Anica sat so close to the bed that her knees pressed the frame.
Oskar lay there crowned in flowers, and she was slowly burying him under more.
She had gathered them into a small basket and carried it like a treasure chest. One by one she chose a flower, lifted it to the light with grave seriousness, turned it between her fingers as if judging whether it was worthy—then placed it gently onto the white sheets covering Oskar's bandaged body.
"This one is for mama," she whispered.
A flower on his chest.
"This one is for papa."
Another.
"This one is for big brother."
Another.
She paused, brows knitting in fierce concentration. Then, as if correcting the world in a soft, solemn voice:
"And this one… is for mama again."
The room smelled of antiseptic and old blood and crushed petals. Beyond the door the hospital moved like a machine—boots on tile, hurried voices, a nurse calling for instruments, a distant clatter of metal. By the window an Eternal Guard soldier sat in full kit, coffee balanced in one hand, the other resting near his weapon, eyes never quite leaving the street outside. Sarajevo was mostly quiet now. The city was resting for the moment as it was mourning the dead.
But in this room, Anica's voice was steady.
Mama.
Papa.
Big brother.
Mama.
Each word landed with the innocent certainty of a child naming the universe.
And that word—mama—slipped through the morphine, through the bandages, through the buzzing in Oskar's ears, and found the oldest door inside him.
He tried to keep his eyes open. Tried to anchor himself in the present: white sheets, the ache of stitches, the dull pulse of painkillers, the weight of history bending without breaking. He was in a hospital. He had survived. It was 1914—not the nightmare century he remembered, not the ruined future that had spat him back into 1903.
But the word kept coming.
Mama.
And with it came the memories he spent a decade trying to chain.
Not all at once. Not like a sudden punch.
More like water seeping into a crack—quiet, patient, unstoppable—until the whole structure began to give.
The peaceful dream he'd been clinging to dimmed. Not suddenly, but the way a candle dims when someone pinches it between two fingers.
At first there was nothing.
No light. No pain. No voices.
Just blackness.
Then weight.
A familiar crushing weight on his shoulders—straps biting into skin, plates pressing his ribs, pouches and gear dragging at him like chains. The world smelled of damp earth and burnt fuel. His hands were gloved. His breath came in harsh clouds. The air was cold enough to sting.
Mud sucked at his boots as if the ground itself wanted him back.
And nearby—too close—an armored vehicle sat half-canted in a crater, its flank smoking, one headlight blown out. The engine ticked as it cooled, a wounded animal sound. Something inside it crackled and popped.
Oskar didn't question it.
In the dream he was not Oskar.
He was Zhang Ge again.
And in front of him, half-submerged in churned ground, a man reached up with shaking hands.
His face was slick with mud and blood. His mouth opened and closed like a fish on land. His eyes were wide and wet and childlike, as if the war had stripped him down to whatever had been underneath him all along.
"Mama," the man sobbed.
The word wasn't German now. It wasn't Bosnian.
It didn't matter.
War never changes the language of panic.
"Mama… mama…"
Zhang Ge dropped into the mud beside him, grabbing him under the arms. His fingers found torn fabric and wet warmth and angles that made no sense. A strap cut into his palm. A piece of bone shifted under skin the way bone should not shift.
"It's alright," Zhang Ge heard himself say, voice breaking, desperate to be useful. "It's alright. I've got you. I've got you."
He tried to lift.
The man screamed.
Not a shout—an animal sound, raw and helpless.
Zhang Ge lifted again—harder, desperate—and the body didn't behave like a body.
It came apart.
Not all at once. Not cleanly. Small pieces first, like something badly held together: a sleeve tearing, a strap slipping free, flesh giving where it should have held. The man's shoulder felt like it slid wrong inside him. The sound of fabric ripping blended with the sound of the man's scream, and suddenly Zhang Ge's hands were full of… too much softness.
Like melting ice cream.
Like cheap decorations pulled off a tree—bright on the outside, ruined the moment you touch them.
No—
No, no—
He let go instinctively, horrified, and the man sank back into the mud, still alive, still reaching, still pleading.
"Mama…"
Zhang Ge's stomach rolled.
