As Oskar fell, he felt four small impacts.
Like needles.
Four blunt, burning punches burrowing into flesh—too fast to fully understand, too clean to be pain at first. His ears rang instantly, the world turning metallic and far away, as if someone had wrapped his head in thick cloth. His body screamed in delayed protest as gravity claimed him and tore him from the saddle.
For a fraction of a second, as he fell through the air, he saw the assassin below—screaming in pure animal terror as Shadowmane's shadow swallowed him.
Then the hooves came down.
There was a crunch.
Not dramatic. Not noble. Just bone yielding under weight.
The young man's face disappeared beneath black fur and muscle and fury, erased in an instant.
And in that moment—strangely, absurdly—that was what struck Oskar deepest.
Not the blood.
Not the pain.
Not even the fact that history had found him again.
But the question rose from somewhere hollow inside him, sharp as a blade driven upward through bone:
Why?
Why had they come here?
Why choose iron and blood and suicide again—like history demanding repetition—only now with more bodies stacked upon the old ones? Had they not seen what was being built? Had they not felt it?
He had never promised paradise.
He had never promised endless riches. The world didn't have the resources for that lie.
Instead, he had tried to give them something real.
Peace. Security. Homes of their own. Food on the table. Children who could grow without hearing gunfire in the distance. A life where living with dignity wasn't a dream—it was the minimum.
So why was this happening now?
Why could they not see that he and the men beside him were not their enemies? That he had tried—truly tried—to be a prince of the people, not above them but for them?
And Ferdinand—
Ferdinand was no tyrant. No butcher of nations. He had spent years trying to hold Austria-Hungary together not with the whip, but with reform. He spoke of representation, of balance, of giving the empire's many peoples room to breathe. He supported diversity within the realm. He argued for restraint where others demanded force.
He had chosen compromise over conquest.
He had chosen peace where pride would have been easier.
And still, it was not enough.
Why?
He could not understand it.
What had he missed?
Where had he misstepped?
What flaw in his vision—what blind spot in his crusade for a better world—had once again led men down this road of blood?
Then he hit the ground.
Cobblestones slammed into his back hard enough to tear the breath from his lungs. The ringing deepened. The sky above fractured into white and blue shards. For a heartbeat he could not feel his legs.
Nothing.
Just emptiness below the waist.
He lay there staring up at the clean summer sky while the street burned around him, smoke and screams bleeding into the edges of his hearing.
To his left he saw the car.
Smoking. Dented. Spattered—metal marked by bullet strikes, blood trickling down its side in thin, dark lines.
The Archduke was inside.
Sophie was inside.
Both perhaps dead.
And with that sight, something inside Oskar went cold.
History—stubborn, spiteful, laughing—refused to bend.
For a moment, Oskar felt nothing.
Not pain. Not rage.
Only a hollow, weightless helplessness—as if everything he had done, everything he had built, had led inevitably to this street. This blood. This ugly, familiar turning of history's wheel. As if no effort, no vision, no sacrifice could bend the road ahead.
Perhaps this was how it had always been meant to unfold.
Perhaps nothing mattered.
He lay there half-upright, breath ragged, vision swimming—when something moved at the edge of his sight.
Shadowmane.
The stallion circled him, bleeding and trembling, one flank dark and slick, nostrils flaring white with heat and fear. Any other animal would have bolted. Any sane creature would have fled the gunfire and smoke.
Shadowmane did not.
He stayed close.
Always close.
And in that simple act—wordless, instinctive—something shifted inside Oskar.
Whatever he thought about fate, or history, or the stupidity of men… there were still beings here who chose him. Who relied on him. Who stood beside him without needing speeches, promises, or reasons.
So how could he lie here and let the world burn around him?
No.
There was still a chance—however small, however bitter—to force his dreams into reality. He just needed to push a little more. Endure a little longer.
He would not give up now. Not while something still stood at his side.
He forced himself up.
Pain hit him in bright, jagged waves. Shoulder on fire. Side screaming. His legs trembling as if they belonged to someone else. Still, he pushed, dragging himself into motion with sheer refusal.
Then—before he saw it, before he heard it clearly—he felt it.
A warning at the base of his skull. A prickling, animal certainty.
