imperiel sprawled sideways like he owned the world.
Juniel and Lailael tangled together in sleep, identical curls pressed cheek to cheek.
Liorael's tiny fist clenched in the fabric of Anna's sleeve.
Azarael breathing slow and steady, utterly unconcerned with empires.
Mirael tucked close, warm and stubborn even in sleep.
Oskar stood there for a long moment and let the door close behind him.
This—this—was real.
Not councils.
Not decrees.
Not the word acting, sharp and hollow in his mind.
Family did not care about titles.
Family only cared that he came back.
He moved carefully, easing out of his coat, lowering himself into the bed as if approaching something sacred. Tanya shifted instinctively, her arm finding his chest without waking. Anna's hand brushed his shoulder, grounding him.
The children crawled toward him like iron filings toward a magnet—small bodies finding familiar warmth, climbing without ceremony, settling wherever gravity allowed.
Oskar lay back.
For the first time that day, he let his breath slow.
This is why I do it, he thought.
Not for power. Not for crowns.
For this.
He knew the hospital was safer.
He knew he wasn't fully healed.
He knew tomorrow would bring documents, ministers, expectations, pressure.
But tonight, he chose something else.
Tonight, he chose to be a father.
If he was to shape Germany's future—if he was to prevent history from repeating itself—then it had to begin here.
With children who knew safety.
With women who knew trust.
With a home that did not fracture.
Oskar stared at the ceiling, one hand resting over the warm, tangled weight of his family.
Outside, the Empire waited like a loaded gun.
Inside, peace reigned—brief, fragile, borrowed.
And as sleep finally took him, he made himself a promise:
Tomorrow, I carry the Empire.
But tonight, I belong to them.
The last lamp dimmed. The last breath evened out.
And the night slipped away.
However, dawn like the night did not bring gentleness.
It brought messengers. It brought ink. It brought men who spoke softly because they were afraid of what their words meant.
By late morning of the 27th, the decree had already been copied, sealed, and telegraphed.
Then by midday on the 27th of December, the Empire had already swallowed the news and begun digesting it like a hard piece of bread.
Acting Crown Prince.
The title raced along telegraph lines, leapt from newspaper stalls into cafés, and spilled into arguments across Europe before the ink was even dry. Embassy clerks sent urgent telegrams. Editors printed extra editions. In London and Paris, men who had never set foot in Germany spoke as if they personally knew her future.
Some called it stability.
Some called it danger.
Some called it proof that Germany was slipping toward war, no matter how brightly a few German books smiled from foreign shelves.
Oskar understood something simpler than any diplomat's cleverness:
Germany hadn't seen him in months.
Not in person. Not with their own eyes. Not close enough to believe he still breathed. They had only heard rumors—half of them reverent, the other half poisonous.
And Oskar had learned the hard way:
Rumors could do what bullets failed to do.
So that morning—against every instinct of caution, against the protests of doctors, and against the comfort of staying hidden—he made his choice.
He would be seen.
He would speak.
And he would do it where the symbolism could not be diluted, not by foreign newspapers, not by nervous ministers, not by fear.
Beneath the Brandenburg Gate of Potsdam.
Near the beating heart of his own growing empire: the headquarters, the first Pump World, the early AngelWorks offices. If he returned to the public eye, he would not do it as a pale convalescent behind palace curtains.
He would return as what Germany believed him to be:
A prince of work and steel—alive.
Shadowmane carried him through the winter streets like a black omen.
Oskar wore a clean uniform, no cap, hair brushed back neatly. Black gloves. Black boots polished like a mirror. His scars were hidden beneath cloth—but everyone who had read the papers could see them anyway, in their imagination, sharper than any photograph.
And his escort was not subtle.
Mounted Royal Guards rode at his flanks, quiet men with hard eyes and rifles held like punctuation.
A statement to anyone watching from a window:
This prince is not unguarded anymore.
They reached the Gate.
