The bang exploded under the bridge, loud enough to punch against their eardrums and bounce back off the stone arch.
For a heartbeat, the muzzle flash drew a jagged pattern on the ceiling.
But Oskar was no longer where his chest had been a moment before.
He dropped low like a cat.
His muscles coiled and twisted, years of training and two lifetimes of danger informing his movement more than conscious thought. The bullet carved through the air he'd just abandoned, its hot wake brushing his cheek.
It screamed past Karl's head so close it stirred his hair.
Karl shrieked, flung himself to the ground, and curled up with his hands over his skull.
"Scheiße—!"
The "old man" in the wheelchair froze.
He had expected a large, slow target.
Not this giant who moved like he'd been born in a dojo.
His eyes went wide.
"Cholera…!" he hissed, Polish slipping out, teeth bared. "Po prostu zdechnij, świnio— just die, pig!"
He didn't get to finish.
Oskar, still in his low crouch, snapped his right leg out in a tight, brutal arc — not toward the man's torso, but at his gun hand.
Leather met bone.
There was a sharp, clean crack. Pain exploded up the assassin's arm. The revolver — a heavy, foreign large-calibre piece — flew out of his shattered grip, spinning wildly. It smashed into the stone arch above them with a metallic clang, then bounced down to land in the dirt almost at Karl's nose.
The assassin screamed, clutching his ruined hand.
"Strzelaj! Zabij go!" he howled at his partner. "Shoot him! Kill him!"
The pusher's head jerked up.
The forgettable, servant-like expression vanished. His face hardened into something cold and focused.
He threw his coat open.
Underneath, Oskar saw the dull outline of an old Dreyse needle rifle — the kind of weapon that belonged in an armoury or on a wall, not under a coat. Old, yes. Clumsy, yes. But at this range, more than deadly.
Oskar's instincts, which had been humming for minutes, now shrieked.
He moved again.
He planted both hands in the dirt, shoulders whipping forward, and drove his legs up and out.
It wasn't a pretty acrobat's kip-up.
It was like watching a cannon go off horizontally.
His boots slammed into the front of the wheelchair with jaw-dropping force.
Old wooden joints exploded.
One wheel sheared away with a splintering crack, spinning off into the shadows.
The seat of the chair shattered, folding in on itself.
The assassin in the chair didn't just fall — he was launched.
Oskar's double kick hammered straight into his chest. Ribs snapped under the impact. The man flew backward like a sack of grain thrown from a cart, crashing into the second assassin just as he tried to wrench the Dreyse free.
They collided in a tangle of limbs, wood, and steel.
The rifle was crushed between them, knocked from his hands.
Both men hit the ground hard, skidding across the path in a mound of broken chair, flailing coats, and splintered parts.
A loose wheel bounced and rattled away into the bushes.
Then came a moment of stillness.
Oskar rolled and surged to his feet, breath ragged, heart pounding. His mind caught up with what his body had just done.
He stared at the wrecked wheelchair and the moaning heap of men pinned under it.
"…What the hell," he whispered.
Even for him, that felt like something out of a ridiculous martial arts film.
He turned to tell Karl to stay back—
But Karl was no longer curled up on the dirt.
Karl had crawled forward on instinct, adrenaline burning away his usual exhaustion. His glasses were crooked, his hair a mess, his coat flapping.
The revolver lay half-buried in the dirt before him.
He grabbed it with both hands.
The two assassins were struggling to untangle themselves, gasping and swearing — Polish curses mixed with German.
"Kur… plecy… moje plecy…!"
"Dawaj, wstawaj! Zanim przyjdą inni—"
They looked up just in time to see a small, furious man running toward them with a gun.
"Du verdammte Verräter!" Karl shouted, voice cracking with rage. "You damned traitors!"
"Karl—!" Oskar barked.
Too late.
Karl raised the revolver, elbows locked, both hands on the grip.
At this range, even a poor shot couldn't miss.
Two sharp cracks split the night.
Bang. Bang.
The first bullet punched into the nearer assassin's forehead. His skull jerked back; a dark spray hit the stone and the broken wood behind him. His eyes emptied. His body went limp.
