On the German Eastern Front in late August of 1914, the weather had turned grim in a way that seemed almost deliberate. Rain fell day after day without pause, soaking the land until the earth itself began to give way beneath the weight of men and machines alike, and when the rain did thin, it left behind a dense, clinging fog that swallowed distance and blurred the world into shapes and shadows. What little clarity the morning promised was quickly lost, and the battlefield became a place where sight could not be trusted and sound carried farther than it should.
Even so, the Black Legion had not stopped.
Their armour sat mired in the roads where mud had claimed it, and their aircraft—those strange, roaring machines that had once ruled the skies—were grounded by the low clouds and endless rain, but still they pushed on. Step by step, line by line, they had driven the remnants of the Russian First and Second Armies out of the Kingdom of Poland and forced them back across much of Lithuania and into Latvia, pressing them eastward like a tide that could not be turned. And now, some eighty kilometres south of the River Dvina—the natural line that guarded the approach to Riga that was the capital of Latvia—the Russians had finally drawn a stand.
It was not a line in the way officers spoke of lines.
There was nothing clean about it. Nothing ordered.
It had been thrown together in haste, shaped not by careful planning but by necessity. The land there stretched wide and flat, broken only by thin rivers, scattered lakes, and the long belts of trees that divided one field from another, and it was along those tree lines that the Russians had dug in. Trenches had been carved into the soaked earth wherever hands could work fast enough, shallow at first, then deeper, reinforced where possible, abandoned where not. Ditches had been cut across the approaches in the hope of slowing the feared German armour, though now those same ditches filled with water and mud, becoming obstacles for both sides alike.
And into those trenches had gone everyone.
Not only the soldiers of the First Army, but farmers, labourers, men taken from nearby towns and villages, still wearing the coats they had worked in days before. They stood in the mud beside regular infantry, rifles in hand, not bound by discipline so much as by the simple understanding that there was nowhere left to go. The fear of the unknown did what orders could not. It held them there.
Above them, the rain fell.
And the artillery did not stop.
Even in the early hours of the morning, before light had properly returned, the tree lines shook and flashed with the constant hammer of Black Legion guns. Explosions tore through wet earth and shattered wood, sending mud and splinters high into the air before letting them fall again in heavy, choking sheets. The Russians answered when they could, their own artillery scattered and hidden as best as it could be, firing blindly toward distant flashes in the dark, guided more by instinct than by sight. But such resistance rarely lasted. A gun that revealed itself, even for a moment, was soon found, and once found, it was erased. Counter-battery fire came fast and without hesitation, crushing positions into silence, burying men and machines alike beneath collapsing soil.
By now, much of the Russian artillery had been lost.
Some abandoned in fields during the retreat, wheels sunk deep into mud that could not be crossed. Others shattered where they stood, broken apart under the steady pressure of German fire. Machine guns suffered the same fate—too few, too exposed, too slow to be moved once the ground had turned against them. What remained in the trenches was simpler. Men with rifles and grenades.
And across from them, the Black Legion did not rush.
By order of their Iron Prince, they advanced slowly, deliberately, moving from one tree line to the next, securing each position before stepping forward again. They did not overextend. They did not chase. The land itself would not allow it, and neither would their doctrine. The roads had dissolved into mud, the kind that swallowed wheels and dragged at boots, turning every movement into effort. To push too far, too fast, would be to risk being caught stretched thin in a war they had no luxury of doing so.
And so the front had slowly began to settle.
Not into peace—but into something heavier.
A pause.
The fighting did not fully end, but it lost its momentum, grinding into small exchanges of fire and pressure, and nothing more. For the moment, there would be no great advance, no sweeping maneuver, not while the weather held the land in its grip. The war, on the Eastern front, had slowed to the pace of the weather itself.
But the line that formed there was not truly a line.
The Black Legion did not rely on a single continuous trench stretching from horizon to horizon, as was being done on the Western front. Instead, they built something different. A network. A patchwork of fortified strongpoints scattered across the land, each one dug deep, reinforced, and layered with wire, mines, and overlapping fields of fire. These positions were placed not simply to hold ground, but to dominate it. Between them lay gaps—but gaps that were watched, measured, and covered by guns and patrols. Any small force attempting to slip through would find itself caught, isolated, and destroyed. Any large force attempting to break through would meet not a single defensive line, but a web that tightened the deeper it pushed.
It was not a wall in the traditional sense.
But it behaved like one.
And in the mud and fog of late August, it was enough.
The Russians could not easily hope to break it.
And the Black Legion, by design, did not rush to push beyond it for the time being.
The land itself would not allow it. The roads had dissolved into thick, clinging mud, the kind that swallowed wheels and dragged at boots, turning movement into labour and advance into risk. Oskar knew the region well enough to understand what this meant. The weather would not lift quickly. Not here. Not now. For weeks, perhaps months, the land would remain as it was—heavy, wet, and hostile to any grand mechanised maneuver.
So he did not force it.
Instead, he let the front settle into that controlled stillness, and behind it, he began to shift something far more unusual.
The Black Legion rotated.
Not in fragments, not in desperation, but in full, deliberate formations. Entire units were pulled from the line in sequence, exhausted men replaced by fresh ones, each strongpoint manned, each sector maintained without weakness. The system held, and because it held, something rare became possible.