And the square was already full.
Workers in Sunday coats. Clerks and students. Veterans with medals pinned to old wool. Mothers hoisting children high onto shoulders. Men standing on crates, fences, cart-wheels—anything that could buy them a better view.
A sea of faces, hungry for certainty.
When Shadowmane stepped into view and Oskar rose above them—tall as a statue, broad as a doorway—the crowd erupted.
His name rolled through the square like thunder.
"Oskar!" "Iron Prince!" "He lives!" "HEIL!"
Some shouted prayers.
Some shouted curses at enemies they couldn't see.
Some shouted promises of loyalty that sounded like vows.
Oskar felt it hit him like heat.
Adoration, yes—
but also rage.
A nation with blood still fresh in its mouth.
He lifted his right hand.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
And the miracle happened again: the noise died—not because they calmed, but because they obeyed.
The square became so quiet that the small sounds of winter returned: a horse snorting, boots shifting on stone, the nervous flutter of a newspaper in the wind.
Shadowmane stood beneath the Gate, hooves striking the cobbles once—an echo like a drumbeat.
Oskar sat tall in the saddle, the winter sun pale against his hair. His eyes swept the crowd—not as a performer hunting applause, but as a commander measuring the weight of his people.
He opened his mouth.
And when he spoke, his voice carried as if the Gate itself had become an amplifier of stone and history.
"Hear me, one and all."
A tremor went through the crowd. Heads lifted. Even the foreign diplomats leaned closer.
"My people… look at me."
He let the silence sharpen.
"You have heard rumors. You have heard fear. You have heard lies. So I have come to speak plainly."
He sat perfectly still on Shadowmane, eyes sweeping the masses.
"As you all surely know, the assassination plot against me has been foiled."
The crowd hissed and growled like an animal remembering a wound.
"The ones who attacked me are dead—by my hands. And the remaining conspirators—those who funded them, armed them, sheltered them—are being hunted down, and destroyed as we speak."
The square erupted.
"HEIL!"
"CRUSH THEM!"
"NO MERCY!"
"IRON PRINCE!"
Oskar raised his hand again.
The roar choked off instantly, like a throat being squeezed.
"Enough."
One word. Steel.
"My father's response has been harsh," he continued. "Many have suffered. Many have panicked. Many have fled. And yes—some of you have looked upon the new law with hope… even with joy."
A murmur rippled—some proud, some ashamed.
"And others," Oskar said, voice dropping, "have looked upon it with dread."
His gaze shifted, briefly, to the edges—where a few foreigners and nervous faces stood like people expecting stones.
"The year closes in," he said. "The first of January approaches. And when it comes, the law will take effect.
Foreigners in our lands who hold property and businesses will be required to sell. They may remain, yes—but only as guests. Guests may live here. Guests may rent. Guests may work under licensed contracts—employment remains legal.
But guests do not decide the direction of the house."
That line hit like a hammer. Even those who agreed with it felt its weight.
Then Oskar lifted his chin.
"But hear me now—hear me clearly.
As Acting Crown Prince, I will not allow chaos to rule Germany."
His voice rose.
"No man is permitted to hunt his neighbor like an animal. No German is permitted to burn, loot, and terrorize in the street and call it 'justice.' That is not strength. That is weakness wearing a mask."
Some faces flinched. Some jaws clenched. But no one dared interrupt him.
He paused—then continued, calmer, colder.
"Now listen well. There are three paths before you."
He held up one gloved finger.
"First: Those who wish to become one of us."
A hush.
"Those who will learn our language. Those who will respect our laws. Those who will adopt German life and German loyalty."
He leaned forward slightly in the saddle.
"If you vow to assimilate—truly—then you will not be cast aside like debris. You will be given a trial period to prove your loyalty and worth. You will be supported by my Oskar Industrial Group. Your work will be found. Your children will be educated. Your record will be watched.
And if you prove yourselves—then you will stand here not as guests, but as Germans."