"I didn't mean to—" he whispered, shaking. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
A hand slammed into his shoulder hard enough to twist him around.
A medic—helmet, armband, eyes bright with fury and fear—was shouting right into his face.
"What are you doing, Zhang Ge?!" the medic screamed. "He's finished! Look at him! Leave him—leave him! We have to move NOW or we all die!"
Behind them the truck—an ugly box with a red cross painted on its side—waited with the engine running, doors open. Inside, men moaned and cried for water. One coughed and kept coughing until it became a wet rattle.
The medic ran.
Zhang Ge didn't.
Because he couldn't.
Because letting go felt like murder.
He looked down at the man in the mud, still reaching, fingers trembling, eyes pleading.
"Mama…"
Zhang Ge swallowed bile and grabbed him again.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, voice shaking. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"
He dragged the man up, forcing him onto his shoulder, the weight lopsided and wrong. The man screamed in pain, his body tearing against itself with every step.
Zhang Ge staggered forward through the mud, each movement stealing seconds.
Behind him, the medic shouted something again—words Zhang Ge couldn't catch, words swallowed by distance and smoke.
All Zhang Ge could hear was the man's broken crying near his ear.
"Mama… mama…"
Don't leave him. Don't be that person. Don't—
Then the buzzing came.
A sound like an insect made of metal, a thin mechanical whine that froze his blood because his body recognized it before his mind did.
He looked up.
Too late.
A black shape dropped from above, silent and indifferent.
Flash.
Concussion.
The world folded and punched outward.
Zhang Ge flew backward, hit the mud hard, breath ripped from his lungs. His ears went dead with ringing. For a heartbeat there was only smoke and a roaring silence where sound should have been.
When his vision finally returned, the truck was gone.
Not moved.
Gone.
Where it had been was fire, torn metal, and a crater full of burning fuel. A wheel rolled once and fell over. Something inside the wreckage screamed—then stopped.
Zhang Ge rolled over choking, face smeared in mud, and realized something else.
The man on his shoulder had gone limp.
The crying had stopped.
"Mama…" had become nothing.
Zhang Ge stared down at him, shaking, hands hovering as if afraid to touch him again.
The man's eyes were open.
But the fear inside them was gone.
Zhang Ge opened his mouth.
No words came out.
And somewhere, deep inside the darkness of the dream, a child's voice drifted in again—Anica's voice, soft as a lullaby, cruel as a knife:
Mama.
The mud vanished.
The war vanished.
And suddenly he was small again.
Too small for the room around him.
A child standing alone in an apartment that had gone quiet in a way homes should never go quiet.
No footsteps. No adult voices. No kettle. No television. No warmth.
Only the hum of a building that did not care if a child lived or died inside it.
"Mama?" he called, walking room to room.
"Mama?"
No answer.
"Papa?"
Nothing.
He opened doors. Looked under tables. Peered behind curtains as if parents could be hiding like toys. His chest hurt with the effort of not crying because crying hadn't brought anyone back the last time he tried.
The door opened.
Adults came in—police, faces tight, careful, as if grief was something heavy they carried and didn't want to drop on him.
They crouched. They spoke softly.
He asked them the same question again and again.
"Where is mama?"
They did not answer.
They said the words adults always use when they cannot bear the truth.
"It's going to be fine."
Hands took him away.
And the child learned something without words:
Being taken care of was not the same as being wanted.
The dream jumped again.
A Shaolin temple. Incense. Stone. Monks moving like legends.
He watched them—how they moved, how they were watched. The crowd's attention was like sunlight. It made the monks look larger than life.
He looked at his foster parents.
Their eyes weren't on him.
They were on the monks.
Admiring. Impressed. Alive.
And the child inside him made a simple, desperate equation:
If I become like that, they will look at me too.
Back home he picked up a camera.
He practiced. He filmed. He failed. He fell. He bruised.
"Mama," he said, breathless. "Look."
And one day she knelt and smiled and called him a good boy.
The warmth of that praise hit him like a drug.
So he did it again.
And again.
And again.
More stunts. More clips. More pain. More laughter—never the laughter of love, always the laughter of spectators.
