The sun was already sinking when Oskar finally pushed the last folder aside.
Ink had been spilled. Orders had been signed. Men had been moved on paper.
The day's work was done.
And because Tanya and Anna were not here—because there were no bedtime stories, no small hands tugging at his sleeves, no warm chaos to soften the edges of his mind—there was only one thing left to do.
What he always did when he felt pressure clawing at his ribs.
He trained.
Not the polite kind.
The kind that scraped weakness out of the body and left only what mattered.
So late that afternoon, at the garrison of Grenadier-Regiment "Kronprinz" (1. Ostpreußisches) Nr. 1 in Königsberg, the soldiers were preparing for the evening meal when the sound began.
At first it was a murmur beyond the gates—voices rising from the street outside, curiosity swelling into excitement. Then the murmur became cheering, and the cheering gained a name.
"Iron Prince!"
"Oskar!"
"Der Eisenprinz!"
The guards at the gate straightened.
Then the black horse appeared.
Shadowmane moved through the gates like a creature that belonged to legend rather than stables—dark coat, powerful neck, hooves striking stone with a quiet confidence. Around him flowed a small escort of Eternal Guard—gray steel and black coats, silent and watchful, their presence turning the courtyard into something heavier than a normal barracks square.
Men turned to look.
Heads appeared in windows.
An officer hurried forward, about to greet the prince with the right words—
—but Oskar didn't give him the chance.
His voice cut across the yard, loud and commanding, not the voice of a guest but the voice of a man who expected obedience.
"All able men in this garrison," Oskar called, "assemble in the yard. Full field kit. Ten minutes."
For two heartbeats the courtyard froze—not in refusal, but in disbelief.
Then the machine moved.
NCOs barked.
Boots thundered on stairs.
Belts buckled.
Rifles were collected.
Caps pulled on.
Straps tightened.
The men who were off duty—those not on guard, not in kitchens, not assigned to stables or stores—poured into the yard in a swelling gray mass. It was not the entire regiment, but it was close enough to feel like it: well over a thousand at first, then more, until the ranks filled the square.
Near two thousand.
Fast.
Disciplined.
Prussia in motion.
Oskar watched them form up with cold satisfaction.
Then, still astride Shadowmane, he addressed them.
"Grenadiers of the First Corps," he said, voice ringing off brick and stone, "rejoice."
A ripple moved through the ranks.
"You have been selected first," Oskar continued, "to be tested."
He let the word tested settle. Not a speech. Not a ceremony.
A warning.
"Normally," he went on, "I would begin with introductions."
His mouth twitched faintly.
"But I believe you already know who I am."
A few men grinned despite themselves.
Oskar's eyes hardened again.
"So we begin."
He lifted one gloved hand slightly, as if drawing the outline of the test in the air.
"This is not a trial to find the strongest man in this yard," he said. "Not the fastest. Not the loudest."
His gaze swept them.
"This is a trial to see whether you can function as a unit when you are exhausted. When you are hurt. When you are confused. When pressure tries to turn you into animals."
He paused.
Then, with sudden sharpness:
"Follow me."
And before anyone could ask questions, Oskar swung down from Shadowmane, saber at his hip, boots hitting stone. Without further explanation, he began to jog—straight out of the gate and into the city.
For a heartbeat the men hesitated.
Then one soldier ran after him.
Then two.
Then a whole company moved—
—and suddenly the entire mass surged forward, officers and NCOs shouting order into it, and the regiment's lungs became one.
They ran.
Three kilometers through the cold streets of Königsberg, past startled civilians and cheering workers, past tram tracks and shopfronts where faces pressed to glass. The city watched as a river of armed men moved behind their crown prince like a living banner.
Then they reached a park near the water.
Oskar did not slow.
He pointed.
"Across."
The river was half ice, black water moving beneath. January water.
Men stared at it—then stared at Oskar.
Oskar didn't hesitate.
He went first.
