Light rain fell from the low clouds covering the northern Baltic lands.
It drifted down over forest, field, road, and river, over the wet coastal country south of the town of Salacgrīva, where the old road ran down toward Riga more than a hundred kilometers away.
Only days earlier, that road had belonged to ordinary life.
Farmers had taken carts along it. Fishermen had carried goods inland from the coast. Traders had rattled south with barrels, cloth, salt, tools, and letters. Boys had ridden bicycles between villages. Women had walked with baskets beneath shawls. Horses had complained, wheels had creaked, and the world had continued in the small familiar way of places far from capitals.
Now the road belonged to fear.
Men hurried north toward the town of Salacgrīva with their families, bundles, and whatever valuables they had managed to carry. Some drove carts piled too high with bedding, icons, sacks of grain, and crying children. Others walked beside exhausted horses. A few ran without looking back. Mixed among them were Russian officials, clerks, policemen, militia, and soldiers fleeing in every condition of disorder: some still armed, some without rifles, some with caps gone and coats torn, some carrying wounded comrades by the shoulders.
Among them moved Guardsmen too, which was what frightened people most.
The Guards had been sent south to reinforce Riga. They were fine, proud soldiers, whose uniforms and bearing were supposed to remind the people that the Tsar still possessed strength. Now even they were running north, muddy and pale, some with blood on their uniforms, others with eyes fixed on the road not daring to glance back.
In the smaller villages off the road, people watched from behind windows.
They did not yet know the truth of the war, not fully.
They knew only what had reached them in pieces: church whispers, official notices, frightened travelers, old newspapers passed from hand to hand. They knew that Germany had first declared there to be a so called special military operation, which had quickly led to a full-scale war. They knew the Tsar had called upon the empire to defend Serbia, the Slavic world, and Russia's honor. They had seen great Russian armies marching west against Germany, and they had been told the attack was necessary, righteous, even defensive.
But the news had darkened quickly.
Russia had suffered a setback, Warsaw might have fallen, then suddenly Riga was under threat.
Which was then followed by men from every village and town being called to arms, to help defend against the advance of the so-called Black Legion. Some went willingly. Some went because others were watching. Some went because refusing would have marked them as cowards, traitors, or worse.
And now Riga, just like Warsaw had fallen.
No one knew the true number of dead. Rumor made the losses monstrous. Hundreds of thousands, some said. Entire armies swallowed, others said. Few had escaped the encirclement, and those who had now came north with mud on their boots, blood on their coats, and terror in their eyes.
Worse still were the rumors that followed them.
From Riga, they said, the so called Red Turban Legion was spreading north under German protection. Some called the Red Turbans rebels. Others called them traitors, deserters, or possessed men who had sold their souls to the devil. But there were other whispers too: that the Iron Prince himself rode with them, offering food, pay, land, citizenship, and a better world to those who joined him—and exile to those who refused.
No one in the small villages knew what to believe.
So they did what ordinary people had always done when foreign invaders came near their homes.
Some fled.
Some slipped into the forests and marshes to hide.
Some stayed behind closed doors, praying quietly and hiding their children where they could.
And now, near the village of Katlapi, not far south of Salacgrīva, the fear of the coming enemy had become sound.
From the forest beyond the fields came gunfire.
Not a clean battle line. Not volley answering volley. Just bursts, cracks, screams, and then strange silences that were worse than shooting. The trees and undergrowth hid most of it, but now and then the villagers heard something else beneath the rifles.
A horse.
Not neighing as horses should neigh, but roaring, shrieking, bellowing like some beast dragged out of a nightmare. Metal clanged as bullets struck steel. Men screamed. Branches cracked. Something heavy smashed through timber. Once, a voice rose above everything else, deep and savage, rolling through the wet forest like the roar of a lion given human words.
The villagers stood frozen.
Then a single Guardsman came flying out of the trees. His body burst through the upper branches with snapping wood and torn leaves, screaming as he came. For one impossible second he hung above the field, arms and legs loose, coat flapping, face pale with a terror that had already passed beyond words. Then he struck the earth beside the road with a heavy, wet thud and did not move again.
The people who had seen it gasped as one.
No one needed to ask what had thrown him.
Inside the nearest houses, mothers dragged children away from windows. Some shoved them beneath beds. Others hurried them down into cellars, whispering for them to stay quiet no matter what they heard. A few men ran for the fields, hoping the wet grass and low ditches would hide them until the danger passed.