Murmurs spread through the crowd—some surprised, some approving.
He raised a second finger.
"Second: Those who wish to leave."
His tone became almost… practical.
"If you choose to depart—whether from fear or conscience—you will not be robbed."
He let that hang.
"If you place your land, your property, your business up for sale before the first of January, it will be purchased—by my industrial group, by approved German buyers, and where necessary by the state itself.
Not instantly, perhaps. But it will be processed. It will be paid. You will receive fair value."
He gestured outward, encompassing the whole Empire.
"And if travel costs are too high, if you cannot afford tickets for your family—then go to the Welfare Lottery offices. Go to the municipal relief stations. Show your sale documentation. You will receive travel assistance sufficient to begin again elsewhere with dignity.
You will not leave as beggars."
A ripple of shock—because that was real mercy, and mercy from power always stunned people.
Then Oskar lifted a third finger.
"Third…"
His voice sharpened. The air tightened.
"Those who try to cheat."
The crowd went utterly still.
"Those who take money meant for rebuilding lives, and then attempt to return for more. Those who lie. Those who forge papers. Those who treat Germany's mercy as a weakness to exploit."
He leaned forward, eyes hard.
"If you take our aid and then return to scam the Empire… you will face the full weight of the law. I promise you that.
Do not mistake mercy for softness."
A low murmur—nervous, approving, hungry.
Oskar raised his hand again, stopping it before it became a roar.
"And yes," he said, voice deepening, "I know how my words may sound abroad. I know what foreign papers will print. I know what our enemies will whisper."
He paused.
"But understand this: what has happened cannot be undone."
The square held its breath.
"My father's wrath was the wrath of a parent whose child was nearly murdered. That fire has already been lit. To pretend otherwise—to suddenly reverse everything—would not be 'kindness.'
It would be weakness."
He let that word cut clean.
"And weakness invites knives."
Then Oskar slowly removed his right glove.
He raised his hand high.
The scar across his palm—thick, ugly, unmistakable—caught the light.
A collective gasp surged through the crowd.
Oskar's voice dropped into something quiet but lethal.
"As you can see… all actions have consequences."
He held the hand there for a heartbeat longer.
"This scar is my reminder. And I assure you—my resolve has never been stronger."
He slid the glove back on.
"My work will continue. The prosperity you have tasted is not the peak—it is the beginning."
His voice grew louder again.
"Germany will become the world's strongest economy. German lives will become better. German children will grow up healthier, safer, and wealthier than any generation before them."
Then he turned his gaze outward, as if speaking not only to the square but to the diplomats, the foreign newspapers, the listening world.
"And hear this, nations beyond our borders:
Germany does not seek war for its own sake.
But Germany will never again be treated as prey."
A ripple ran through the crowd like electricity.
"We will build an army that cannot be bullied. A navy that cannot be laughed at. A nation so unified and prosperous that no man dares gamble on our collapse."
He raised his chin one last time, voice ringing against stone and sky.
"This is not a threat. It is a promise.
Germany will rise—not to conquer the world, but to secure peace through strength.
Now go home. Hold your families. Work. Build. And let the coming year be remembered not as the year Germany fractured—"
His eyes narrowed.
"—but as the year Germany became unbreakable."
For a heartbeat, the square was silent.
Then it exploded.
"HEIL OSKAR!"
"IRON PRINCE!"
"GERMANY FOREVER!"
Shadowmane stood beneath the Gate like a black statue, and for a heartbeat Oskar did nothing—only looked.
Not at banners or slogans, not at the diplomats lurking on the edges, but at faces. Ordinary faces. The kind that had never been meant to decide the fate of empires, yet would be the ones paying for whatever came next.
Then Shadowmane stepped forward.
Slowly. Deliberately.