The child became a clown.
And the clown kept performing because performance was the closest thing he had to a home.
But he wasn't happy.
So he changed, and instead began doing his own thing. He began playing games.
First came games with guns.
Then came the maps with nations.
And there he quickly discovered that diplomacy was slow. Compromise was slow. Talking was slow.
Force was fast.
And the audience loved fast.
They cheered when he conquered. They cheered when he crushed. They cheered when he stopped trying to be liked and started trying to win.
He tried to convince himself it was only a game.
But something in him flinched anyway.
Because somewhere beneath the screen he knew what he was feeding: the same part of the human soul that always chose the hammer when the scalpel took too long.
He tried to escape that part of himself.
He tried to prove he was more than pixels and commentary.
He tried—again—to earn legitimacy the way he'd tried to earn love.
And so he went to war.
To learn. To help. To become someone.
To stop being the child calling "mama" into an empty room.
And he found, instead, the same emptiness wearing different uniforms.
Men trembling before orders.
Men smoking because their hands needed something to do.
Men laughing too loudly because silence would break them.
He asked them why they were there.
He asked them what they believed.
He asked them what they were fighting for.
The answers were always the same words in different mouths.
Family.
Money.
Duty.
Faith.
And when pressed—when the bravado ran out and the eyes went flat—another answer came, quiet and honest:
"I don't know."
They fought because someone up top had decided they should.
Because a story had been told.
Because a border had been drawn.
Because the machine of state demanded bodies and men had been taught since childhood that obedience was virtue.
And on both sides, everyone believed they were the hero.
No one thought of himself as the villain.
So they learned to make villains.
They called the enemy animals. Orcs. Pigs. Rats. Demons.
Anything but human.
Because if the enemy was human, then killing him would feel like murder.
And murder is harder to live with than war.
The world burned itself down again and again, Zhang Ge realized, because nobody could bear the pain of admitting the other side might also be human.
Might also want the same simple things.
A home.
Food.
Children.
Dignity.
Safety.
And so they kept tearing at each other like starving dogs over scraps of pride.
And Zhang Ge—Oskar—stood in the middle of it, hands that had tried to heal now stained with blood anyway. He had killed men who believed they were heroes. He had watched others die who had never chosen any side at all. He saw again, like a wound reopening, the family in the street—gone in a flash—while the girls crying continued behind a doorway that no longer had a mother to answer it.
He thought of the girl.
Small hands clutching a teddy bear.
Blonde hair, blue eyes, shaking in a doorway while the world burned.
He had taken her into his care not because it fixed anything, not because it balanced the scales—only because doing nothing would have been worse. Only because some stubborn part of him still believed that if you could not save everyone, you at least saved one.
And the thought that followed was not rage anymore.
It was exhaustion.
Why must it be like this?
Why did people insist on turning neighbors into enemies? Why did they need flags and myths and old grudges so badly they would feed children and fathers and mothers into fire to keep those stories alive?
And if this was only the beginning—if even here, even now, with everything he had built and forced and dragged into place, the world still reached for violence—
then what came next?
How many more would die?
Would war come anyway? Would the century burn itself down to ash until nothing remained but bones and slogans? Was compromise truly impossible? Could no one admit they were wrong? Could no one accept that the other side might also be afraid, also human, also trying to live?
He wanted to believe it could stop.
He wanted to believe that someday men could look at one another and see the same hunger, the same love, the same desire for a home and a warm bed and children who would grow old.
And it was that want—desperate, almost childish—that finally cracked the gray world apart.
In the dream, the darkness loosened its grip.
Not like mercy.
Like something tired of being ugly.
The mud softened into soil. The cratered wasteland pulled back like a tide retreating from a ruined shore. Green returned in hesitant patches at first—grass forcing itself up through ash—then suddenly, impossibly, the earth gave in.
A field of sunflowers rose bright and unreal, as if the world had decided—for one moment—to forgive itself.
The sky cleared.
Blue. Vast. Clean.
White clouds drifting like peace made visible.
