"So," Wilhelm murmured, "it is treason after all."
His gaze slid toward the Royal Guard captain from Babelsberg.
"Very well. Captain… arrest these men."
The captain trembled.
His hands tightened around his rifle until the leather of his gloves creaked. For one heartbeat, he did not move. Perhaps some last sane part of him still understood that one more step would turn the palace into a battlefield. But the Crown Prince was watching him, and behind him stood armed Royal Guards waiting for someone else to decide their souls.
So the captain stepped forward. In that same instant, the Eternal Guards' rifles rose.
The Royal Guards reacted as one. Men spread along the corridor, carbines lifting, boots scraping against marble as the front rank dropped low and the second rank aimed over their shoulders. A third line formed behind them, weapons seeking angles through the bodies ahead.
For half a breath, no one fired.
The hallway held still. The two Eternal Guards before the doors did not shake. Their fingers rested near the triggers. Their black helmets gave no hint of fear, doubt, or even anger. They were not men deciding whether to die. They had already decided.
Then, from Wilhelm's left, down the short stretch of corridor where the stairwell opened, metal glinted.
Two more Eternal Guards crouched on the upward stairs, rifles already raised.
Beside the stairwell, the large freight elevator gave a low mechanical groan. Its tracks began to grind. Something was coming up from below.
Eyes shifted. Royal Guards glanced from the two men at the doors, to the stairwell, to the elevator, then back again. The Royal Guards had numbers, but they had stepped into a crossroads. Fire could come from the front, from the side, from the stairs, and soon perhaps from whatever rose out of the elevator shaft.
More Royal Guards crowded the hallway behind Wilhelm, but numbers meant less when only the first few ranks could shoot.
Still smiling, Wilhelm lowered his chin beneath the shadow of his hood. No one saw the pistol rise beneath his cloak.
Thus the first shot of that day came through cloth, with a bright flash that split black fabric.
The Eternal Guard nearest the windows jerked backward as the bullet punched into his chest plate at almost point-blank range. Metal cracked. The plate held for a fraction of a second, then failed at a seam. The guard staggered, his rifle firing as his body fell.
The return shot struck the Babelsberg captain in the face.
His right cheek tore open in a red burst, and he reeled sideways with a strangled cry, firing by reflex as he fell against the men beside him.
That was enough.
The hallway erupted in fire. Carbines cracked in brutal, overlapping bursts. Muzzle flashes strobed against marble, glass, gold trim, and black armor. Sparks jumped from breastplates. Bullets punched into wood and stone. Men shouted. Someone screamed. The smell of powder flooded the corridor, sharp and hot, followed almost instantly by the iron scent of blood.
The two Eternal Guards at the doors were hammered by fire.
Their armor sparked and buckled under the storm. One dropped to a knee but kept firing. The other braced himself against the double doors and sent shot after shot into the closest Royal Guards, his weapon steady even as bullets tore into him.
From the stairwell, the hidden Eternal Guards opened fire.
Royal Guards fell along the left side of the hallway, struck from the flank. One man spun into the wall and collapsed. Another dropped his rifle and clutched his throat. A third fell backward into the men behind him, knocking them off aim.
"Stairs!" someone shouted. "Fire on the stairs!"
The Royal Guards turned part of their line, carbines snapping toward the stairwell. Five-shot bursts hammered the stone steps. Chips of masonry flew. The Eternal Guards there fired, ducked, shifted lower, then fired again.
Wilhelm threw himself backward.
A dead Royal Guard collapsed near him, and Wilhelm seized the body by the collar, dragging it half over himself as a shield while bullets cut the air above his head.
"Kill them!" he roared from the floor, eyes wide and shining. "Kill every Eternal Guard in this palace! We are the Restoration! We fight for the resurrection of the Empire! You fight for me—your Crown Prince!"
The wounded captain, half his face red and ruined, somehow pushed himself upright against the wall.
"Form on the stairs!" he gurgled through blood. "Suppress them! Suppress them!"
The Royal Guards obeyed because orders were easier than fear. Men shifted, rifles rose, fire concentrated toward the stairwell.
And in those few seconds, one of the Eternal Guards before the double doors, moved his hand to his belt.
His fingers found the pins of two round grenades, and he pulled them both.
For one heartbeat, through the cracked black mask, something almost like a smile seemed to exist.
