The smoke of Belmont had barely cleared before winter closed its grip upon the Mississippi Valley.
For the Greybacks, the weeks that followed were strange ones.
They had won their prize.
Grant sat bound, spirited away under heavy guard, his presence concealed even from the Confederate officers who shared in the field's triumph.
To the world, it seemed the Union general had vanished into the chaos of defeat, perhaps drowned in the river, perhaps slain and left unburied in the swamps.
Washington sent frantic wires demanding news; none came.
But Elias knew.
The tether pulsed faintly with the thoughts of his captains, with their reports of a prisoner who spoke little, ate sparingly, and seemed to brood more than despair.
Grant was a man of iron, Elias judged—a man who could not be broken easily.
That made him all the more dangerous, but also all the more valuable.
For now, the Greybacks were told: stand aside.
The Confederacy needed to claim its own laurels in the months to come, victories won by Southern arms alone.
So through November and December, Rex and Varga drilled their men in hidden camps, continuing to maintain their weapons, tending to the wounded, sharpening the edge that had struck so cleanly at Belmont.
Kentucky, meanwhile, became a furnace.
Union columns poured down from Ohio and Indiana, pressing hard against the state's uncertain loyalties.
Confederate forces, stretched thin, met them in desperate contests at Mill Springs and smaller crossings along the Cumberland and Green Rivers.
The news from those fields was bitter.
Southern banners fell back again and again.
By the time frost had crept into the valleys, Kentucky seemed to tilt firmly toward Union control.
The Richmond papers thundered with rage.
Where were the victories of summer?
Where were the miracles of Bull Run?
Confederate morale sagged under the weight of defeat.
Elias watched with satisfaction.
Every Southern setback hardened resolve, deepened the hunger for vengeance, and called forth louder cries for more men, more blood, more sacrifice.
The furnace was stoked.
In January, the Greybacks moved again.
This time to Tennessee, where the Union prepared a bold thrust by river.
Ironclad gunboats nosed down the icy waters of the Tennessee and Cumberland, their armor shrugging off musket fire, their guns booming across the hills.
Federal generals—Foote and the newly prominent Henry Halleck—sought to pry open the South's river defenses and drive deep into the heartland.
There, at the banks and forts that guarded the waterways, Rex and Varga took their places once more.
They were not the tip of the spear this time, but the hidden weight behind it.
Confederate infantry manned the works, but when the Federals came across in their longboats, it was Greyback rifles that cut neat gaps into their ranks.
Their fire was precise, masked by the volleys of militia and regulars, so that none could say where the impossible accuracy came from.
The Union pressed, but at each attempted crossing, they were hurled back bloodied.
Boats burned.
Men drowned in the frigid waters.
The rivers themselves seemed to turn hostile, swelling with wreckage and corpses.
Confederate officers declared it a providential sign—God Himself barring the way.
In truth, it was Elias's hand, careful, measured, unseen.
Yet Kentucky remained lost, its fields under blue occupation.
Tennessee only held by stubborn defiance.
The balance teetered.
It was then that Elias looked east.
North Carolina trembled under Federal threat.
The coast was riddled with inlets and sounds—perfect avenues for Union gunboats and landing parties.
Already Roanoke Island was under pressure, and New Bern loomed as a target.
Richmond begged for aid, but its armies were too stretched, too bound to Virginia's defense.
So Elias gave his command: the other half of the Greybacks, those who had remained idle since summer, would march for the Carolinas.
Their task was simple and brutal—hold the coast, no matter the cost.
In this way, all of Elias's American forces would be engaged.
From the banks of the Mississippi to the rivers of Tennessee to the marshes of North Carolina, his Greybacks would be the unseen steel beneath the Confederacy's faltering lines.
But Elias was not blind to the danger.
Engagement on all fronts meant risk.
His forces could bleed heavily if pressed too far.
Reinforcements would be needed.
Supplies would be needed as well to further fuel the confederacy's survival.
And so his gaze turned across the Atlantic.
Europe.
In the former small village of bar, Elias had built his hidden base.
Depots where crates of muskets and powder lay stacked in neat pyramids.
Barracks where drilled contingents of Greybacks waited in silence, ready to be deployed overseas.
And above all—his naval yards.
From them, ships could be called forth.
Wooden frigates, swift steamers, even a handful of armored behemoths whose iron-plated hulls gleamed black against the sea spray.
Three such ocean-going ironclads were complete, the crown of Elias's preparation, all thanks to lucky draws from the system monthly lottery.
Together with a dozen escorts, they formed not merely a squadron but a fleet—small compared to the navies of Britain or France, but formidable enough to contest the shallow blockade of the Union.
Elias considered the reports carefully.
The Federal Navy was strong, yes, but stretched thin along the thousands of miles of coastline it sought to strangle.
At key points, its cordon was fragile, reliant on small groups of gunboats and converted merchantmen.
A sudden thrust by ironclads could smash through, opening a corridor for supplies and men to pour into the Confederacy.
The thought pleased him.
Not simply muskets and powder, but entire battalions of Greybacks could be delivered under cover of smoke and cannon.
Reinforcements that might tip campaigns, topple fortresses, and drown Union hope in blood.
Through the tether, he gave the order: ready the fleet.
In Richmond, men still argued over command.
Jefferson Davis quarreled with his generals, while newspapers scolded the government for weakness.
In Washington, politicians spoke of the coming spring as the season of decision, when the Union would finally unleash its great hosts in a push to crush the rebellion once and for all.
Neither capital knew of the fleet stirring in European waters, since all major powers had instead elected to remain neutral to the americans plight lest they be forced to turn on one another for their support of the opposing side.
Neither dreamed of the hidden iron that soon would cut across the Atlantic, bearing fresh ruin in its wake.
Elias, seated in his study across the sea, closed the latest dispatch and allowed himself a thin smile.
The war was widening.
After nearly an entire year of war ten thousand deaths had been suffered by the union forces, already accounting for 10% of the overall losses they had suffered in the origional timeline, and this was all before the major offensive had even truly begun.