Hooves rang on stone in an even, measured rhythm, and the crowd parted as if the horse carried its own gravity. Guards rode close behind—hard-eyed, disciplined—trying to hold the line without choking the moment. They couldn't stop the surge. No one could. The people flooded in anyway, flowing around horse and rider like a river around a pillar.
Hands reached out.
Rough hands, soft hands, hands stained with coal and ink and laundry soap. Calloused fingers brushed his boot, his stirrup, the hem of his coat—as if touching fabric could confirm he was real.
Children craned upward on shoulders, mouths open in wonder. Veterans shouted his name with voices scraped raw by cold and memory. Women wept without hiding it. Men roared like they were trying to drown out their own fear.
"Oskar!" "Iron Prince!" "Germany!"
Oskar leaned down when he could—brief, controlled motions—clasping a hand here, squeezing a shoulder there, nodding once to meet a gaze. Small gestures, measured like medicine.
Because he knew what it meant.
To be seen.
To be flesh.
To not vanish behind palace walls like a rumor in uniform.
And as Shadowmane carried him onward through the press of bodies, Oskar felt it—under the love, under the worship, under the desperate hope:
A nation clinging to him not just for comfort…
…but because they believed he was the last thing keeping the world from breaking.
And yet, beneath the roar, beneath the banners and cheers, a quiet heaviness settled in his chest.
They were happy.
That, at least, was true.
The people were happy to see him alive. Happy to see him standing. Happy to believe that someone strong and familiar was still watching over them in a world that felt increasingly unstable.
And he was glad for that.
But he was not satisfied.
As Shadowmane carried him away from the Gate and toward the palace, Oskar's thoughts turned inward, as they so often did when the noise faded.
That was not what I wanted to say.
He had known it even as the words left his mouth.
What he wanted to say—what the man he had once been would have said—was different. Kinder. Cleaner. Simpler.
That people should not be forced to choose faith under threat.
That culture could be shared without coercion.
That belonging should be earned by contribution, not blood or baptism.
That the future did not need fear to be built.
But this was not the modern world.
These were not modern people.
This was 1906—an age where empires still ruled by steel and scripture, where race and nation were spoken of as destiny, where even the most "civilized" powers justified brutality with confidence and applause.
France preached liberty and crushed Algeria.
Britain spoke of law while ruling half the world by force.
Germany was hardly unique in its sins—only more honest about them.
And he—Oskar—was not Kaiser.
Not yet.
He was Acting Crown Prince.
A temporary pillar, balanced carefully between his father's authority and the crowd's devotion.
If he pushed too far, too fast—if he spoke with the morals of a century not yet born—he would not be applauded.
He would be silenced.
He had already felt how close death could come.
So he adapted.
As Buddhism had taught him, long before he ever knew the name Oskar:
When a better path appears, you take it. But you do not pretend cliffs do not exist.
He had tried to give people choices.
Not one path—but several.
Stay and assimilate.
Stay and live quietly as guests.
Leave with dignity and means.
None of them perfect.
All of them better than chaos.
And perhaps—perhaps—better than what history had once promised.
He thought of the workers he had hired years ago, foreigners who had learned German not because a law forced them, but because a job offered hope. Who had converted on paper, or in truth, or somewhere in between—not out of fear, but because the future was brighter inside than outside.
He had believed then, as he believed now, that incentives shaped nations more quietly than decrees.
Let people want to belong, he thought. Don't just tell them they must.
The law had taken that gentleness away.
All he could do now was sand down its edges. Catch those who stumbled. Buy time. Buy land. Buy peace where he could.
Was it enough?
He didn't know.
As Shadowmane climbed the final rise toward the palace, Oskar glanced back once more at the square—now slowly dispersing, people still buzzing with excitement, still repeating his words to one another, already turning them into something larger than he had intended.
Legends were like that.
They were born not from what was said, but from what people needed to hear.
He closed his eyes briefly, letting the winter air fill his lungs.
This isn't the world I wanted, he admitted silently.
But it is the world I have.