Then the grenades detonated. The corridor became fire. The blast slammed through the Royal Guard ranks, lifting men off their feet and throwing them into walls, windows, and one another. Shrapnel tore through legs, hands, faces, throats. The nearest men simply vanished into smoke and blood and fragments of uniform. The double doors behind the Eternal Guards split inward, one side blasted half off its hinges, the other cracking down its length as splinters flew into the inner family corridor.
Inside, Anna screamed. Cecilie screamed with her.
They dragged the four remaining children backward as wood fragments tore through the air. The Eternal Guards inside threw themselves behind pillars and doorframes. One pushed the family deeper into the nearest children's room, just as bullets tore through the wrecked doorway.
For a few seconds, the shooting faltered.
The hallway beyond the doors was full of smoke, dust, groans, and men screaming for medics, mothers, God, or death. Royal Guards dragged themselves backward, leaving dark trails behind them. Others crawled blindly through smoke, reaching for rifles they could no longer hold.
Then Wilhelm rose out of the haze.
His cloak was torn. Blood streaked one side of his face, though whether it was his own or someone else's was impossible to tell. He stared through the shattered doorway and pointed with his pistol.
"Advance!" Wilhelm screamed. "Capture them! Capture Oskar's family! Forward, you fools!"
The Royal Guards moved, not eagerly or in a clean formation, but they moved.
A handful rushed through the smoke and splintered doorway, boots slipping on blood and broken wood as they tried to force their way into Oskar's wing.
They were met instantly.
The four Eternal Guards inside opened fire from the inner corridor. The first Royal Guard through the smoke was struck in the chest and thrown backward into the men behind him. Another reached the shattered double doors before a round tore through his throat. A third stumbled behind the broken frame, firing blindly into the haze until a burst from the far side of the corridor caught him under the arm and dropped him to the floor.
For a few seconds, the entrance became a slaughterhouse.
The Eternal Guards fired from behind pillars, doorframes, and corners, turning the inner hall into a narrow killing lane. Royal Guards fell over one another in the smoke. Some crawled backward. Some dragged themselves behind splintered wood and marble. One wounded man, teeth bared and eyes wild, pulled a grenade from his belt and tried to throw it before a shot knocked him flat.
Behind them, Wilhelm saw the charge falter.
"Machine gun!" he roared. "Bring up the machine gun!"
The weapon came forward at once. The gunner dropped to one knee near the wrecked entrance while two Royal Guards shielded him with their bodies. The barrel swung down the family corridor. The ammunition box rattled into place.
Then it fired, and the sound changed everything. Carbine shots had been sharp, fast, and individual.
The machine gun was a tearing roar. It ripped through the corridor in a storm of metal. Bullets chewed pillars, doors, plaster, carved wood, portraits, and glass. Curtains snapped apart. Windowpanes burst inward. The double doors farther down the inner hall, the ones leading deeper toward Oskar's private chambers, splintered and shook under the impacts as bullets hammered through them.
The Eternal Guards took cover.
One behind a window pillar leaned out just long enough to fire twice. The machine gun found him immediately. Sparks burst from his armor, his body twisted, and he slammed sideways against the wall before collapsing beneath the tall broken windows.
Another Eternal Guard, closer to the children's room, fired from the doorway, then vanished back inside as the machine gun swept over him, carving the frame to pieces.
Then came the grenades, all with four second fuses. They were small metal spheres that came skipping through the smoke, bouncing along the floor with hard, playful clatters.
One, two, three, four grenade's. The sound of them was almost obscene in that place, like children's toys rolling through a nursery.
"Grenades!" someone shouted from inside the corridor.
The first exploded near a side table, shredding wood, carpet, and wall paneling. The second burst farther down the hall, sending shrapnel screaming into the doors and old portraits. The third struck a pillar, bounced away, and detonated in the center of the corridor, turning dust and splinters into a white cloud.
The Eternal Guard at the girls' room saw the fourth grenade rolling toward the doorway.
He had no time to throw it back.
He turned and threw himself inside the room with the family, and slammed the door half shut.
The grenade burst outside.
The blast tore the door from its hinges and hurled him backward into the room. He struck the floor hard, armor smoking, one arm bent beneath him at an impossible angle. For half a second, the room was nothing but ringing ears, falling dust, and smoke crawling through the broken doorway.
Then the family saw the hallway.
Through the torn-open entrance, they saw the Eternal Guard by the window pillar try to rise, try to bring his rifle up one last time. The machine gun cut him down before he could fire. He dropped out of sight behind the smoke.
The guard inside the room groaned once and forced himself upright.
For a moment, he swayed on his feet, black armor smoking, one hand braced against the wall. Then training took hold. He staggered to the doorway, raised his rifle, and leaned out to return fire.