But most did not scatter.
Most went to the small Lutheran chapel.
Not because they believed its thin walls would stop bullets, or that the little wooden cross above the door could turn aside steel and fire. They went because when the world outside became senseless, people of their age did not first look for reason. They looked for God.
There Men removed their caps as the pastor opened the Bible with shaking hands, and together they prayed for deliverance.
Others gathered around kitchen tables with hands clasped tight, whispering for God to spare them from whatever now moved in the forest.
And within that forest, the road had become a place of ruin.
The Russian column had not expected battle there.
Ten minutes earlier, it had been marching south, ordered to reinforce fleeing troops and slow the rebel advance before it reached the town. There had been Guardsmen, militia, a few police, local volunteers, wagons, banners, and enough confidence left among the officers to believe the enemy was still far away.
They had been wrong.
Now men lay across the road and forest floor in twisted heaps. Some had fallen into ditches. Some hung from branches where the force that struck them had thrown them upward before gravity remembered them. Broken rifles lay in mud. Cartridge boxes had split open. A torn Russian banner sagged against a tree trunk, its imperial eagle smeared with rain and blood. Another lay trampled beneath boots and hooves, its pole broken in two.
The forest smelled of wet leaves, powder smoke, blood, and opened bodies.
And at the center of the carnage, on the muddy road, stood Oskar. But not as he had stood in Riga.
There, in the city, he had been a black-armored terror, a skull-faced giant walking through smoke and fire, more machine than man, more judgment than prince.
Now the armor was gone.
Too much of it had been damaged, cracked, burned, or discarded during the fighting of the last days. What remained of him was almost bare: torn white trousers darkened by mud and soaked red in places with blood that was not all his. His feet were bare, planted deep in the mud like anchors. Rain ran down his body, tracing the ridges of muscle, the old scars, the fresh bullet wounds, the bruises, the streaks of blood and gore drying across his skin.
His torso was marked by war.
His face was not.
His thick neck, jaw, and features seemed almost untouched, immaculate beneath the rain. His hair had grown slightly longer, the light blond and platinum strands wild and wet around his head, clinging to his forehead and temples. He stood with his head tilted upward, eyes turned toward the broken canopy and the grey heavens beyond, as though he were not standing among the dead but receiving rain after a long drought.
In his right hand he held his great black sword.
It had suffered like its master. The blade was dulled, chipped, and cracked along the surface. It no longer looked like a polished weapon fit for legends. It looked like a slab of broken dark steel. Yet the bodies around him proved that even ruined, it remained enough. As a club, and as a shield against rifle fire, it had done its work.
Rain struck its edge and ran down in red streams.
Then, above him, the clouds thinned.
Through the grey vault of rain and smoke, a narrow shaft of sunlight broke open and descended through the forest canopy. It fell upon him alone, cutting through the gloom like a blade of heaven lowered into the earth.
Below him on the forest floor lay hell.
Broken banners and things of flesh in the mud, men twisted across the road and roots, their bodies scattered beneath the trees like offerings left before some terrible altar. To Oskar the forest floor was carnage, ruin, and suffering made flesh.
Above him was light. Pure and pale, shining down from the wounded sky.
And between the two stood Oskar.
Barefoot in the mud, sword in hand, blood running down his body as the rain washed filth from his skin. For a moment, the battlefield seemed to gather around him as if he were its center: death beneath his feet, heaven above his head, and his own body caught between them like a beacon of light set between damnation and deliverance.
He closed his eyes.
In that light, surrounded by mud, rain, and the dead, he looked almost peaceful.
Then, without truly meaning to, words left his mouth like a prayer.
"Between hell and the light of heaven, I stand," he murmured, "as a piece of heaven's light sent to raise the mortal realm toward the glory of the heavens above."
He lifted his left hand toward the light.
His fingers opened, reaching.
Then slowly, as if closing around something only he could feel, his hand became a fist.
"Heed my words, light above," he whispered. "Through fate and fire, humanity will unite as one. We will reach for the stars, and my light will lead the way. No challenge, no struggle, no darkness ahead will shake my will to see mankind become one family upon this earth and reach new horizons in the stars above."