And people appeared—not in uniforms, not in helmets and plates and mud-stained gear, but in ordinary clothes. Workers. Farmers. Mothers. Students. Old men. Young women.
They carried flags—hundreds of them. Different colors. Different names.
But they were not facing each other.
They were walking in the same direction.
Side by side.
Toward a hill in the distance, bright with sunlight, as if that hill was a promise.
When someone stumbled, another reached down and lifted them up without question.
No one screamed "mama," because mothers walked beside their children.
No one begged for mercy, because no one was trying to kill.
The field moved like a living river of humanity, and in it Zhang Ge—Oskar—felt something he almost didn't recognize:
Belonging.
Not to a tribe.
Not to a nation.
To mankind.
A single family, finally tired of eating itself.
And as the sunflowers turned their faces toward the light, he walked with them toward the hill—toward the dawn that existed only if people chose it.
Only if people changed.
Only if people let go.
Then his foot caught.
Nothing dramatic. No warning. Just a stupid, human misstep.
He went down hard.
Face first into flowers and grass with a soft, ridiculous thump. For a second he lay there, more embarrassed than hurt, tasting dirt and pollen.
"Damn it," he muttered into the ground.
He waited—smiling weakly to himself.
For someone to laugh.
For someone to say his name.
For a hand to reach down and pull him up.
No one came.
Silence.
Too much silence.
He pushed himself up onto his hands—
and froze.
The ground wasn't soft.
It was hard.
Cold.
Unforgiving.
He blinked.
His hands were not young.
They were large.
Bandaged.
Scarred.
The old bullet scar on his right palm stared back at him like a brand.
He looked down at his chest.
Wrapped.
Stitched.
Bruised.
Hospital bandages beneath torn cloth.
Not a dream-body.
Not Zhang Ge.
Him.
Oskar.
Fresh from Sarajevo.
Fresh from bullets.
Fresh from blood.
He stood slowly—and the world he had been walking through was simply… gone.
No sunflowers.
No laughter.
No flags of peace.
The sky above him was not blue.
It was black and red—clouds torn open like wounds, and the sun eclipsed into a dead coin swallowed by shadow.
The air felt thick.
Heavy.
Wrong.
He turned—
and saw it.
Bones.
Everywhere.
Fields of skeletal remains stretching beyond sight. Skulls half-buried in mud. Ribcages collapsed inward. Helmets resting beside empty eye sockets. Bomb craters filled with dark stagnant water.
Flags.
Hundreds of them.
Clutched in skeletal hands—frozen mid-charge.
They had tried to reach the hill.
He followed their direction.
There it stood—the hill from his dream.
But no sun crowned it now.
At its base, the Austria-Hungarian banner hung in tatters, ripped and filthy, held by a skeletal figure that had collapsed before reaching the summit.
Higher—
near the top—
the Imperial German flag.
Broken.
The pole splintered.
The cloth torn.
And beneath it—
a small skeletal body lay face-down in the dirt.
Compact.
Dwarfish.
One bony hand still wrapped around the flagstaff, as if even death had not pried it loose.
Oskar's breath caught.
"Karl?"
The name came out hollow.
He staggered back.
"No."
He looked down.
Skulls near his boots.
Small ones.
Too small.
He crouched, hands trembling, and recognized shapes.
A jaw.
A brow.
A delicate curve he knew too well.
"Tanya…?"
His voice broke.
Another skull.
Imperiel.
Another.
His daughters.
Friends.
Children.
All reduced to bone.
He rose violently as if standing could deny what he had seen.
"This isn't real," he said, and his voice echoed across the wasteland. "This is a dream. It has to be."
He looked at the hill again—at the flags, at the bodies, at Karl lying beneath the banner like a fallen standard himself—
and forced the world to make sense.
"I changed it," he said like a prayer. "I saved Ferdinand. I stopped it. There will be no great war."
He said it again.
And again.
As if repetition could build a wall.
"Germany is too strong. With what we have built, no one can hope to defeat us unless they sacrifice everything."
"Russia would be mad to mobilize."
"Serbia cannot win—Bulgaria on one side, Austria-Hungary on the other."
"Everyone knows that."