The second shot caught the other just above the nose, snapping his head back into the shattered remains of the chair. He spasmed once and slumped, sliding down in an ungainly heap, blood beginning to pool beneath his hair.
Silence slammed back into the space under the bridge.
Somewhere far away, a dog barked.
A tram rattled faintly on distant tracks.
Under the arch, only Karl's heavy breathing broke the quiet.
He stood there for a few seconds, chest heaving, revolver still aimed at the bodies. His hands were shaking — whether from recoil or fury, even he didn't know.
Slowly, he lowered the gun.
Then he turned and looked at Oskar.
Only then did he seem to fully realise what he'd just done.
Oskar stared at him, stunned.
"Karl… you—"
"Don't," Karl rasped, cutting him off. "Don't say anything soft, Your Highness."
He swallowed, throat tight.
"They tried to murder a prince of the Empire," he said. "They got off easy. A rope in public and days of humiliation would've been worse. This—" he flicked the revolver in his hand, "—this is merciful."
He glanced at the bodies, then back at Oskar.
"And if you're about to say they might have had families, or were misled, or were 'products of their time'—save it. They knew exactly what they were doing."
For a moment, Oskar saw another side of him.
Not the exasperated bookkeeper.
Not the overworked manager.
But a man who understood, viscerally, that power and survival sometimes came down to who pulled the trigger first.
Something from the modern world flickered between them — a shared understanding born in different ways.
Oskar let out a slow breath.
"…Right," he said quietly.
Then, more firmly:
"Thank you."
Karl nodded once.
Before either of them could say anything else, something cylindrical and short arced down from the darkness behind them — from the direction they had originally come.
The little cylinder landed beside Oskar's boot with a soft, deceptively harmless thup.
A fuse hissed, bright and hungry.
Karl's eyes went wide.
"Is that—Dynamite?!"
Oskar didn't think.
He reacted.
His past life in Ukraine — nights dodging grenades, drones, shells — slammed through his nerves like lightning. His body moved before his mind could keep up.
He snapped his leg out with a sharp kick.
The dynamite stick flew like a stone skipping across water, bouncing off the dirt and vanishing into the darkness near the outer edge of the bridge.
A heartbeat later—
Two more sticks clattered down around them.
Shadows flickered at the park's edge — hands striking matches, lighting fuses, tossing small red-wrapped packages into the gloom like evil children throwing toys.
"KURWA! SZYBKO, RZUCAJ!"
"Hurry! Throw them!"
Karl screamed, "Run! RUN!"
Oskar grabbed Karl by the coat, yanked him upright, and sprinted.
Karl's short legs pumped furiously, surprisingly fast when terror fueled them.
He made it maybe five, six metres—
When Oskar felt it.
A flash of danger behind him, the kind he hadn't felt since Ukraine.
He whirled, arms spreading wide on instinct — shielding Karl.
And then the world went white.
BOOM.
The first explosion punched into his back like a sledgehammer.
He staggered, breath ripped from his lungs.
BOOM.
A second blast tore through the dirt path, flinging rocks like angry hornets. Shards of stone slashed into his coat, shredding it, tearing at the skin beneath. His back burned as if a hundred blades had scraped him raw.
BOOM.
The third hit even closer, the concussion lifting him off his feet for an instant before dropping him hard to one knee.
Bits of shredded bridge mortar and earth rained down across the path.
Then—
A terrible quiet.
Dust drifted like pale smoke around him.
The night hummed with aftershock.
"Oskar!? Oskar, Your Highness—are you alive!?" Karl's voice cracked with fear.
Oskar exhaled, a pained but stubborn breath.
His coat sloughed off his shoulders in tattered strips.
He forced a grin.
"Just a… flesh wound."
His entire back felt like it had been sandblasted. His legs throbbed where stone had torn through his trousers. But he was alive.
Alive because he had taken the hits himself.
Alive because instincts sharpened by another world had saved them both.
He pushed himself upright—
CRACK!
A rifle shot tore through the air from down the path.
Karl screamed.
Oskar spun.
