Oskar watched the bodies drift past.
They came slowly with the current, turning in the clear water—pale faces rising and sinking, some intact, others broken beyond recognition. Some were whole. Some were not. Limbs without bodies. Bodies without faces. Men reduced to shapes that no longer resembled what they had once been.
Most were Russian soldiers.
But not all.
That was what troubled him most.
Among them were civilians—young men, old men—men who had taken up rifles not as soldiers of the Tsar, but as sons, fathers, and husbands who believed, in their own way, that they were defending something worth dying for. Their homes. Their families. Their land. Whatever words these men of this land had used to justify the same old act.
Some still clutched rifles in stiff, waterlogged hands.
Others bore no wounds at all.
Those, he knew, had likely drowned—driven into the river in panic, unable to swim, swallowed by the current in blind terror as the battle collapsed around them.
And many—most—had not come here by their own will.
They had been thrown here.
Cleared.
Disposed of.
His soldiers had done it as part of their work.
Not out of cruelty.
Not out of pleasure.
But because the field had to be cleaned, the roads had to be opened, the city had to be made usable again. Bodies could not be left to rot in the streets and alleys.
So some were buried, and for the sake of time, some had been dragged, lifted and thrown into the river like garbage.
It was not clean work.
It was not meant to be.
Oskar told himself, distantly, that perhaps this was better than the alternative. The river would carry them. Perhaps some would be found downstream by their loved ones. Perhaps the land would take them back. Perhaps they would become something again—food for animals, or soil, or nothing at all.
But none of that made it lighter.
He watched them pass in silence.
And he knew—more clearly than anything—that this was his doing. Not entirely, but enough. Because the same old thing still held true even now, he had failed to stop the war.
And now this was the result.
The river carried it all before him.
However, at this moment what disturbed him more was not just the death.
It was the change.
This was not how it was supposed to go.
In the history he had known, Germany did not take Warsaw in August 1914. The eastern front did not break like this. The timelines, the pressures, the movements of armies—they had all shifted. Bent. Broken.
He was no longer following history.
He was inside something new.
And that meant that certainty was beginning to slip out of his hands.
Of course, he still knew fragments of the enemies plans, and possible actions they might take.
But none of it was true certainty.
Russia still had armies—ten in total, and more on their way.
The Second was gone.
The First was shattered, its artillery largely destroyed.
The Sixth was in Saint Petersburg, and the Seventh in Odessa, both armies were in reserve defending the motherland.
The Ninth and Tenth would come—but not yet. Only after they were fully mobilised and trained for combat.
And as for the southern armies, they were either running already, or then they would soon be made to run by his Black Legion.
Within his mind he could see the shape of them, all those armies maneuvering across the vastness of Russia.
He could read their next actions in the way they were retreating, of how they were already using such drastic measures.
Burning centuries of hard work of the men and women of this land.
In the way they were pulling men, supplies, and land away from him.
He understood the overall pattern.
But now there were gaps.
Unknown details he could not be sure of.
Variables he could no longer control.
And it wasn't just the Russian armies, he had been tracking Lenin as well.
That, too, had slipped from his grasp.
The man had vanished—moved from Switzerland into France, and then… nothing.
Gone.
Oskar did not know where he was.
He did not know what he was doing.
And he did not know if the revolution would still come—or what form it might take if it did.
That uncertainty unsettled him more than the armies.
Because it meant the future was no longer something he could prepare for.
Only something he could guess at.
His gaze drifted again to the river.
What should he do next?
Press the attack?
Drive forward?
Encircle more armies?
Destroy them as he had destroyed the Second?
Turn more men—living men, thinking men—into what now floated past him?
Or stop?
Dig in?
Force a long war of exhaustion?
Bleed Russia slowly instead of breaking it quickly?
Seek peace?
Try to end it before it became something worse?
Every path led to the same place.
More dead.
Different roads.
Same destination.
He closed his eyes briefly.
Too many had already died.
Not just these corpse's before him now.
His own men.
Black Legion soldiers.
Men who had followed him without hesitation into fire and steel.
Men who had believed in him.
Men who had died because of him.
That thought weighed heavier than the rest.
He had been at the front for days.
With the Eternal Guard.
Moving through villages and towns.
Securing ground.
Eliminating threats.
Killing.
Again and again.
He had seen everything.
Burned homes.