He stepped into the freezing water in full kit, breath cutting hard, and swam.
That was all it took.
If the prince crossed, they crossed.
The first men plunged in, gasping and swearing, muscles locking in shock. Then more followed until the entire crossing became chaos—order shouted through teeth chattering, men helping men, NCOs forcing the hesitant forward.
On the far bank, soaked and steaming, they were not allowed to rest.
"Strength endurance," Oskar snapped.
They found tree branches and low limbs and used the winter wood like iron.
Twenty pull-ups.
One hundred push-ups.
One hundred sit-ups.
One hundred squats.
Arms shook.
Breath tore.
Boots slipped in frozen mud.
Then Oskar pointed back toward the water.
"Back."
They crossed again—worse now, because the body knew what was coming.
Then they ran again, uphill toward the barracks, wet uniforms clinging, gear dragging like punishment.
They sang as they ran—not because they were happy, but because singing made it easier to breathe, and because it made fear smaller.
Oskar kept calling the same thing over and over, as if it were doctrine:
"No man left behind. No man left behind."
And somehow, they didn't.
When they finally returned to the courtyard, soaked and shivering, men expected relief.
Instead, they found more.
The test changed shape.
Now came the combat-focused trials.
Controlled sparring—men ordered to box in thick winter gloves, supervised by NCOs who watched for injuries and cowards. Others were made to practice wounded extraction: carrying and dragging men of similar weight across the yard and back again, repeatedly, not once.
Then came the worst part.
Hand-to-hand drills under fatigue.
Men were rotated against multiple opponents—never to "win," but to keep moving when the world narrowed into pain and blur. To see who froze. Who quit. Who lost control. Who broke discipline and became useless.
Stopping meant failure.
Freezing meant failure.
Losing emotional control meant failure.
Oskar himself added the final cruelty: psychological stress.
He shouted.
He gave conflicting orders.
He changed rules without warning.
He humiliated men who tried to hide.
It wasn't about sadism.
It was about war.
Obedience under chaos.
Decision-making under stress.
Emotional control while provoked.
And when the evening finally broke and men staggered, shaking, into the cold air—over half had failed.
Not because they were weak.
Because they lacked the balance.
Endurance without discipline.
Aggression without control.
Strength without stubbornness.
Only the men with a hard mind survived—those who could keep functioning when their bodies screamed to stop.
Oskar walked the line personally, exhausted himself, wet hair clinging, breath fogging.
He congratulated the survivors one by one and pressed a hundred-mark bonus into each hand—nearly a hundred thousand marks thrown away in one evening, as if money meant nothing compared to what he was building.
"It's good effort," he told them. "You earned it."
Then he lifted his voice so the failures could hear too.
"You failed today," he said. "That doesn't mean you are finished."
He pointed toward the barracks.
"Three recovery days. Eat. Sleep. Heal."
A gift disguised as mercy.
"There will be more opportunities," Oskar said. "If you want this… you will come back harder."
To Oskar, this had been only a starter course.
A filter.
A first cut.
One he intended to use again and again in the future—until the men who remained could form the core of the army he wanted.
The Eighth Army, was going to be shaped his way.
Thus, tired, soaked, and steaming faintly in the winter air, Oskar left the barracks and returned to the headquarters of I Army Corps.
The exertion still sat in his chest like a forge being dragged behind his ribs, heat and fatigue mixing into a dull, persistent ache. He had barely crossed the threshold of his quarters when hurried footsteps sounded behind him.
"Your Highness!"
An orderly caught up to him, breath quick, holding out a letter with both hands.
"This was delivered earlier," the man said. "Marked urgent. Sealed. I believe it is from the French ambassador in Berlin."
Oskar stopped.
"A letter?"
"Yes, Your Highness."
He nodded once and waved the man away.
The moment the door closed behind him, sealing the quiet of his room, Oskar looked down at the envelope in his hands.
Cream paper. Heavy stock. Dark wax.