A burst cracked from the hallway.
Bullets hammered into his chest and helmet, sparks leaping from the black plates. His body jerked once, then again. He struck the broken doorframe, slid down against the splintered wood, and went still.
Farther down the inner corridor, the last Eternal Guard was still fighting near the ruined entrance, almost lost behind smoke, dust, and muzzle flashes.
Then another grenade detonated.
The blast shook the floor. After that, the Eternal Guard's rifle fell silent. Only the Royal Guards were firing now.
And suddenly, there was no one left between the children and the men coming for them.
Anna stood deeper inside the girls' room, barefoot in a white nightdress, clutching Juniel and Lailael against her. The room around them was small compared to Oskar's chambers, warm and crowded with the remains of childhood: narrow beds, folded blankets, dolls, picture books, ribbons, slippers, a wooden horse, and a stuffed dinosaur lying on its side near the carpet.
Now smoke crept over everything.
Juniel's face was white with shock, but her violet eyes kept moving, counting doors, bodies, weapons, distances. Lailael clung to her mother with one hand and gripped a pillow with the other, her small jaw set in stubborn terror.
Near the doorway, Cecilie held the two boys.
Azarael and Liorael were only seven, still small enough to fit against her sides, but already too strong and too strange to feel like ordinary children. Their platinum hair was tangled from sleep, their violet eyes wide in the smoky dawn. Cecilie's arms locked around them, desperate rather than graceful, her white nightdress streaked with dust.
For one terrible heartbeat, none of the women moved.
There had always been guards, walls, Oskar's protection and his impossible certainty that the world could be forced to obey if only enough steel stood between danger and his family.
But now the guards were dead, the door was broken, boots were coming closer, and Oskar was not there.
Then Azarael saw the rifle.
The fallen Eternal Guard's weapon lay near the doorway, too long and heavy for a child to use properly, but the bayonet was still fixed beneath the barrel.
Without a word, he tore himself free from Cecilie's arms.
"Azarael!" Cecilie hissed.
He did not listen. He darted to the fallen guard, dropped low, and seized the rifle. It was far too large for him to wield, but his hands moved with practiced certainty. He twisted, pulled, and tore the bayonet free.
Then a shadow crossed the broken doorway.
A Royal Guard stepped into the frame, broad and armored, the dawn burning white behind him through the shattered windows. For one frozen heartbeat, he was not a man but a black shape cut from the morning itself: helmet low, rifle raised, shoulders wide enough to throw their darkness over Azarael, over the women, over the children huddled behind them.
No one moved, even the smoke seemed to pause around him.
Anna tightened her arms around the girls. Cecilie went still. Azarael looked up, bayonet held low in his small hand, then recognition struck him.
Before him was not an enemy, not a stranger, it was someone known. Someone who had once stood in training yards and corrected his footing, someone who had laughed when he moved too quickly and beat him, someone who had called him clever, nimble, dangerous, but always with warmth, or so he had thought.
"Herr Klaus?" Azarael whispered.
The Royal Guard's eyes found him. Recognition flashed there too.
Klaus had trained with the children before. He had been one of the Royal Guards assigned occasionally to help with knife drills, footwork, and supervised sparring. He had laughed once when Azarael moved too quickly for his eyes, he had called him many good things, even dangerous in a playful way which Azarael had liked.
Now there was no play in his face, only fear wearing the mask of disgust.
"Well now," Klaus said, voice rough. "If it isn't little Master Azarael."
Azarael stared at him, stunned. "Teacher… what are you doing?"
The Royal Guard's mouth twisted into a smile.
"You were always quick on your feet," he said, raising the carbine toward the boy's head. "Let us see if you can dodge this."
Cecilie moved before thought could stop her. She shoved Liorael aside and threw herself between Azarael and the barrel.
"No!" she screamed.
Yet the rifle clicked, it was empty. And for one impossible heartbeat, everyone froze.
Klaus's eyes widened for a moment, as he cursed, stepped back, let the empty carbine fall against its sling, and reached for the pistol at his hip.
Azarael stepped away from Cecilie, bayonet held low in a reverse grip.
The pistol cleared leather and rose, yet Klaus did not aim at Cecilie. He aimed at the boy, and fired.
The muzzle flash filled the room.
Azarael's blade flashed at the same instant.
No one saw the movement clearly. There was only a sharp metallic snap, a bright spark, and the bullet split against the bayonet's edge, its fragments cutting past either side of the boy close enough to stir his silver hair.