Karl was on the ground, gun still in his hand, the other pressed to his thigh where blood now soaked through torn cloth.
"Karl!" Oskar's voice thundered with raw panic.
Karl gasped, "Left leg—hit—!"
Thirty metres away, in the clearing of the path, a lone figure stood holding a rifle — silhouetted in the dust cloud like a ghost. Around him, other shapes shifted in the darkness.
It was an ambush.
And Karl had just been shot.
Something inside Oskar snapped clean in half.
He reached down, scooped up the broken wheel of the destroyed wheelchair — the heavier of the two shards.
He rose to full height.
The sniper chambered another round.
Oskar's arm whipped back.
He threw.
Not like a man.
Like a siege weapon.
The wheel sliced through the air with a vicious whir, almost humming from sheer velocity.
It hit the sniper's skull with a wet, concussive crunch.
The man didn't even scream.
His head burst apart like a ripe melon.
Brain, bone, and blood sprayed into the night as the body collapsed in a heap.
Oskar turned toward Karl—
But two shapes burst from the settling dust behind him, sprinting toward him from under the bridge.
Knives glinted in each hand.
"À mort l'oppresseur ! Vive la France !"
"Long live France! Long live Alsace–Lorraine!"
They were ragged-looking, desperate—yet fanatically determined.
They didn't charge like trained killers.
They charged like men who had decided they were already dead.
Oskar stepped toward them, towering over both.
His rage met their madness.
The first lunged.
Oskar ducked and swept his leg low and wide.
Both assassins' legs were ripped out from under them.
Knives flew from their hands.
They hit the ground hard, screaming.
The smaller one scrambled to rise.
Oskar grabbed him by the ankles.
The man kicked wildly, clawing dirt, shrieking French curses.
Oskar lifted him.
Effortlessly.
Dangling upside down like a flailing rag doll.
The taller assassin rolled away, trying to escape, eyes wide with sudden terror—
Too late.
Oskar swung the smaller man down.
Bodies collided.
Bone hit bone.
Skulls cracked.
The knife-wielders screamed together.
Oskar didn't stop.
He lifted the smaller one again.
And again drove him down — smashing him bodily into the other assassin with the sickening finality of flesh and bone meeting unyielding ground.
SLAM.
SLAM.
SLAM.
Their screams died.
Their bodies twitched once.
Then didn't move at all.
Dust settled around Oskar's boots.
His breath steamed in the cold air. His eyes were dark, wild, almost feral.
He turned back toward Karl—
And saw that the world under the bridge had changed again.
Further up the path, beyond the haze of dust, more figures were stepping out from behind trees and shrubs. Six of them. Some held rifles of various makes, some pistols. At a glance they could have been ordinary men in ordinary coats, but their silhouettes were thin, hard-edged, worn by hardship.
Off to the left, a woman in a long coat broke from the shadows and stumbled toward the fallen sniper whose head Oskar had turned into pulp. She dropped to her knees beside the corpse, crying out in a language Oskar recognised only by its shape — Hebrew.
"אוי אלוהים… אחי… אוי אלוהים…"
"Oh God… my brother… oh God…"
She lifted her tear-bright eyes toward him.
"You!" she screamed in German, voice cracking with hatred. "You demon! You'll die for this!"
The men behind the trees looked at one another, shocked by her raw grief. Then, as if that grief were a signal, they raised their weapons as one.
Six muzzles flashed.
Smoke and gunpowder exploded in the confined air — a rough, uneven volley. One sounded like an ancient musket coughing its last. Two were clearly modern rifles. The rest were pistols of varying quality.
Bullets hissed through the air around him, angry wasps in the dark.
Oskar moved.
He shifted sideways, trying to put more of his bulk between the shooters and Karl. Even so, one round found flesh — tearing through his right side just below the ribs.
It felt, for a second, like someone had pinched him very hard.
His hand went instinctively to the spot. It came away wet and warm.
Karl, on one knee, lifted the revolver and fired back once.
"Verdammte Hunde!" he shouted. "Damn you!"
Bang.
Oskar didn't see where the shot went.
The weeping woman with the pistol didn't care.