Rest.
Real rest.
Men who had fought in the mud and rain were not simply moved to a quieter trench or a rear position—they were sent home. Not alone, not scattered, but in formed groups, under command, moving as soldiers even in withdrawal. It was a practice almost unheard of in this age of war, where armies were expected to endure the front without pause until victory or death released them. But Oskar did not believe in wasting men to exhaustion.
He believed in preserving them.
And in showing them.
So they marched.
Through towns. Through cities. Through streets lined with civilians who had only heard of the war in distant reports and newspapers. Black-clad columns moved in perfect order, boots striking in unison, rifles carried with quiet precision, their presence cutting through the everyday life of the nation like something drawn from myth. They were not broken men returning from the front. They were controlled. Hardened. Whole.
People gathered to watch them.
And they cheered.
Not because they understood the war—but because they could see it.
Young boys stared with wide eyes. Young men stood a little straighter, measuring themselves against what passed before them. Women reached out, calling names, searching faces, finding them—sometimes. And when the march ended, when the officers spoke and the final orders were given, the discipline broke in the only way it was allowed to.
Men were released.
And they ran.
Not in disorder—but in relief. Toward families. Toward friends. Toward homes that had not yet been taken from them by the war. Laughter returned where there had been silence. Stories were told. The front, with all its mud and fire and death, followed them back in fragments, spoken in low voices or carried quietly in the way they moved.
It was not simply rest.
It was renewal.
And it spread.
Because the people saw it. They felt it. The war was no longer something distant and abstract. It had faces now. Voices. Men who had stood in it and returned from it. And in that, something else took root—belief.
On the 24th of August, Oskar returned as well.
Not apart from it—but at the center of it.
He rode beneath open sky through the streets of Berlin and Potsdam clad in black steel, his armor catching the light in dull, cold reflections as though it belonged more to legend than to the present age. The skull-faced helmet rested upon his lap, one gauntleted hand holding it with ease, the other rising now and then to acknowledge the crowds. Beneath him, Shadowmane moved like something carved from night itself—massive, armored, each step of the great beast striking the stone with a weight that seemed to echo through the street. The horse was enormous, larger than any natural creature should have been, its presence alone enough to make the armored trucks that followed seem almost… lesser.
Behind Oskar, the 3rd Company of the Eternal Guard advanced in perfect formation. Motorcycles growled low and steady, their riders unmoving, precise. Armored trucks rolled with heavy, iron authority, six-wheeled machines bristling with weapons, engines rumbling like restrained thunder. And yet—even among such machines—even among such force—it was Oskar who drew the eye. Oskar upon Shadowmane. The Black Skull Knight at the head of it all.
The people saw him.
And they answered.
The streets were full—crowded not only with men and women, but with children in numbers that had become impossible to ignore in recent years. Young faces everywhere. Mothers carrying infants at their chests and backs, fathers holding toddlers upon their shoulders, older children pushing forward through the crowd to see him more clearly. Families larger than memory would have allowed before, the quiet result of years of growth now made visible in a single moment.
Oskar watched them as he passed.
And he smiled.
He raised his hand in greeting, and the children answered first—waving eagerly, calling out, their voices rising above the rest. Then the adults followed, and as they did, Oskar brought his fist to his chest in a gesture of thanks and respect.
The crowd mirrored him.
Again and again, like a ripple spreading through water.
Respect given.
Respect returned.
And in that exchange—simple, repeated, undeniable—the bond between ruler and people made itself visible without a single word needing to be spoken.
At the gates of the royal palace in Potsdam, the order and discipline of the march finally broke.
Oskar dismounted, and for a brief moment—just a moment—the Black Skull Knight became something else entirely.
His children reached him first.
They came in numbers that would have overwhelmed any ordinary man, a flood of small bodies, voices, hands pulling at him, calling his name, climbing over one another just to reach him. For a moment he was buried among them, a giant surrounded by life, laughter, and noise, their joy unrestrained in a way the world outside rarely allowed. He caught them, lifted them, held them close, pressing kisses to their heads and faces, his deep laughter breaking through the weight of everything else.
It took effort to move through them.
It always did.
But he did, and beyond them stood his wives.
Three—and more besides.
He reached them at last, pulling them into his arms one after another, holding them close in a way that was both gentle and absolute. He kissed them, then lower still, hands resting where new life had already begun to grow, faint and unseen but known to him all the same. A new generation, already on its way into a world at war.
They were not alone.
Bertha.
Cecilie.
They stood there too, drawn into the same embrace, carrying the same future in quiet certainty.
And for a brief moment, the war seemed very far away.
Inside, the armor would come off.
Food would be taken. Rest allowed. Words shared with father, mother, brothers, sister—things spoken that had nothing to do with strategy or steel.
Outside, Shadowmane was freed.
The great beast was stripped of its armor and released into the palace grounds, where it moved at once toward its own kind. Black shapes gathered around it—mares and young, some already large, already wrong in that same quiet way their sire was wrong. Stronger. Larger. Unnatural, though no one would have dared say it aloud. The stallion moved among them with ease, and for a time, even that creature of war knew something like peace.
But for Oskar, the peace did not last for long.
News had already come to him from the war at sea and the colonies. Matters of ships and the economical side of it that could not be ignored. War, in another form, calling for his attention.