Klaus stared, his mouth falling open as he muttered out loud, "Impossible."
Then he was hit as a pillow struck him full in the face, followed by a stuffed tyrannosaur that hit him in the stomach.
Juniel and Lailael had thrown both at once.
Klaus staggered, blinded for half a second, and fired again. The shot cracked into the back wall, just as Azarael charged. One step, a leap. His foot struck Cecilie's back as she lay between him and the enemy, using her body like a springboard. She gasped as the boy flew over her.
The pillow slid from Klaus's face just as Azarael reached him.
The bayonet drove into his throat. Klaus choked, stumbled backward, and his heel caught on the dead Eternal Guard's leg. He fell into the hallway with Azarael on top of him, pistol spinning from his hand across the floor.
Azarael ripped the blade free. Then struck again, finishing Klaus off without hesitation.
The hallway swallowed the sound.
For one frozen second, the boy stood over the body, breathing through his nose, bayonet red in his small hand.
Three Royal Guards in the smoky hallway saw him. A seven-year-old child, with hair like spun platinum, bright violet eyes, and blood across his face. And beneath him lay a grown man, dead by his hand.
Their fear became certainty.
"It's a monster," one whispered.
Another raised his rifle and screamed, "Kill it!"
Azarael shifted his grip, ready to move, but before he could, Cecilie seized him from behind and yanked him back into the room with desperate strength. Bullets tore through the doorway where his body had been a heartbeat earlier.
Liorael moved next.
He darted forward, grabbed Klaus's boots, and dragged the body deeper into the room, out of sight. His small hands searched the belt quickly, a pouch, a knife, a pistol magazine.
Then he found a single round grenade. His eyes lit with wicked delight.
"Liorael, no!" Anna shouted.
Too late.
The boy pulled the pin and rolled the grenade into the hallway with a bright, gleeful smile, as if he had just played the finest prank in the world.
Outside, men shouted.
"Grenade!"
Boots scrambled. Then the grenade came back, as someone kicked it.
The metal sphere struck the doorframe above the dead Eternal Guard. Liorael's smile vanished, he tried jumping for it, hands reaching, but it was too high. The grenade bounced off the frame, passed over his fingers and hit the floorboards behind him within the room.
Anna screamed, "Back! Get back!"
She dragged Juniel and Lailael deeper into the room, throwing herself over them as best she could. Azarael and Liorael both were about to leap away.
When Cecilie saw the grenade, the children. And just before the four seconds were up, and the grenade exploded, she without hesitation threw herself onto it.
The explosion swallowed the room.
And in that same minute, the whole palace answered.
Wilhelm's first shot had done what no proclamation, no whispered order, and no white armband could have done. It confirmed the alarm.
Until then, there had still been uncertainty. Servants had been sent to ask questions. Officers had looked at one another in confusion. Royal Guards had stood at their posts, wondering whether the strange tension in the air was only another quarrel among princes. Even some men of the Eternal Guard had waited, rifles ready, because Oskar's household had taught them discipline as much as violence.
But once the shot rang out on the third floor, uncertainty died.
Across the palace, men who had stood only a few dozen meters apart for months—sometimes years—suddenly turned their rifles on one another.
In the lower halls, an Eternal Guard patrol heard the first shot, saw Royal Guards reaching for their weapons, and fired before the other men had even finished asking what was happening. Two Royal Guards died beneath a painted ceiling where, the evening before, footmen had carried trays of wine.
In the servants' corridors, Royal Guards hesitated too long. Eternal Guards did not. Carbines cracked in the narrow passageways. Maids screamed and threw themselves against walls as bullets passed over their heads. A cook carrying morning bread dropped the basket and fell flat among scattered rolls while men in armor killed one another beside the kitchen doors.
In the second-floor hall, a Royal Guard captain tried to shout for calm.
An Eternal Guard put two bullets through his chest before the word "calm" had left his mouth.
On the fourth floor, near the servants' rooms, the war came in flashes of muzzle fire and black shadows moving through smoke. Men who had shared hallway's and guard patrol routes now shot at one another across linen closets, nursery cupboards, and polished banisters. Some Royal Guards still did not understand that a coup had begun. Some shouted that there had been a mistake. Some tried to lower their rifles and speak.
The Eternal Guards gave them no time. To them, the matter was already settled.
The Iron Prince's family was under attack. Therefore, anyone armed and not wearing black was an enemy.
The palace ceased to be a palace, it became a battlefield.
