Montenegro, Spring 1871
The bells of Podgorica rang before dawn, their brass tongues echoing off the mountains like a call to arms.
By midmorning, the courtyards of the princely palace were filled with nobles, officers, and priests.
The air thrummed with expectancy, as though the land itself had been holding its breath for this day.
Elias sat silently along the periphery of the chamber, hiding amonst the crowd, listening as Prince Nikola read aloud the Russian envoy's words.
The Tsar had declared war on the Ottoman Empire.
The Romanians had risen, the Bulgarians were in open revolt, and Serbia was sharpening its sword for battle.
The Balkans, long bound beneath the Turkish yoke, were now a furnace of rebellion.
And Montenegro would march!
The prince's declaration was met with cheers, but Elias did not join them.
His expression remained steady, his hands folded upon his lap.
For him, this was not a moment of revelation but of confirmation, his involvement in the timeline had caused some things to change.
He had prepared for this particular day for more than a decade, but even still he'd thought he'd have more time.
Patience, he had learned, was as valuable as steel.
When he had withdrawn the Greybacks from America in 1863, Elias had resolved never again to squander their blood for the ambitions of others.
The Confederacy had burned away like so much dry straw, leaving behind nothing but graves.
From that lesson came his new doctrine: build, prepare, wait.
And he had done so.
In the years since, his domains in Montenegro had flourished.
The baronies he carved from conquered territory were turned into fertile plains, and hives of activity.
Barracks rose beside granaries, factories alongside schools.
The Greybacks were no longer just soldiers—they were settlers, magistrates, landholders.
As citizens they even took in orphans as their own children to be raised as loyal subject of the future empire.
Five fortified bases now anchored his power across the principality, each bristling with breachload artillery and stocked with supplies to last forever if the bases themselves were not destroyed.
Roads and railways linked them, ensuring troops could march at short notice.
His navy, once scattered raiders, had been reborn in the secluded harbors of the Adriatic.
Bar Harbor—expanded, dredged, and fortified with batteries—was now a steel cradle.
Within it, frigates and raiding sloops lay waiting, their black hulls eager to prowl once more, at least until they were replaced with true beasts of steel when Elias ranked up his system once more.
Most importantly, his army had grown.
No longer a loose band of marauders, serving as mercenaries in another nations war, but a proper host:
50,000 men under arms, drilled and organized into divisions, most in hiding at the moment as general civilians.
Artillery trains, created by the system, gunners who knew their operations inside and out as if they were holy scriptures.
Cavalry regiments, skirmishers tending to massive warhorses capable of easily taking the title of being this new ages knights.
Supply and engineering corps, ensuring his army could march not as wolves but as a disciplined machine.
While his logistical corp had grown to capacity, as all available slaves within montenegro had been freed, purchased up by Elias's merchants, while his spies sent liberated persons from all across europe.
Elias had not merely raised an army.
He had raised the skeleton of a state.
Now, at last, war called.
Though the balkan uprising as Elias chose to call it was happening to soon.
This war should not have happened until the late 70's not at the start of it, the only reason for the change he could fathom was... his own involvement.
Montenegro had grown powerful, expanding greatly from the previous war, and flourishing even more so after winning.
The residents of the balkans had come to learn of this, and thinking what everyone else would thing: If they can do it, why cant we?
And so revolts started, first in Herzegovinia, then Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, even Greece.
The whole of the balkans erupted in fires of fury one after the other, and the patriarch of slavs, and the one most interested in control of the region the Russian Empire was quick to endorse their uprising.
As the council broke and officers dispersed to carry out the prince's commands, Elias remained seated, his mind elsewhere.
His system link whispered quiet notifications—reports from each base as messengers and signal flags confirmed readiness.
Forces being called in from their homes and farms.
Horses mustered from stables and rances.
Fleet crews recalled from their port holdings to re-embark their ships once more.
He spoke softly, almost to himself:
"It begins, the empires rise at last."
~
Elias remained until the room emptied itself completely then like a ghost he made to leave.
He'd been here before twenty years ago, however even if anyone recognized him, they would claim he was his own son.
Afterall how else could one explain having the same face and looking like they hadnt aged a day?
But with his knowledge of the future slowly coming to an end Elias's face was contorted with his brows furrowed, as he stormed out of the hall deep in thought.
~
That night, in his private chambers, Elias summoned his generals—men who had once been Greybacks, now barons and commanders of his new army.
Rex was there, older but still bearing the same hard eyes that had unsettled Davis so many years before.
His hair was graying at the temples, but his posture was ramrod straight, his uniform immaculate.
One by one, the officers reported.
"Fort Kotor reports twenty thousand men ready to march within three days."
"Bar Harbor confirms the fleet can sail with the tide. Six frigates, ten sloops, and transports enough for two divisions."
"The artillery parks are fully supplied—three hundred guns in all."
"Cavalry is massing in the Zeta plain. Scouts already probing Ottoman lines."
Elias nodded with each report, his face unreadable.
Finally he stood, his shadow long against the candlelight.
"For years we have waited,"
he began, his voice carrying the weight of command, but resonating through the systemlink to every single one of his summons.
"We have built not for glory, nor for plunder, but for permanence. We are no longer vagabonds, no longer hired blades. We are the spine of a nation yet unborn. The Turks do not yet know it, but their fall will be our rise. When this war is done, they will not merely retreat. They will not merely yield provinces. They will be gone—from these mountains, from these valleys, from the lives of our children. Gone."
The chamber stirred with murmurs of approval.
Rex's voice cut through.
"And if Russia betrays us? If the Tsar seeks only his own dominion, and not our freedom?"
Elias smiled thinly.
"Then we shall do as we have always done. We shall bleed them if they cross us. But for now… let them think we march for them. Let them pay the price to open the gates. Once the Ottomans are broken, the land will be ours to hold."
The officers bowed their heads in agreement.