She surged to her feet and ran, cap pulled low, long coat flapping, small handgun clutched in both hands. She moved not like a trained shooter, but like someone who believed only distance and hatred could correct her aim.
"Shit—" Oskar hissed.
He had no desire to find out if her pistol was reliable at close range.
He grabbed Karl up by the collar again and ran, lungs burning, heading up the sloping bank toward the higher path that crossed over the bridge.
Behind them, shots cracked and whined. The assassins' weapons — old, badly maintained, or simply inaccurate — struggled to find range and rhythm. Each reload was clumsy. Each volley ragged.
Bullets still whistled past.
Oskar reached the top path, spared a glance toward the direction from which the dynamite had come — and saw three new shadows breaking into a run toward him: one with a long-bladed sword or machete, two with pistols already raised.
Too open.
Too exposed.
He veered hard right, dragging Karl with him back into the cover of trees and brush.
Another shot slammed into him, grazing the left side of his neck. White-hot pain flared; his ears rang as though someone had struck a bell inside his skull. Blood ran warm down into his collar.
He didn't stop.
They ducked behind a thick tree trunk, half crouched in the undergrowth.
Oskar set Karl down.
Karl clamped one hand over his bleeding thigh, the other gripping the revolver with four shots left. He tried to say something, but Oskar's hearing was still half-muted by the ringing. The words were just shapes in the air.
It didn't matter.
Something else spoke louder.
That inner warning — that strange sense of incoming danger — flared like a bonfire.
Left.
He didn't see it, didn't hear it. He felt it.
He moved.
His body twisted, turning to face the left side of the tree, rising to his full height just as a figure lunged out from behind the trunk.
It was the woman.
Her cap shadowed her face, but her eyes glared at him with blue, hate-lit fury. She raised her small, single-shot pistol — the kind cheap revolutionaries could afford — and fired point-blank.
Oskar's right hand was already moving to grab the barrel.
The shot punched straight through his palm.
Bone splintered. Flesh tore. The bullet burst out the other side in a spray of blood and fragments.
His ears rang anew. Pain flashed up his arm like lightning.
But his hand still closed.
His fingers found her throat.
He squeezed.
She was light, thin. Rage kept her kicking for a second or two, boots drumming against his shins, fingers raking at his sleeve.
Her face flushed red, then purple. Her eyes bulged. There was a small, awful pop beneath his grip, and her body went suddenly limp.
He lowered her slightly but did not let go.
Because the man with the sword was already there.
He came in a frenzy, swinging the machete in wide, chopping arcs, screaming something half-French, half-savage.
"Pour l'Alsace ! Pour la Lorraine !"
The first strike took the woman's limp arm clean off at the elbow, spraying blood across Oskar's coat. The second sheared through her leg. The third thrust drove straight into her torso — blade punching through flesh and cloth, tip scratching the fabric over Oskar's ribs beneath.
She shielded him even in death.
The assassin yanked his blade free, pulling her corpse half loose from Oskar's hand, preparing another swing.
Bang.
The man jerked as if yanked by an invisible rope.
A hole bloomed in the side of his head. For a second his body remained standing, sword arm frozen midway through its arc. Then his legs gave out and he crashed down beside the woman's ruined body.
Behind Oskar, Karl lowered the revolver, barrel still smoking.
He had fired from his knees, thigh bleeding, teeth clenched.
Oskar glanced back at him, eyes wide.
Karl's face was pale, but his jaw was set.
In the trees ahead and to the flanks, Oskar saw movement — shapes shifting farther back, not advancing this time.
Halting.
Scared of the noise, of the sudden brutality, of the giant who took bullets and didn't fall.
They were thinking. Repositioning. Preparing to flank.
Oskar let the woman's body drop to the ground with a dull thud.
He didn't look at his wounds. He barely felt them through the adrenaline.
He looked at Karl instead.
"Stay here," he said, voice low and steady. "At the tree. Shoot only if you have to."
Karl swallowed and nodded once.
Oskar stepped away from the cover, into the dark between the trees, his senses straining, his blood running hot.
The ambush wasn't over.
But neither was he.