The words as always, tasted foolish the moment they left his mouth. Naive, too grand, almost childish, and yet he meant every one of them.
He stood there with one fist raised toward heaven and a ruined sword in his other hand, and for a few silent breaths he prayed.
Not for Germany or it's victory alone.
He prayed for the dream that had haunted him since before this life had given him a crown and a sword: a world where all ordinary men could live with basic dignity, safety, food, homes, work, family, and peace. A world where no man had to wake fearing that some distant ruler would gamble his sons away in a war of borders, pride, or revenge. A world where mankind stopped looking inward for enemies and turned its eyes outward instead, toward new horizons, new worlds, and the stars waiting beyond the blue sky.
It was absurd.
He knew that.
The world did not become gentle because one man wanted it. History did not obey noble wishes. Men did not stop hating because someone stronger told them to. Every step toward unity seemed to require blood, and every drop of blood made unity harder to justify.
But if no one believed in the impossible, then the impossible would remain impossible forever.
Someone had to try.
Someone had to take the weight, the hatred, the sin, the responsibility, and walk forward anyway.
That someone, Oskar had long ago accepted, would be him.
And he was not alone.
Inside his chest, beneath flesh and bone, beneath the heart that beat like any man's heart, the second warmth pulsed again.
The hidden core. The thing of red, white, and gold. The light within the meat.
It beat with strange strength, not like blood, not like muscle, but like something alive inside his life. When he focused on it, the pain softened. His skin tightened around wounds. Bullets lodged against bone and muscle shifted, then slowly began to work themselves outward as his flesh rejected them. Heat spread through him, not fever, not illness, but power. Every wound, every strain, every impossible exertion seemed to feed the thing inside him and make it clearer.
He still did not understand it.
Not truly.
Was it God? Fate? Mutation? Punishment? Reward? A fragment of whatever had sent him into this world? He did not know. He only knew it was there.
And it was growing.
Unknown to Oskar, another strand of his light blond hair began to change.
From the root upward, color drained from it, brightening until it turned nearly silver.
At the same moment, sunlight caught his raised left arm, and for six seconds, the air around it glowed.
It was not a reflection, not rain, but light.
A faint white layer gathered over his skin, thin and pure, like the suggestion of fire without heat. It wrapped his forearm, his knuckles, his clenched fist. For those watching, it seemed as though the sunlight had chosen not merely to shine upon him, but to answer him.
Oskar did not see it.
Others did.
Captain Carter stood at the edge of the road, rain dripping from his helmet, his black armor streaked with mud and blood. Beside him were Jonas Kazlauskas, Jānis Ozols, Father Nikolai's armed followers, Red Turban men, Eternal Guards of the third company, and newly converted soldiers still unsure whether they had joined a cause, a rebellion, a cult, or salvation itself.
They all saw the light then, and for a moment no one moved. No one stripped weapons from the dead. No one checked wounds. No one spoke.
They simply stared.
Their prince stood in the rain, half-naked and blood-covered, sword in hand, fist raised to heaven, white light gathered around his arm like a divine seal. To some, he looked like a king from scripture. To others, a warrior-saint. To the more frightened among the Red Turbans, he looked like proof that their doubts had been sins.
Some had joined him out of terror. Some had joined hoping for better opportunities, food, pay, even land that might be gained. Some because they hated Russia. Some because men with rifles had told them to kneel, and kneeling had seemed wiser than dying or going into exile.
But in that small moment in the forest, selfish reasons shrank. The treacherous felt their hearts tremble. The uncertain felt belief press against them like a hand.
The faithful fell deeper into faith.
The light lasted only six seconds, but when it faded, it had been enough to touch them all.
Oskar opened his eyes, unaware of what had passed over him.
The light had faded. The rain remained. The dead still lay in the mud.
For a moment no one moved.
Then Oskar lowered his arm, turned toward his men, and in that instant whatever had stood there beneath the pale shaft of heaven vanished. The prophet, the saint, the impossible thing they had seen in the forest light was gone.
The Iron Prince had returned.
"Collect the weapons," he ordered. "Ammunition, food, maps, papers, coin, anything useful. Strip the dead of what can serve us, then bury the bodies quickly."
The men straightened as if the words had struck them in the spine.
Oskar turned his head.
"Captain Carter."
Carter stepped forward at once and struck his fist to his heart.