And a name in precise handwriting that made him sigh so deeply it almost became a groan.
Jules Cambon.
French Ambassador. Berlin.
Oskar had met him often enough—at receptions that pretended to be cultural, at dinners that pretended to be harmless, at "evenings of discussion" that were really political surgery performed with smiles and crystal glasses.
Cambon was polite.
Cambon was clever.
Cambon was dangerous.
He was the sort of man who could offer you a compliment and an insult in the same sentence and make you thank him for both.
And Cambon was French.
Oskar had only been in this world a little over five years. He had mastered German through necessity and repetition, but his French remained painfully basic. Conversations with Cambon were exhausting—especially because the man had a habit of drifting between German and French mid-sentence, as if daring Oskar to keep up.
Oskar broke the seal and unfolded the letter.
He skimmed.
Then he exhaled again, longer this time.
Another invitation.
A dinner at the French embassy in Berlin.
Selected guests.
Private conversation.
"Matters of mutual interest."
The tone of gracious civilization.
Oskar's eyes narrowed.
He could already see the room: crystal chandeliers, candlelight, a string quartet playing something elegant and carefully unchallenging. Men in perfect coats weighing him with smiles, Cambon proudly displaying yet another piece of art he'd recently acquired from some forgotten collector.
And inevitably—because Cambon had discovered this weakness—there would be talk of history.
Of creation.
Of ancient worlds.
Of dinosaurs.
Cambon had become strangely fascinated by Oskar's published thoughts on the early Earth and prehistory, and he loved dragging those ideas into conversation as if they were philosophical revelations.
To Oskar, it was mortifying.
In his old life, dinosaurs were for children, museums, and bored afternoons. Now they were treated like metaphors for civilization.
It was exhausting.
And he knew exactly how the evening would go.
They would praise him.
They would ask innocent questions.
They would slowly, politely, gently try to make him feel included.
Not overtly.
Never overtly.
But the message was always there, hovering beneath the wine and the laughter.
Come closer.
Be part of us.
Join the circle.
Oskar set the letter down and rubbed his face with a wet glove.
He didn't want to refuse Cambon outright. Diplomacy was a dance, and you didn't kick your partner in the teeth unless you intended to start a war.
But he didn't want to accept the other thing either.
The thing Cambon never wrote plainly—but had hinted at more than once, over wine and late laughter, during those half-philosophical discussions he seemed to enjoy dragging Oskar into.
Cambon liked to talk about light.
About enlightenment.
About what it meant to truly see.
Once—late in the evening, after enough glasses—Cambon had leaned closer and spoken of the sun as if it were more than a metaphor.
Oskar had laughed then, uncertain whether the man was joking.
He was still uncertain.
But he had learned something important since waking in this world.
There were circles beneath circles.
Doors behind doors.
The Black Hand that would one day reach for an archduke's life was not an aberration. It was proof that secrecy, belief, and patronage could combine into something lethal when left unchecked.
Five years ago, Oskar would have dismissed secret societies as childish nonsense—stories for frightened peasants or bored intellectuals.
Then he learned about his body's grandfather.
And about his father.
Wilhelm II's hatred of Freemasonry was not casual. It wasn't disapproval.
It was visceral.
A refusal to tolerate any brotherhood that placed loyalty anywhere above the imperial hierarchy.
Wilhelm had warned Oskar more than once: never let himself be pulled into such circles, no matter how politely they smiled or how many favors they offered.
And after being approached in so many quiet, indirect ways, Oskar finally understood why.
Prince Friedrich Leopold of Prussia—the man Oskar had displaced from the eastern inspectorate—had been associated with those networks.
Wilhelm II had never liked that.
Not because he feared symbols or rituals.
But because he feared influence he could not command.
Oskar stared at the letter again.
The world was not as clean as textbooks had made it look.
In his old life, history had been taught as nations competing openly—flags, borders, armies in clear opposition.
Here, the more he listened to men like Cambon, the more he sensed loyalties that did not always align with flags.