"If Austria-Hungary moves against terrorists, the world will understand."
"They must understand."
"It would be suicide to challenge Germany."
"And I do not want slaughter."
"I do not want death."
"Yes—Germany would win."
"But at what cost?"
"Our sons."
"Their sons."
"Tens of millions."
"For nothing."
His voice weakened.
"Surely there is a peaceful path…"
He nodded to himself as if he could still convince himself this was only a nightmare—random thoughts, fevered visions, nothing more.
All he had to do was continue as he had been doing.
Keep building.
Keep guiding.
Keep forcing the world toward peace.
And everything would be alright.
A lasting peace.
And then—
he felt it.
Not a sound. Not a step.
A pressure.
Like the air itself had weight now—like something vast had leaned close enough to be felt. The hairs on his arms lifted. His breath caught. The whole battlefield of bones seemed to hush, as if the world had noticed a higher presence.
He turned.
Above the red-black sky, suspended over the hill and the flags and the dead, hung a being of white light.
Not a face.
Not a body.
Just light—pure, silent, unbearable—watching him the way a blade watches a throat.
Judging.
Oskar's mouth went dry.
"You," he whispered.
And then the anger came, immediate and hot, because the audacity of that gaze hit him like an insult.
"You judge me?" he said, voice shaking. "Who are you to judge me?"
He took a step forward over cracking skulls.
"You sent me here—didn't you? You threw me into a prince's body with no language, no memories, no instructions. You gave me nothing but time and expectations and silence."
He lifted his bandaged hands, smeared with ash and blood that wasn't his.
"So what do you want from me?" he demanded. "Tell me."
The light did not answer.
Oskar's voice rose.
"What did I miss? What did I do wrong? Have I failed—how? Just show me. Give me a sign. Give me anything. One word!"
The light flickered, cold and indifferent.
Then it turned away.
As if disappointed.
As if he wasn't worth speaking to.
And it began to ascend, drifting higher into the torn sky.
"No," Oskar breathed.
Then, louder—raw:
"No, don't you dare."
"Come back!"
He stumbled forward, boots crunching through bone.
"Tell me what I'm supposed to do!" he roared. "Tell me!"
The light continued upward.
Silent.
Smaller.
Leaving him.
Something in Oskar snapped.
His rage surged so violently it felt like heat breaking through his skin. Veins stood out along his forearms, darkened, then burned red beneath the flesh like molten lines. The air around him warped.
The ground cracked.
Fissures split the field of corpses in jagged lines. Far away, the horizon flared—magma pulsing as if the world's heart had been exposed. Lightning tore across the eclipsed sky, turning skulls into white grinning mirrors for a heartbeat at a time.
Oskar threw his head back and screamed until his throat tore.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!"
The sound shook the horizon.
The dead flags snapped in their skeletal hands.
The sky seemed to fracture—
—
—and the dream shattered with it.
Oskar exploded upright in his hospital bed with a roar, flinging flowers into the air like torn confetti.
Petals rained down.
Anica shrieked in fright, slipping off the edge of the mattress—eyes wide, arms flailing—about to fall.
Oskar lunged and caught her by the waist with one bandaged hand, yanking her safely back onto the bed before she hit the floor.
He blinked, wild-eyed, breathing hard.
White sheets.
Bandages.
Sunlight through a window.
The smell of antiseptic and crushed petals.
Anica stared at him, heart pounding, teddy bear squeezed to her chest.
For a second neither of them spoke.
Then Anica's face scrunched up in offended seriousness.
"You have a weird way of waking up," she said.
Oskar swallowed, voice hoarse. "Anica…?"
She nodded briskly, as if confirming something obvious.
"And you talk a lot in your sleep," she added, leaning closer like it was a secret. "You know that? You're silly."
Oskar stared at her—still shaking, still half in the nightmare—and he didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Anica blinked at him, still clutching her bear.
"You're such a big silly man," she repeated, with the blunt certainty only children possess.
For a heartbeat—
Oskar almost laughed.
A dry, broken sound escaped him.
"Yes," he muttered hoarsely. "I suppose I am."
Then, something finally snapped inside Oskar.
