February 1862 brought with it no thaw, only sleet and bitter wind.
The Cumberland lay swollen and half-iced, its waters black beneath the overcast sky.
Along its banks, tens of thousands of soldiers dug in around Fort Donelson—Confederates bracing against Union advance, and Federals massing to seize the gateway into Tennessee.
But the Union came with a flaw.
Grant was missing, his fate unknown since the disaster at Belmont.
In his stead, command had fallen awkwardly between Flag Officer Andrew Foote and a cadre of lesser generals.
Foote was a man of iron discipline upon the water, but he was no master of maneuver on land.
The result was hesitation—orders delayed, attacks uncoordinated, and opportunities squandered.
Elias saw the weakness and pressed his advantage.
Greybacks filtered through the Confederate lines, their fire mingled with that of Southern infantry.
From the bastions of Donelson they struck, their volleys cutting down Union engineers, their precision fire silencing officers mid-command.
In the woods beyond the works, Rex led companies on night raids, slipping through snow and pine to slash at Union supply lines, burning wagons before melting back into the darkness.
The Federals fought fiercely nonetheless.
Gunboats hammered the fort, their shells bursting with thunder that shook the earth itself.
Infantry surged forward in wave after wave, their bayonets glinting beneath the pale sun.
The Confederate lines bent and shuddered.
For two days it seemed they would break.
Then came the counterstroke.
On the third dawn, grey-coated brigades poured from the trenches in a sudden fury.
At their core moved Varga's Greybacks, silent and relentless.
Together they drove into the Union flank, musket fire at point-blank, bayonets flashing red in the frozen dawn.
Foote tried to rally his forces, but the command chain was fractured, his generals arguing even as their men bled.
The river ran thick with bodies as Federals staggered back toward their camps.
For hours the snowstorm of musketry raged, until the ground itself seemed to shudder beneath the weight of the fallen.
By nightfall the field lay strewn with shattered regiments, blue and grey intermingled in death.
The cost was staggering.
Out of the forty-five thousand who fought at Donelson, nearly thirty thousand were counted as casualties—captured, wounded, missing, or dead.
The Confederates held, but only barely, their victory measured not in banners captured but in survival itself.
To the South, it was a triumph snatched from the jaws of disaster.
To the North, it was a calamity, worsened by the absence of the man who might have steadied them.
And in the shadows of the fort, Elias's hand had left its mark once more.
Even as Donelson bled, another front unfolded to the west.
In Arkansas, Union forces under General Samuel Curtis marched southward, seeking to crush Confederate resistance in the Ozarks.
They were met near the little town of Leetown at a place called Pea Ridge.
There, Confederate General Earl Van Dorn rallied a diverse host—Texans, Missourians, Arkansans, and, most striking of all, warriors of the Cherokee Nation.
For the Cherokee, the war was not merely a struggle of Union versus Confederacy.
It was a chance for vengeance.
Many remembered the Trail of Tears, the broken treaties, the betrayals of Washington.
Curtis's army carried with it not just muskets, but the symbol of the same government that had forced their people westward in chains.
When the Greybacks from North Carolina arrived after their long march, they did so not as strangers, but as brothers-in-arms.
Their arrival was a godsend, since all system summons could speak every language of the earth, just as Elias now could, who could share words and counsel with their new allies.
Around the campfires, Greyback officers spoke fluently of honor, of shared enemies, of a new dawn in which the Cherokee would stand not as pawns, but as warriors feared and respected.
That bond bore fruit on the battlefield.
At Pea Ridge, Union forces outnumbered the Confederates and held superior ground.
Curtis was confident, his artillery massed along the ridges, his men well-fed and supplied.
He did not expect the ferocity of the Cherokee charge.
Led by Greybacks who cried commands in their language, the Cherokee warriors swept down the slopes like a storm, rifles cracking, tomahawks flashing.
Their fury tore through Union cavalry, scattering them like leaves in the wind.
Texan infantry surged in their wake, and for the first time in months, the Confederate banners advanced with momentum rather than simply in defence.
The fighting was savage.
Cannon thunder shook the ridges, musket smoke turned the hillsides into shadowed infernos.
Greybacks moved like wraiths through the chaos, their volleys striking with uncanny precision, their presence stiffening every wavering line.
By the third day, Curtis's army was in full retreat.
The victory belonged not just to the Confederates, but to the Cherokee.
They had tasted vengeance and proven their strength, their names shouted in Southern camps with admiration.
Bonds of trust were sealed in blood.
The Greybacks, by bridging the tongue and culture between them, had forged an alliance deeper than any treaty written on paper.
When news of Pea Ridge and Donelson reached Richmond, the capital roared with sudden hope.
Two victories in the span of weeks—the tide, perhaps, was turning once more.
Jefferson Davis declared days of thanksgiving.
Newspapers proclaimed the "miraculous fortitude" of Southern arms.
But Elias knew better.
The victories had come at dreadful cost.
Donelson's field was a graveyard, its rivers choked with the dead.
The Confederacy bled men it could ill afford to lose.
And though the Cherokee had brought triumph at Pea Ridge, their fury risked drawing the Union's vengeance down upon them with greater weight than before.
Still, Elias smiled.
Every death, every victory, every alliance pulled the threads of history tighter into his design.
Grant sat imprisoned, the Union's future bent from its old course.
Foote's failure at Donelson cast doubt upon Northern leadership.
The Cherokee, once pawns of broken treaties, now stood as avengers allied in blood.
And across the ocean, his fleet prepared to sail.
The rivers had run red.
The hills of Arkansas had thundered.
Soon, the seas themselves would burn.