He knew—at least as far as rumor and implication went—that powerful men in the West belonged to those circles.
He knew the British king had ties to them.
He knew French leadership whispered around them.
He knew the American president had been initiated into something similar.
Washington's obelisk loomed over an entire capital, and the modern world pretended it was only architecture.
And yet—
Wilhelm II stood outside it.
Nicholas II stood outside it.
Even Archduke Franz Ferdinand was said to distrust such networks.
The lines were not clean.
But the pattern was unsettling.
A brotherhood that crossed borders would naturally prefer friends who crossed borders too.
And by removing Friedrich Leopold—and by refusing to step inside those doors—Oskar had made himself an inconvenience.
Not an enemy.
Not yet.
But an uncertainty.
Oskar felt a flicker of irritation at himself and forced it down.
Relax.
He folded the letter neatly, slid it back into its envelope, and tucked it away.
"Fine," he murmured.
Next week, he would go.
He could endure one dinner. He could nod politely, refuse gently, and use the visit as an excuse to see his family in Berlin.
He would not insult Cambon.
He would not join Cambon's circle.
He would do what he always did.
Take what was useful.
Refuse what was dangerous.
Smile while doing both.
A shiver ran through him as his wet uniform finally remembered it was winter.
"Enough," Oskar muttered.
He stripped quickly—gloves, tunic, shirt—moving with brisk impatience toward the bathing room. Steam already curled from the tub the servants had prepared, a small mercy of civilization.
He lowered himself into the hot water and felt his muscles loosen one by one, the ache dissolving into heat.
For a few minutes, he simply breathed.
Later, wrapped in warmth and clean linen, he ate like a modern bodybuilder trapped in an imperial court:
Eggs.
Bacon.
And rice—because some parts of him refused to forget where he had come from.
He brushed his teeth.
Sat on the edge of the bed.
And for a moment, as the lamps hummed softly and the fortress city slept outside, Cambon's letter returned to his thoughts like a thorn.
Then he exhaled.
Tomorrow, he thought.
Always tomorrow.
And finally, the Iron Prince closed his eyes and let sleep take him.
---
On the following day, Oskar formally summoned the corps and division commanders of the Eastern Army Inspectorate to a closed conference.
No press. No ceremony. No spectators.
Just officers, maps, and the kind of silence that only existed in rooms where careers could be ended without a bullet.
By then, the transfer order for Lieutenant General Maximilian von Prittwitz had already been issued.
Prittwitz himself did not appear.
Instead, his adjutant arrived in his place—stiff-faced, too correct, completing the required formalities with visible reluctance while his commander remained conspicuously in Berlin. Prittwitz's replacement, Hans von Seeckt, had not yet reported east.
No one commented on Prittwitz's absence.
No one needed to.
The message sat in the room like an extra chair:
The Iron Prince had removed him, and the Emperor had signed it.
Oskar allowed the meeting to begin the way proper Prussian meetings began—through objections.
The reactions to his proposed reforms were predictable.
Some commanders supported them openly, drawn to the promise of stronger logistics, clearer chains of command, and modern equipment.
Some opposed them on instinct, the way old officers opposed anything that smelled of change.
Most hesitated—measuring the room, watching one another, waiting to see which way the wind would blow before committing their reputations.
Oskar listened.
He did not interrupt. He did not argue. He did not threaten.
He let them speak until the edges dulled and the emotions had exhausted themselves.
Then he did what mattered.
Calmly, professionally, he made one thing unmistakably clear.
"No officer will be ruined by these reforms," Oskar said.
Heads lifted.
He continued in the same steady tone.
"Yes, brigade-level commands will be dissolved under the new structure. But those officers will not be thrown away like scrap. They will be reassigned with dignity—placed into staff roles, moved laterally, promoted where appropriate, and given responsibilities matching their rank and experience."
He let his gaze move across them.
"Careers will not be destroyed. Reputations will not be publicly humiliated."
