The snows of January 1860 lay heavy on Montenegro, blanketing the valleys in white and stilling the mountain passes.
Yet beneath the frozen surface, the land stirred with a vigor unlike any winter before.
Where once villages had resigned themselves to cold, hunger, and isolation, now the baronies thrived.
Stone-paved roads, laid down in the past two years, held firm against sleet and thaw.
Oil lamps burned through the night, scattering darkness from streets that had known only moonlight.
Markets bustled even in the dead of winter, with stores of grain and vegetables piled high, and casks of wine rolling in from vineyards that had never before yielded so freely.
The poorest regions of the principality, once whispered of as backward and destitute, now drew visitors from afar.
Merchants who had ignored the northern valleys now sought them out, curious to see the miracle of prosperity in the highlands.
Inns filled with traders, their mules burdened not with charity but with goods to barter for the bounty of Elias's transformed lands.
It was a victory Elias cherished more than any battlefield triumph.
Armies could be broken and rebuilt, treaties signed and shattered.
But prosperity—prosperity rooted in abundance, in the tangible weight of bread and timber and cloth—was harder to undo.
It seeped into the bones of a people, made them unwilling to surrender what they had gained.
It bound them to the lords who had delivered it, not by oath or fear, but by necessity.
Every month, the villages celebrated fresh harvests.
Every month, their surplus strengthened Elias's barons, while those in Centje tried to learn the secret to why the regions had become so prosperous, only to sneer that the new barons had taken over only to lower taxes, and invest their own coin into the lands polar to typical feudal lords.
And every month, a hundred or more newly summoned men left Montenegro quietly, their destination far across the ocean.
The stream was steady, almost unnoticed by the outside world.
A hundred men gone from a village could be explained—recruits, wanderers, migrants seeking fortune.
But Elias counted them carefully.
By the dawn of 1860, more than 7,500 stood ready in the American South, armed, drilled, and hidden beneath the surface of a nation on the brink of tearing itself apart.
The South whispered of secession.
The North bristled with indignation.
To most, war was a distant possibility.
To Elias, it was inevitable.
And when it came, his shadow army would not only rise—they would tilt the balance.
Yet even as his gaze stretched across the Atlantic, his dominion in the Balkans expanded.
The System had granted him two gifts in recent months.
The first was another MCV—Mobile Construction Vehicle.
With it, Elias carved a third fortress-base into his assigned territory, this time leaving the safety of the mountains to place it along the coast located at the village of Bar that had since then become a fully fledged and defended town, with a simple seaport, and naval yard.
It was more than a military stronghold; it was a factory of industry, a forge where men and ideas were shaped into power.
From its walls stretched new roads, new markets, new fields, each stitched carefully into the fabric of Montenegrin society so that no man could say where Montenegro ended and Elias's realm began.
The second gift was stranger: the Ion Cannon Control Center.
The image of it in his mind rose like an enigma above the fortresses around him, a tower of steel and glass utterly alien to the rustic world around him.
A weapon beyond comprehension, capable of rewriting the rules of war.
Yet for now, it lay dormant, a weapon unneeded in this day and age, to remain in his mental storage until the time was right to place it into the world.
The cannon was a blade for a war yet to come.
For now, it was enough to know that when the day arrived, he would wield a power unseen in any corner of the world.
Beyond that the draw was more generous than initially, where he used to only get riflemen or cavalry in the draws, or perhaps barracks, and mining crews.
But now maybe because the naval base existed he had begun to draw ships on top of the infantry and buildings.
Not anything grand, it's not like he could rise up against the naval powers like Britain or even france for that matter, but having access to his own ocean capable ironclad, and steamers meant when the war came, his force could serve as blockade runners against the union to bring in ample support to the south, allowing them breathing room to last just a little bit longer.
The winter brought more than abundance.
It brought reflection.
Elias walked the streets of his baronies, clad in the simple cloak of a nobleman.
Children ran past him, laughing in the glow of oil lamps.
Merchants shouted in the markets, weighing grain on balanced scales.
Farmers smiled at the sight of new iron plows, their burdens halved.
It was a transformation so swift it might have seemed sorcery.
But Elias knew it was not.
It was the steady application of knowledge, discipline, and will.
Tools replaced toil.
Medicine replaced prayer.
Order replaced chance.
He visited the clinics where his medics worked.
Once, Montenegrins had treated fever with herbs, infection with superstition.
Now, under his physicians, lives were saved with methods that seemed miraculous.
Parents wept in gratitude, blessing the barons who had brought such wonders.
Elias watched in silence, letting the illusion grow.
Every child saved was another thread binding the people to him.
Every plow that carved a deeper furrow was another step in their loyalty.
Montenegro did not yet realize it, but it was being remade in his image.
Still, Elias never forgot the wider game.
Reports flowed to him daily from across the Ottoman frontier.
The empire was limping.
Humiliation from Kolasin and the "rebellions" that had flared across its borderlands still festered.
Garrisons stretched thin, villages simmered with unrest.
Constantinople seethed, demanding control it could not enforce.
It was exactly as Elias had intended.
The Sultan's empire was not dead, but it bled from a dozen small wounds, each deepening with every passing month.
And in its weakness, Montenegro's independence was secure.
Russia smiled on the outcome, Austria tolerated it, France applauded it, Britain observed it.
No power wished to tear apart the fragile balance.
Elias had built a fortress not only of stone but of circumstance.
The Ottomans could not march north without provoking war; Europe would not let Montenegro fall without consequence.
It was, in every sense, the perfect shield.
On a quiet January night, Elias stood atop the walls of his third fortress.
The stars burned sharp above the snow.
Far below, the valleys gleamed with lantern light where villages thrived even in winter's grip.
He thought of the men crossing the Atlantic, hidden in the flow of migration, vanishing into the plantations and towns of the South.
He thought of the Ion Cannon's silent hum, waiting for its day.
He thought of the Ottoman frontier, restless and bleeding, yet powerless to strike.
It was not triumph he felt, but patience.
The foundation was laid.
The work of years was bearing fruit.
Montenegro would rise, America would fracture, and when the smoke cleared, his hand would be woven into the destiny of nations.
He rested one gloved hand on the cold stone.
"The world thinks winter brings stillness,"
he murmured.
"But winter is when roots grow deepest."
And with that, Elias turned back into the fortress, where the plans of spring already waited.