And if he could not tear it down and rebuild it all at once—
Then he would do what he had always done.
Adapt.
Endure.
And change it piece by piece.
Even a small turn of the wheel, taken early enough, could bend the course of history.
Shadowmane snorted softly as if in agreement.
Oskar straightened in the saddle.
There would be meetings.
There would be backlash.
There would be blood he could not wash from his hands, no matter how carefully he moved.
But there would also be factories. Schools. Homes. Clean water. Children who grew up stronger than the ones before them.
Hope, imperfect and fragile—but real.
And for now, that would have to be enough.
Oskar rode back toward the Royal Palace with the echo of the square still clinging to him—hands reaching, voices roaring, faces shining with relief that their prince had not become a ghost.
He did not see the other half of the world.
He did not see telegram clerks tearing paper off humming machines. Did not hear hurried translations being read aloud in foreign ministries and Admiralties. Did not watch financiers and generals lean over the same lines, weighing them like gunmetal.
He only felt that Germany—just for one afternoon—had stopped screaming and started breathing.
And that mattered.
Because before his appearance, Europe had been sliding by the hour.
Not toward declared war—yet—but toward the kind of tightening that always came first: extra companies moved "for exercises" along the Franco-German border; debates in Paris over sanctions and embargoes that would "punish Berlin" without firing a shot; London editorials framing Germany as a country "consolidating by force." In St. Petersburg, ministers argued whether Germany's new internal law meant weakness… or a dangerous new cohesion.
Even neutral capitals whispered the same question in different accents:
Is this the moment Germany stops being contained?
The markets felt it before the diplomats admitted it.
Credits tightened. Orders stalled. Ships waited in port. A few bad headlines, a few bad rumors, and suddenly everyone behaved as if tomorrow might make contracts worthless.
Oskar's absence since October had made it worse.
Silence, in a crisis, is gasoline.
Then came the 27th.
Then came the speech.
And something subtle—but unmistakable—shifted.
The panic did not vanish.
It slowed.
Because Oskar did not promise surrender.
He did not promise conquest.
He promised control.
He sounded like a man who knew where the lines were, and—more importantly—like a man who intended to keep Germany from tearing itself apart while those lines were drawn.
Across Europe and beyond, the public reaction was almost uniform:
Perhaps Germany won't collapse into madness.
Perhaps this prince won't allow it.
Oskar's name carried weight Germany's laws did not.
He was already known abroad as the prince whose books had saved lives, whose products reduced injury, whose strange "modern" ideas had seeped into kitchens and clinics and train stations from Berlin to Boston. People did not love Germany.
But many, grudgingly, trusted him.
For a brief moment, that trust bought calm.
But calm is not the same thing as comfort.
Because while the newspapers softened their language and markets steadied, a different conversation began—one that never touched the public air.
Behind closed doors, the conclusion hardened into something colder:
If Germany continues to grow like this—unified, disciplined, prosperous, technically ahead—then balance is threatened. Not because Germany had declared war, but because power did not need to announce itself to become dangerous.
So intelligence services sharpened their focus.
Not on speeches.
On factories. Shipyards. Patents. The lottery's cashflow. Steel output. Engine output. Rail capacity. Mobilization potential.
Military planners ran projections with new assumptions:
If Germany can do this in two years… what can it do in eight?
And in London, Paris, and St. Petersburg, the final decision settled quietly into place:
Germany would be watched, contained, and—if necessary—checked as a bloc.
The understanding was reached first in private, as all such things were.
Then, at a chosen date, it would be announced to the world as a formal mutual-defense alignment—a public chain meant to discourage Berlin from ever believing it could act alone without consequence.
A treaty spoken aloud at the right moment, like the click of a pistol everyone could hear.
Oskar rode on, unaware.
He believed he had bought time.
And in truth, he had.
But time, as always, was already being spent—by others, for their own plans.
The world had not chosen peace.
It had chosen to wait.