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Carry out my orders. Bring the men after me once they are ready. I will speak to the village ahead first."
For the briefest moment, concern tightened Carter's face. Not disagreement. Not doubt. Only the instinct of a soldier who never did like seeing his prince ride ahead alone, but concern did not become objection.
Thus Carter struck his fist to his heart again.
"As you command, Your Highness."
That was enough.
The forest came alive behind him.
Men moved quickly, almost fiercely, eager to be useful again. Awe remained in them, but it did not slow their hands. If anything, it sharpened obedience. Rifles were gathered. Cartridge boxes opened. Papers were stuffed into oilcloth satchels. Red Turbans bent over fallen Guardsmen with practical hands, taking belts, boots, knives, ration tins, and coins. Eternal Guards dragged bodies toward the trees, while others took up shovels and began cutting into the wet earth.
None questioned him.
Not after what they had seen.
Oskar did not linger to watch work already commanded.
He slid the ruined black sword into the great leather sheath across his back, then whistled.
At the roadside, Shadowmane lifted his head from the wet grass.
The stallion had been eating as if the carnage around him meant no more than the rain. He wore no armor now, no barding, no steel, and somehow seemed more terrible without it. His huge black body shone with water, muscles shifting beneath the hide like living stone. Blood darkened his chest and forelegs. His mane hung wild, tangled, and wet.
He came to Oskar's side and stopped. He had no saddle or reins, for his rider needed none.
Oskar placed one hand against Shadowmane's neck. For a heartbeat they stood together in the rain, both stripped of armor, both marked by blood, both seeming more complete in that raw state than they ever had beneath steel.
Then Oskar leapt.
In one smooth motion he vaulted onto the stallion's bare back, landing easily, one hand buried in the wet mane, his bare feet settling against Shadowmane's sides.
The horse turned north before any command was spoken.
Together they rode out of the forest.
They crossed the wet grass, passed the dead Guardsman lying broken in the field, and moved toward Katlapi.
The village waited in terror.
It was not large, but neither was it nothing. A small chapel stood near the center. A windmill rose beyond the muddy road, its wet sails still beneath the low sky. Wooden houses clustered around the lane, with barns and farm sheds scattered farther out among the fields. Nearer the coast, low fishing cottages stood in the grey distance, their nets and boats hidden beneath rain-dark canvas. Smoke rose faintly from a few chimneys. Chickens hid beneath carts. Fences sagged under the weather.
It would have been a beautiful place on a clearer day. Even now, beneath the light rain and muddy roads, there was a quiet loveliness to it.
But no one came to meet him.
No elder stood in the road. No farmer raised a hand in greeting. No Russian official remained to speak for the Tsar, and no soldier came to stop him.
Curtains shifted. A young girl's face appeared behind a window and vanished with a small squeak as hands pulled her back. Somewhere a woman sobbed once and was quickly hushed. The chapel door remained closed, though candlelight glowed faintly behind its cloudy windows.
Shadowmane entered the village at a slow walk, his hooves striking the mud with heavy, deliberate sounds.
Oskar let him stop in the village center.
There he sat, tall and blood-streaked upon the bare back of the black stallion, rain sliding down his face, shoulders, and ruined trousers. He did not look like the skull-helmed terror of Riga. He did not look like a polished Crown Prince of Germany.
Instead he looked like a barbarian, a wild man, yet never only a man.
He wore nothing fancy, and he did not arrive with a parade at his back. Yet upon that black horse, wet blonde hair pulled back, bare and wounded beneath the rain, he as always seemed more like a king of legends than if he had ridden in gold.
Oskar looked over the silent houses for a moment, then his voice rose, "People of Katlapi."
The sound carried through the village and struck the chapel walls.
"Come out."
No one moved.
Oskar waited a moment. Then his voice deepened, not angry, but impossible to ignore.
"Men, women, children. Come from your homes, your barns, your cellars, and your chapel. Stand before me and listen. You have nothing to fear if you do not raise your hands against me."
Still silence.
Then, calmer now, he continued.
"I will not enter your homes covered in blood. I will not walk barefoot through your chapel with mud and dead men's blood upon me. I have come before you in the open, where all may see me and all may hear me. So come out. Let us be quick, for I apologize, but the weather is poor and our circumstances poorer."
That did what command alone had not.