His hand shot out and seized the iron railing at the side of the hospital bed.
Metal shrieked.
The bolts tore free with a violent crack as he ripped the entire handrail clean out of the frame and hurled it across the room. It struck the wall and fell with a deafening clang.
"Shit!" he roared. "Fuck—fuck!"
Anica recoiled, eyes wide, shrinking back against the pillows.
Oskar sat there shaking, both hands gripping the mattress, breath ragged. Then he dragged his palms down over his face, smearing sweat and dried blood and the scent of flowers.
"Damn it," he whispered. "I'm such an idiot."
He bowed his head.
For a moment he teetered on the edge—between stubborn pride and something far harder.
Between continuing exactly as he had… or admitting that perhaps he had been wrong about something fundamental.
Anica hesitated.
Then, cautiously, she reached out.
Her small hand touched his.
"There, there," she said softly. "It's okay. Don't be angry. It's okay."
The simplicity of it cut deeper than any accusation.
Oskar stilled.
He looked at her.
At the child who's family was not here anymore… and yet, despite this she was now here comforting him.
His jaw tightened.
Enough.
Self-pity was useless. Rage without direction was worse.
He exhaled slowly.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "I'm fine now."
He wasn't.
But he was steady.
He turned his head toward the window.
The Eternal Guard soldier who had been standing watch snapped to attention.
"How long?" Oskar asked. "How long have I been out?"
The soldier immediately stepped forward and dropped to one knee.
"Your Highness," he said, voice controlled, "nearly a week. You slipped in and out of consciousness. The doctors feared internal bleeding. The nurses—and… Anica—have been feeding you. You responded at times. You were able to swallow."
Oskar blinked.
"A week?"
Anica brightened immediately.
"Yes!" she said proudly. "And I gave you cookies and milk. Like you wanted."
Oskar looked at her.
"…Thank you."
She beamed.
The soldier hesitated.
"There is more, Your Highness."
Oskar's gaze sharpened.
"Go on."
The guard straightened slightly, still kneeling.
"Captain Carter asked that you be informed the moment you woke. The political situation is deteriorating rapidly."
Oskar felt the old weight return instantly.
"Explain."
"Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia days ago. They demand that Austro-Hungarian police forces be allowed to enter Serbian territory to root out the Black Hand and any remnants of Young Bosnia. Serbia has rejected key demands."
Oskar closed his eyes briefly.
Too fast.
Everything was moving too fast.
"And?"
"Austria-Hungary has begun mobilization. Partial at first—but expanding."
The soldier swallowed.
"And this morning, Russia authorized partial mobilization as well."
Silence filled the room.
A week.
Only a week since Sarajevo.
In his old history, things had simmered.
Now they were boiling.
"And Germany?" Oskar asked quietly.
The guard's jaw tightened.
"The Kaiser is enraged, Your Highness. News of your shooting reached Berlin within hours. His Majesty has cancelled the Norway voyage. He has publicly affirmed full support for Austria-Hungary."
Of course he has.
The guard continued.
"The ultimatum was pushed out with unusual speed. Berlin's tone has been… uncompromising."
Oskar almost smiled.
So this is how it begins.
Again.
Faster this time.
Because this time the culprits were clear.
Because this time he had been shot as well.
Because this time the Kaiser's pride was wounded personally.
The guard lowered his head slightly.
"Your Highness… matters are escalating beyond diplomacy."
Oskar inhaled.
Exhaled.
The dream of bones flickered behind his eyes.
The field of sunflowers.
The beam of light turning away.
He could stall.
He could plead.
He could attempt another round of words and restraint and careful balancing—
Or he could accept that history did not fear him.
He opened his eyes.
"Alright," he said calmly.
"We will fight."
Anica, who understood none of the politics but all of the tone, pumped her fist enthusiastically.
"Yes!" she declared. "Let's fight!"
The guard rose sharply and struck his fist to his heart in salute.
"Yes, Your Highness."
Oskar sat there, bandaged and bruised, flowers still scattered across the sheets.
Inside him, something had shifted.
He did not yet know whether he had chosen the right path—
only that the path had chosen him back.