Rain fell in a steady curtain.
Not a storm—nothing violent—just the slow, patient rain of the tropics. Warm. Persistent. It drumd softly against steel plating and canvas awnings, beaded along railings, and slid in thin streams toward the scuppers. Tugboats cut through the gray water ahead of the convoy, black hulls hissing as they turned to guide the ships toward harbor.
Oskar stood at the rail.
For a long mont, he did nothing.
He simply breathed.
Not the shallow, habitual breath of planning and command—but a full one. A deep one. The kind that reached the chest and settled there.
The air was different here. Thick with moisture and green life, heavy with the scent of wet earth and salt and sothing older still, sothing that did not belong to maps or schedules. Rain slid down his skin, soaked into his hair and uniform, and he let it, eyes fixed on the dark, uneven line of land rising from the sea.
Behind him, there was noise.
Workers and their families clustered along the deck—voices bright with excitent and nerves, laughter cutting through the rain. Children pointed and shouted. n leaned over the rail, arguing softly about rivers and trees and what waited beyond the shore. A little farther back, the Eternal Guard of the Third Company stood in their lighter jungle gear—helts dulled, equipnt stripped to necessity, bodies steady even as the ship rolled beneath them.
And there were the caran.
Karl's idea, of course.
They moved carefully across the slick deck with their equipnt, adjusting tripods, wiping rain from lenses, capturing the arrival the way such journeys were always captured now—royalty abroad, industry advancing, civilization approaching the unknown.
But beneath all of it—beneath voices, engines, and the slow groan of tal—there was sothing else.
Quiet.
The jungle waited.
Oskar could feel it if he focused. Birds lifting from the canopy sowhere inland. Rain striking leaves so broad they turned water into sound. A world breathing at its own pace, indifferent to ships and flags and plans.
It was beautiful.
So peaceful.
And suddenly, with a clarity that cut through everything else, Oskar understood that this—this—was also why he had co to this world at all.
Not to conquer it.
Not to smother it beneath rails and ledgers and ambition.
But to change its path just enough that places like this might still exist, far into the future—not as ruins or footnotes, but as living things.
History would not change itself.
Soone had to move first.
He glanced down.
Waves rolled against the hull, dark and alive. For a heartbeat, sothing broke the surface—a small fin slicing cleanly through the water before vanishing again.
His first step.
Oskar straightened.
Without hesitation, he began to undress.
Boots off.
Belt loosened.
Jungle jacket shrugged away, rain streaming from the fabric as it fell to the deck.
The noise behind him faltered.
Karl turned mid-sentence—and froze.
"What are you doing?" he demanded, disbelief sharpening his voice.
People stared.
Workers paused. Guards stiffened. Even the caran hesitated—then instinct took over, and lenses were raised.
The Crown Prince of the German Empire stood tall in the rain, massive fra revealed as he stripped down to simple white underclothes. Water traced the lines of his shoulders and back as he moved, muscles shifting with calm, effortless strength—no display, no flexing. Just the raw fact of a body built for endurance and motion.
Karl took a step forward. "Oskar—"
Oskar turned and smiled.
Not recklessly.
Not wildly.
But with that familiar, unsettling calm.
"My little man," he said lightly, rain running down his face, "we're wasting ti standing here."
He nodded toward the shore.
"You lead the n. Prepare everything as planned. I'll go ahead."
Karl stared at him, stunned. "You can't possibly be serious. You're not thinking of—"
But Oskar was already moving.
He stepped onto the rail and balanced there for a single, perfect mont—rain clinging to him, the jungle watching.
The caran reacted on instinct.
Film began to turn.
"Oskar!" Karl shouted, grabbing the railing. "Have you lost your mind?! There are sharks in those waters!"
Oskar didn't answer.
He simply bent—
—and dove.
A clean, effortless arc.
Headfirst.
No hesitation.
No splashy panic.
Just a precise entry into the sea below, water breaking around him and closing again as if he had never been there at all.
The deck erupted.
People rushed to the rail. Guards surged forward. Caran leaned out dangerously, trying to catch a glimpse of him beneath the surface.
Karl's voice carried over the rain, raw with disbelief.
"What—are you insane?!"
Below the water, the ripples spread—and then vanished into the dark.
For a mont, from the deck above, it looked as if Oskar had simply disappeared.
He didn't surface.
He went lower.
The dive had taken him a few ters down, deep enough that the world turned into muted green and blue and heavy silence, the rain above becoming a soft, distant drumming. The ship's shadow lood like a moving cliff. Bubbles rose past his face and broke into nothing.
Then the sea moved.
Shapes.
Small reef sharks, quick and curious, circling in the near distance—more silhouettes than bodies at first, triangles of motion in a world where everything that lived was either hungry or cautious.
One of them separated from the others.
Not the biggest. Not the oldest. Just the boldest.
About a ter and a half—maybe eighteen kilos—fast enough to be dangerous, small enough to think bravery was the sa thing as intelligence.
It angled toward the fresh disturbance like instinct itself had been given teeth.
Oskar saw it coming.
And instead of fear, sothing odd rose in him—sothing old and reckless and very human.
So this is it, he thought. The real world.
The reef shark accelerated, mouth parting slightly as it committed to the idea that whatever had splashed into its water must be prey.
Oskar waited until the last mont.
Then he drove his fist forward—not a flailing panic-strike, but a clean hamr of motion, even with the water resisting him.