Danger.
He moved.
He rolled hard to his left, slamming into the smoking car as a bullet cracked past the space where his head had been a heartbeat earlier.
Stone chips snapped up.
Oskar looked up.
A figure on a rooftop. Rifle in hand. Working the action. Eyes wide—shocked the shot had missed.
Oskar did not hesitate.
He rose to one knee and drove his fist into the cobblestones.
Stone cracked.
He tore a chunk free as if wrenching a tooth from a jaw. Mortar split. His knuckles bled. And then, without ceremony, he crushed the stone in his grip until it shattered into jagged fragments.
He hurled it upward.
The rubble burst mid-flight like a swarm—sharp shards striking the assassin's face with brutal force. Stone bit into skin, into eyes, into teeth. The man screamed, stumbled backward, hands flying up—and vanished behind the roofline.
Oskar exhaled through clenched teeth.
He hated this.
Hated the violence. Hated the necessity. Hated that the only language left to him in this moment was force.
Another movement caught his eye.
At the mouth of the alley to his right—far enough that the blast would not swallow him, close enough that it would reach him—an assassin stepped out holding something squat and dark.
Not a bottle.
Not a grenade.
A crude cylinder wrapped in cloth and wire.
A trigger fixed at the top.
A bomb.
The man's face was pale beneath his hat. He had seen too much in too little time: a rider who would not stay down, a horse that killed like a myth. In his mind there was only one explanation left.
Monster.
He screamed it with spit flying from his mouth.
"Die, you monster!"
His arm drew back.
Shadowmane lowered his head, muscles tightening to charge.
Oskar, on one knee, blood soaking into his torn shirt, seized another stone.
Then—
A baby cried.
Not from the street.
From inside the house behind the assassin.
High.
Thin.
Confused.
A door flew open.
A woman ran out barefoot, blouse half-fastened, hair loose. She didn't look at Oskar. She didn't look at the car. She looked only at the man with the bomb.
She ran toward him.
"No!" she screamed.
She collided with him just as his thumb pressed down. She grabbed his wrist and dragged the bomb inward, crushing it against her own chest as if she could smother fire with her body.
The assassin panicked, stunned, fighting her grip. "Are you insane—let go! You'll get us both killed!"
A man burst out behind her—older, broad-shouldered—and seized the assassin's other arm. A boy followed, wrapping himself around the attacker's legs, clinging like a desperate anchor.
The baby inside the house kept crying.
Oskar felt his voice tear from him.
"No—don't—!"
The world flashed white.
The blast tore outward in a brutal, concussive bloom. Heat slapped his face. The pressure hit his wounds like a hammer and shoved him half sideways. The sound arrived a heartbeat later—like the sky cracking open.
Then red.
Not mist. Not spray.
A hard, violent arc—thick and sudden—like a bucket flung in a perfect circle. It painted the street, the wall, the side of the car. It struck Oskar full in the face and chest, hot and heavy, and for an instant his brain refused to name it.
It streaked Shadowmane's dark flank, ran in rivulets down muscle and mane.
Debris followed—soft, obscene little taps on stone.
And the shape of the assassin and the family was simply gone.
One heartbeat they had been there—hands locked, bodies straining—
The next there was only smoke, splintered wood, and ruin.
But the baby—
The baby was still crying.
Inside the house.
Louder now.
Alone.
Oskar knelt there, stone still in his hand, blood dripping from his jaw and mixing with someone else's. His mind refused to assemble what his eyes had seen.
He stared at the doorway.
At the smoke curling out.
At the crying child.
And something inside him broke—not in anger this time, but in disbelief.
They were Slavs.
Christians.
People who shared the same churches, the same saints, the same graves. Families intermarried for generations. Bloodlines tangled until no one could truly say where one ended and another began.
The Balkans were not strangers fighting invaders.
They were cousins.
Neighbors.
Men who might have shared wine at the same table ten years ago.
So why?
Why did they insist on carving each other apart like this?
Were they truly so different?
Or was the difference only in flags and words and stories told too often?
The baby's crying cut through the smoke again.
Sharp.
Alive.
Oskar's hands trembled.
Shadowmane snorted and stamped, slick with blood that was not his own.
Around them, the city roared.