In the kitchens, pots overturned and fires were kicked apart. In the dining hall, bullets shattered crystal and punched through portraits of dead kings. In the marble corridors, spent casings bounced and spun across floors polished for emperors. Servants, maids, footmen, cooks, laundresses, gardeners, and clerks ran wherever there was space to run, only to find that every hallway had become dangerous and every doorway might open onto death.
Outside, the madness spread just as quickly.
The First Company barracks, a neat three-story building set within the palace grounds, came alive with rifle fire. The twenty-five Eternal Guards resting there had already been dressing, arming, and waiting for the worst. When the first shot echoed from the palace, they no longer waited.
Windows opened.
Black carbines thrust out.
Fire cracked across the gardens.
Royal Guards moving through the courtyard stumbled and fell. Men at the gates shouted in alarm. Others dove behind wagons, stone planters, and the bodies of horses as bullets began striking from the barracks, the hedges, the garden paths, and the palace windows.
On the outer walls, Royal Guards returned fire downward into the grounds. Their rifles flashed from behind old stone battlements that resembled something built for an age of swords and muskets, now turned into firing positions for a civil war no one had dared to name.
Below them, Eternal Guard patrols fought from behind statues, trees, fountains, and clipped hedges. One black-armored soldier dragged a wounded comrade behind a marble lion while another fired upward at the walls. Across the lawn, a Royal Guard machine-gun team tried to set up near a gatehouse, only to be struck by fire from the barracks before the weapon could fully deploy.
Then Karl's manor joined the battle.
At the edge of the palace grounds, Karl's servant had barely reached the gate to ask what was happening when the first shot rang out from inside the palace. The man saw Royal Guards stiffen, saw hands tighten around weapons, and did the wisest thing he had ever done in his life.
He threw himself flat and began crawling away. A heartbeat later, the walls and windows of Karl's manor opened fire.
Second Company had been waiting in silence behind curtains, hedges, garden walls, upper windows, and concealed firing slits prepared long ago under the excuse of renovation. Their first volley struck the Royal Guards posted near the front entrance and sent them sprawling beneath the morning light.
The response was immediate.
One of the tanks before the palace gates turned its gun toward the manor.
A flash followed, then a roar.
The shell struck the outer wall and blew stone, glass, and timber inward through a sitting room where, only minutes earlier, servants had been told to stay low and silent. The other tank fired a moment later, punching a black wound into the side of the house. Dust burst from the windows. Roof tiles slid loose. Somewhere inside, someone screamed.
Karl's manor fired back harder.
Rifles cracked from the upper floors. Grenades arced over the garden wall. A machine gun began hammering from a reinforced window near the corner of the house, sweeping the palace gate and forcing Royal Guards to dive for cover.
The quiet negotiations Karl had hoped for vanished in seconds. There was no longer anything to ask, no longer anything to clarify.
The answer had come in gunfire.
Before the palace, Moltke found himself standing in the middle of the storm he had helped summon. He had imagined orders, proclamations, obedience, perhaps even a swift seizure before the city understood what had happened. Instead, bullets snapped above his head and struck sparks from the stones around him while Royal Guards dragged wounded men toward the trucks.
Prittwitz, harder and faster to recover, roared for his Seventh Army men to form lines, secure the gates, and suppress the manor. Officers repeated his commands. Men in white armbands rushed for cover. Trucks lurched forward. Machine guns were dragged down from vehicles. The tanks shifted their guns again, one toward the manor, another toward the barracks inside the palace grounds.
The coup had wanted silence, it received war.
All around the Royal Palace of Potsdam, the morning shattered. Smoke rose from Karl's manor. Smoke drifted from the palace windows. Glass fell in glittering sheets. Bells began ringing somewhere within the building, whether by order, panic, or accident no one knew. The palace gardens filled with shouting men, wounded bodies, and the sharp repeated crack of modern rifles.
Then, beyond the walls, another sound joined the battle. Sirens were heard. Police sirens, first distant, then growing louder.
From Potsdam streets, from nearby stations, from loyal barracks and confused offices, men began to move toward the sound of shooting. Telephone lines burned with reports no one fully believed. A palace coup had become a battle. A family seizure had become open rebellion. The old Empire had torn open its own heart in the first light of dawn.
And still, on the third floor, behind smoke, shattered wood, and the broken doorway of a child's room, the fate of Oskar's family hung by seconds.
Germany woke on the 23rd of September not to speeches, not to church bells, and not to victory. It woke to gunfire.
The silent coup was dead, the battle for the palace had begun.