A pause.
"Unless," he added softly, "someone chooses to challenge the imperial decision openly."
That single sentence shifted the air.
Because everyone in that room understood what it meant.
Disagreement was permitted.
Defiance was not.
And when it became clear—through quiet confirmation and the absence of Prittwitz—that Wilhelm II himself had approved the transfer, resistance didn't merely soften.
It collapsed.
No one in the room believed the Emperor would reverse himself.
And no one wished to be remembered as the man who tried.
There was another reason opposition faded so quickly.
The reforms were… good.
New equipment pathways.
Cleaner command logic.
More rational training cycles.
Improved supply planning.
Pay incentives tied to performance.
Every commander present understood the same truth:
If war came—and if the Eastern Army performed well—advancement would follow.
Medals followed victory.
Rank followed medals.
Merit followed success.
So they agreed.
Not only because they respected Oskar.
But because the reforms promised them a future.
---
The days that followed fell into a relentless rhythm.
Oskar did not linger in offices longer than necessary. Paperwork in the morning. Inspections and conferences before midday.
And then, almost without exception—
He went to the men.
Not once.
Not for spectacle.
But every day.
Regiment after regiment.
Grenadiers.
Line infantry.
Support units.
He ran with them.
Trained with them.
Pushed them until hesitation burned away and discipline took its place.
Those who endured were rewarded—not only with money, but with rest days, recognition, and the quiet certainty that their commander had bled alongside them.
Those who failed were not cast out.
They were warned.
They were given another chance.
This was the standard now.
And the message spread faster than any written order ever could:
> The Iron Prince does not test you once.
He becomes part of your routine.
Within days, officers stopped wondering whether the training would continue.
They began asking when their turn would come.
---
On January 15, before departing for Berlin to attend the dinner hosted by Ambassador Jules Cambon—and to see his family—Oskar issued a final directive from Königsberg:
All six infantry divisions under the Eastern Army Inspectorate were to begin immediate reorganization under the new system.
The machine was now moving.
And machines, once started, were difficult to stop.
Naturally, not everyone accepted this quietly.
Least of all Prittwitz.
To him, the transfer was not reassignment.
It was humiliation.
Being removed from the eastern command by a younger prince—publicly, in front of officers he believed inferior—cut deeper than any formal reprimand ever could.
And Moltke the Younger was willing to listen.
"Chief of Staff," Prittwitz said eagerly during one of their meetings in Berlin, "this is our opportunity. Oskar has overreached. He is forcing reforms unilaterally—trampling tradition. My men tell me the East is furious."
It was a lie.
But Moltke wanted it to be true.
"Are they truly that dissatisfied?" Moltke asked, voice carefully neutral.
"Yes," Prittwitz insisted, striking his chest with the confidence of a man who believed loudness created reality. "Universally. If we act now, we can have him removed."
For the first time in weeks, Moltke felt something dangerously close to hope.
He had lost too many contests to Oskar.
This one, finally, might be winnable.
"If His Majesty were to remove him from the eastern command," Moltke said slowly, "it would be a severe blow."
Prittwitz leaned closer, hungry.
"If he were removed as Crown Prince," he added, "that would be better still."
Moltke shook his head.
"That will be difficult," he said. "But not impossible."
His eyes narrowed.
"We proceed step by step. If Oskar continues to 'err,' the opportunity will come."
Inside, Moltke nurtured a single desperate wish:
That Crown Prince Wilhelm might somehow recover.
Because as long as Oskar remained uncontested, the future did not belong to Moltke.
---
On January 22, Moltke the Younger and Prittwitz formally petitioned Wilhelm II.
They demanded that Oskar be removed as Inspector of the Eastern Army Inspectorate—and stripped of his future command of the Eighth Army—citing reckless, destabilizing military reforms.
The confrontation had begun.
And Oskar—still in Berlin, still smiling politely at diplomats—had no idea yet how hard Moltke intended to strike.