The chapel door opened first. An old Lutheran pastor stepped out, Bible clutched against his chest like a shield, spectacles wet with rain. He was thin, pale, and visibly trembling, yet he walked forward because someone had to. Behind him came a few older men, then women with shawls drawn tight, children peering from behind skirts, laborers in worn coats, fishermen, farmhands, and better-dressed villagers who had been hiding inside the chapel with the pastor.
One by one, doors opened.
People emerged as if fear and curiosity were drawing them from the wood. They did not come close, but they came close enough for him to see them and for them to hear him clearly.
Oskar looked over them, and for a moment his face softened.
"I know many of you have lost someone already," he said. "Sons. Fathers. Brothers. Husbands. Perhaps they went to Riga. Perhaps they were called to arms. Perhaps they never returned. That is a tragedy, and I will not insult you by pretending otherwise."
No one answered.
Rain fell between them.
"I am Oskar of Prussia," he said. "Crown Prince of Germany. Some call me the Iron Prince. Some call me butcher, devil, monster, savior, liar, king. Names are easy. Truth is harder."
His eyes moved from the pastor to the villagers.
"So, just as I have done at many other villages and towns, I now come before you not as rumor, not as a shadow in the forest, not as a story carried by frightened men, but in person. I come to speak. I come to offer you a path out of fear."
A young mother clutched her child tighter.
Oskar saw it.
"I will be plain. Riga has fallen. The Russian power south of you is broken. The Tsar is far away. His officials have fled. His Guards run north. His armies bleed themselves against my lines and leave villages like yours to wonder what comes next."
He leaned slightly forward.
"What comes next does not have to be slaughter."
The villagers listened.
Fear kept them silent, but silence was not refusal.
"We do not have to continue as enemies," Oskar said. "We do not have to keep feeding sons into the fires of war because old rulers, old flags, old estates, old hatreds, and old borders demand it. Alone, each of you is weak. But together, united under one law and purpose, you can become something greater."
He let the words settle.
"So join this new order, accept my offer of entry into the new Northern Baltic Kingdom I have made for all of you. Of course, you will not instantly become full citizens, but you will be protected with rights, given food, work, order, and the chance to earn more. Ten years of loyal service will earn citizenship. Service will bring status. Loyalty will bring prosperity and benefits, such as maternity leave amongst other things that are now common in Germany already. And if all goes well, one day even the road to German citizenship may open."
A murmur passed through the villagers.
Oskar did not raise his voice.
"The kingdom will be ruled from Riga Castle by King Paul von Rennenkampf under German protection. It will not be Russia. It will not be the old manor order. It will not be a mob tearing down one master only to raise another in his place. It will be something new: a kingdom of law and order, where loyalty is rewarded, labor is honored, and the common man may live with safety, stability, dignity, and purpose in a society unlike anything before it."
He looked then toward the better-dressed villagers near the front: an estate steward, his wife, two grown sons, a clerk, and a few wealthier farmholders standing stiffly beside the pastor, as if habit alone told them they ought to speak for the village.
Oskar saw them.
He also saw the hand inside the younger son's coat.
And the hooded young woman beside the chapel steps, one hand hidden beneath her cloak in a way too careful to be natural.
Oskar smiled faintly as he ordered, "Drop them."
The village froze.
The young man went white.
The woman stopped breathing.
Oskar's pale eyes remained on them, calm and terrible.
"The pistol in your coat," he said to the young man. Then his gaze shifted. "And yours beneath the cloak. Drop them. Do not be fools."
For a few seconds neither moved.
Then the young man's pistol fell into the mud, and a moment later, the woman's followed.
People gasped. The pastor turned ashen. The young man dropped to his knees at once, and the woman began to stammer something that might have been a prayer, an apology, or the beginning of begging.
Oskar lifted one hand.
"Silence."
The word cut through the village, and everyone fell still.
Oskar looked at the young fool and the would-be female assassin, then over the rest of the villagers.
"It is all right," he said. "As I told you, I understand your fear. I understand your anger. If foreign soldiers came to my village, and if their prince rode before me covered in blood, perhaps I too would think of murder."
He let that settle.
"Now give me ten minutes of your time. Ten minutes only. Listen, and allow me to speak."
His smile returned, small and knowing.
"Thank you."
And with every eye in Katlapi fixed upon him, Oskar began to explain the order he meant to build upon the ruins of the old one.