Fleeing populations.
Broken bodies.
And now—
this.
A victory.
And the river full of it.
History had already bent.
He knew that now.
There was no going back.
Every step forward would push the world further away from the future he once understood.
And the further he went, the less he knew what waited ahead.
That frightened him more than the war.
Because for the first time, he was no longer moving within the safe confines of history.
He was truly cutting a new timeline open.
His hands trembled.
He hadn't noticed when it began. But they were shaking now—not from cold, not from exhaustion, but from something deeper. The weight. The doubt. The knowledge of what he had already done—
and what he would have to do again.
He looked down at his arms.
How many more?
How many more men would he have to crush, break, and carve apart with his own hands?
How many more would fall beneath him as he rode through them like that thing in black—the skull-faced reaper he had become on the field? How many more faces would blur together behind the helm until they were no longer men, but only shapes to be cut down? Flesh to be split. Bodies to be reduced to pieces in mud and steel.
The thoughts came easily.
Too easily.
He could still feel it.
The resistance of bone under his grip.
The way bodies bent when struck too hard.
The way his blade passed through men as though they were nothing.
The heat of blood.
The sound.
The breaking.
His hands shook harder.
He stared at them.
At the thick muscle beneath the blood and dirt.
And for a moment—
they did not look like hands.
They looked like tools.
Forged things.
Industrial.
Made to break.
Made to crush.
Made to turn living men into ruin.
And that thought frightened him. Not the strength itself, but how natural it had begun to feel. How easy it was for him to crush men's skull's like they were merely apple's being broken in his grip for sport.
His heart slammed in his chest.
Slow.
Heavy.
Each beat like a piston driving something larger than flesh.
And deeper still—
he could feel it.
The core.
That red sphere of light buried within him, burning like a heart that was not his own. And within that red, the gold. And within that gold, the white—something purer, stranger, flowing through him in silent currents.
Power.
Endless.
Unnatural.
It moved through his body like a second blood.
He felt strong.
He felt dangerous.
He felt like something that did not belong in the world.
For a moment, that thought almost swallowed him whole.
Then he grabbed his own wrist hard—fingers digging into flesh—and forced himself to breathe.
Slow.
Controlled.
Again.
Calm down.
He lowered his head, forcing the thoughts back, forcing the shaking to stop.
He was the Iron Prince.
Too many men depended on him now.
Too many lives rested on his decisions for him to falter here like some frightened child staring at his own reflection. Whatever he felt, whatever doubt clawed at him, he had no right to let it show.
He had to be strong.
A sharp snort broke the silence.
Oskar glanced back.
Shadowmane lay sprawled in the grass like some absurdly oversized war-beast, rolling lazily on his back, legs kicking once at the air before settling again.
Another snort.
This one… almost mocking.
Oskar stared at him for a moment.
Then exhaled through his nose.
"Oh, shut up," he muttered. "Easy for you to say, you… whatever you are. Demon horse of the apocalypse. Some death knight's epic drop."
Shadowmane's head snapped up.
A loud, offended snort.
Oskar narrowed his eyes.
"Oh, what? Now it's my fault?"
The stallion snorted again, sharper this time, then flicked his tail with what looked suspiciously like attitude.
Oskar sighed.
"…Yeah. Alright. Fair."
Because he knew.
Somewhere along the way—through whatever that power was, through years of being together, through whatever strange bond had formed between them—he had changed the beast just as he had changed himself.
Made him larger.
Stronger.
Faster.
Something beyond a horse.
Something closer to a creature out of myth.
A war-beast.
A monster.
Like himself.
The thought should have unsettled him more.
Instead… it didn't.
It eased something.
A small, tired part of him.
At least he wasn't alone in it.
At least there was something else in this world that understood—without words, without judgment—what it meant to become something no longer entirely human.
His expression softened, just slightly.
"Thanks," he muttered.
Shadowmane snorted once more, less mocking now, then dropped back into the grass and resumed tearing at it in huge, careless bites like some oversized, indifferent lawnmower of war.
Oskar watched him for a moment.
Then shook his head.
He needed to clear his mind.
Slowly, he rose.
The towel slipped loose.
He tore it free without ceremony and tossed it aside.
Then, bare and marked by blood, dirt, and battle, Oskar stepped forward—
into the Vistula.
Into the same clear water that carried the dead past him.