March came in raw and wet, the thaw of winter turning Virginia's roads into endless quagmires.
In the East, the Confederacy faltered.
Union forces pressed down the Shenandoah Valley and along the Peninsula, striking with weight that Richmond's generals could not counter... not without greyback support.
At Kernstown, Stonewall Jackson—who only months earlier had been a rising star—was thrown back in bitter defeat.
Union columns pushed deeper into Virginia soil, forcing Confederate armies to retreat again and again.
Newspapers in Richmond, which only weeks before had celebrated Donelson and Pea Ridge, now dripped with despair.
"The Yankees are at the gates," one headline thundered.
Elias read the reports and allowed himself a thin smile.
The defeats in Virginia served his design.
Each loss fed the desperation of Davis's government, binding them tighter to the Greybacks who still held firm in the West.
If Richmond suffered, then Tennessee would rise in importance, and there Elias had already laid his hand.
The Greybacks remained in Tennessee, preparing for what all knew would be a clash greater than Donelson.
Grant was still absent, his capture hidden from friend and foe alike, but the Union would not abandon its thrust into the South having already long written the man off as dead.
Along the Tennessee River, at a small place called Shiloh Church, two armies sharpened their knives.
Rex drilled his companies with ruthless efficiency.
The men who had survived Donelson carried scars from battle, but they did not waver.
Every rifle was cleaned, every bayonet polished, every plan rehearsed.
"Shiloh will be a hammer-blow,"
Rex told his captains.
"And we will be the edge that cuts deepest."
Varga, ever the predator, led scouts into the dense woods around Pittsburg Landing, charting every stream and ravine.
"When they come,"
he murmured,
"they will bleed in the trees before they ever see our lines."
Elias, watching through the tether, approved.
Tennessee would be held.
The blood of Shiloh would stain the Union forever.
To the south and east, the war surged toward Georgia.
The Union Navy, emboldened after its early successes along the Atlantic coast, had set its sights on Savannah.
The great masonry fortress of Fort Pulaski guarded the river's mouth, and Washington believed its fall inevitable.
But the Greybacks who had marched from Arkansas did not agree.
Hardened by Pea Ridge, tempered by Cherokee alliance, who remained to guard in their stead they arrived at Pulaski with fire in their veins.
Their rifles, more accurate than any known to Union command, turned every attempt at reconnaissance into slaughter.
Gunboats that drew near to test the fort's range found their crews picked off at astonishing distances.
The Union brought heavy rifled cannon—new weapons meant to crack stone itself—but each emplacement was harried by Greyback raids at night.
Ammunition wagons vanished.
Gunners were found dead at their posts, throats cut cleanly, their comrades whispering of phantoms in the dark.
By month's end, Savannah still flew the Southern banner, Fort Pulaski unbowed.
For the Confederacy, it was another defiance to trumpet.
For Elias, it was one more strand woven into the tapestry of his design.
Yet it was not on land that March bore its greatest turn, but upon the sea.
From the hidden docks of Europe, Elias's fleet finally sailed.
Three ironclads—hulking monsters of black steel, their hulls near impervious to shot and shell—led the formation.
Around them steamed a dozen escorts: sleek frigates and swift blockade-runners laden with crates of powder, rifles, and medical supplies, along with preserved foodstuff.
Beneath their decks waited a thousand fresh Greyback riflemen, summoned, armed, and ready to step into the war.
The Atlantic was treacherous, but the fleet cut through storm and swell alike, engines beating like the pulse of some great leviathan.
Off the Carolinas they found their prey: a thin cordon of Union gunboats straining to maintain the blockade.
The battle was swift and merciless.
Union captains, seeing the ironclads, at first mistook them for foreign warships—British, perhaps, or French.
By the time they realized their error, the sea already boiled with fire.
'Confederate' shells smashed wooden hulls to splinters.
One ironclad rammed a Union sloop amidships, splitting it like a child's toy.
Another turned its broadside upon a converted merchant steamer, its guns blasting the vessel into a pyre of smoke and flame.
In less than two hours, the blockade squadron lay in ruins.
Survivors clung to wreckage as Elias's fleet drove into the coastal waters, smoke trailing behind them like a black banner of vengeance.
At Wilmington and Charleston, the docks erupted in jubilation as the fleet arrived.
Supplies poured ashore—powder, rifles, boots, uniforms, even precious medicine.
And with them came the thousand riflemen, stepping onto Southern soil in perfect order, their eyes cold, their rifles gleaming.
Whispers spread like wildfire.
"Europe has joined us,"
men said.
"The blockade is broken."
Richmond papers blared headlines of divine providence, of "iron monsters sent by God Himself to smite the Yankee fleet."
None knew the truth—that these were Elias's creations, born not of diplomacy or providence, but of his hidden will, and in return the union hearing of this relentlessly question the europeans to see who had interfered with none coming forward, causing the great powers to for the first time realize there was a hidden power, either that or one of the other great powers was going to great lengths to cover up their involvement.
The thousand riflemen did not mingle with others—they were a silent host, disciplined beyond measure, their accents wholely american, their eyes too steady.
Yet in battle drill they moved as one body, and none could deny their worth.
By the end of March, the Confederacy stood bloodied yet unbroken.
Virginia reeled from defeat, but Tennessee held firm.
Georgia's coast remained defiant.
The blockade, though not shattered entirely, had been pierced in a manner that emboldened every Southern heart.
And still, Elias smiled.
Each battle drew the Union deeper into the mire.
Each victory and defeat alike tightened the web.
Shiloh loomed ahead, a storm waiting to break.
When it did, Elias knew, the rivers would once again run red, and the Union would bleed heavier than history had ever written.
Across the Atlantic, more ships waited in hidden harbors.
More men stood ready to be summoned.
The iron tide had only begun to rise.