His knuckles hit the shark's snout.
The animal jolted sideways, shock rippling through its body, its whole rhythm breaking as if the sea itself had slapped it.
Oskar didn't hesitate.
He surged forward.
Both hands shot out and clamped onto the reef shark's body—not like a man grabbing prey, but like a machine closing a vise. One hand locked behind the head, fingers digging into cartilage and muscle; the other seized the base of the fin, crushing down with rciless pressure.
The shark exploded into motion.
Its body whipped and twisted, tail lashing with panicked violence, water churning into a froth of bubbles and green blur. Teeth snapped uselessly at empty water. The animal thrashed with everything it had, its nervous system screaming that sothing had gone terribly, impossibly wrong.
Oskar felt it all.
The slick strength of muscle. The frantic vibration of life trying to escape. The resistance—then the give.
He tightened his grip.
Not suddenly.
Not theatrically.
Just… more.
There was a dull, underwater crack—felt rather than heard—as cartilage failed under pressure no animal had ever applied to it before. The shark's body spasd violently, then jerked out of rhythm, its thrashing turning wild and uncoordinated.
Oskar twisted.
His whole torso rotated with the motion, shoulders and core driving the movent like a hydraulic press. The shark's spine bent at an angle it was never ant to reach.
Sothing inside it tore.
Blood clouded the water in a sudden dark bloom.
The thrashing slowed.
Then stopped.
The reef shark hung limp in his hands, its body broken not by cleverness or tools—but by overwhelming, indifferent force.
Around them, the sea changed.
The other reef sharks widened their circle instantly, instincts screaming retreat. They did not scatter in panic—but they did not co closer either.
They watched.
Because they had just seen sothing they did not understand.
Prey that seized. Prey that crushed. Prey that ended a hunter in seconds.
Oskar stared at what remained in his hands, disbelief and exhilaration colliding in his chest.
Holy shit.
His fingers flexed slightly—and the torn body shifted, slack and ruined, pieces drifting away as the water claid what it could.
He looked at his hands as if seeing them for the first ti.
Did I really just—
Yes.
Yes, he did.
A sharp, almost ridiculous joy surged through him—hot and primal and utterly human.
Then the water moved again.
Not fast.
Not small.
Heavy.
A vast shape passed beneath him, blocking the light like a living shadow sliding under the sun.
The joy vanished.
Oskar turned slowly.
It circled once—unhurried, confident, claiming the space with its mass alone.
A bull shark.
Big.
Scarred.
Thick-bodied—less an animal than a weapon shaped by ti, muscle packed onto muscle, eyes empty of hesitation.
His mind dragged up the worst possible facts from mory:
Aggressive.
Territorial.
Unwilling to retreat.
The bull shark angled toward him.
Not charging yet.
Judging.
Drawn by blood. By motion. By the simple certainty that sothing here should be eaten.
Oskar's heart slamd against his ribs.
"Oh shit."
He didn't pretend bravery now.
He did sothing smart.
He released the ruined front of the reef shark, letting it drift away in a widening red haze—and kept hold of what remained, dragging the tail-end behind him like a crude, bloody offering.
The bull shark made its decision.
It ca in hard.
The water compressed around its charge, a torpedo of muscle and teeth. Oskar snapped the carcass up just in ti—
Impact.
The bull shark's jaws closed with terrifying force, ripping into the offering like it was paper. The collision sent a shock through Oskar's arms, bone-deep, teeth rattling with the violence of it.
He struck back.
A brutal, piston-like punch to the snout.
The blow drove straight through water and into nerve and bone. The shark recoiled a fraction—but not enough. It shook its head furiously, trying to tear the "food" free, rage rippling through its massive fra.
Oskar hit it again.
Harder.
Then, abandoning finesse entirely, he lunged in and jamd his fingers into the thick muscle near the fin—digging, twisting, levering pain the way he did against n in sparring, forcing the angle, forcing control.
The bull shark finally recoiled.
Not defeated.
But irritated.
Agitated.
Circling again, angry and uncertain, matching his movent with predatory patience.
Oskar did not wait for a second charge.
He turned—
and swam.
Hard.
Fast.
Every stroke burned.
His lungs scread. His muscles flooded with fire. The shore was still far enough that the distance mocked him.
Behind him, the bull shark followed.
Sotis close.
Sotis below.
Always present.
Do not stop.
The words beca his entire world.
Once, the shark drifted close enough that the water shifted around his legs—close enough to remind him how easily this could end.
Then, slowly, it peeled away.
The red cloud behind them was easier.
Safer.
The shark turned back toward the simpler logic of the sea.
Oskar didn't look back.
He swam until sand appeared beneath him, until the water loosened its grip and his hands scraped bottom. He dragged himself forward like a man crawling out of another world and collapsed onto the beach with a heavy, exhausted thud.
In his hand remained only a miserable prize—little more than torn flesh and tail.
He stared at the gray sky and laughed once, breathless.
"Fuck," he muttered. "That was close."
Out at sea, the four ships were still approaching, tugboats guiding them in.
And on the decks, people had gathered at the rails.
They were cheering.
Shouting.
Pointing.
They'd seen him erge. Seen him make shore. Seen him live.
Oskar lifted one arm with theatrical slowness and gave them a thumbs up.
The cheers doubled.
Sowhere on the lead ship, Karl clutched the railing and shook his head like a man watching a miracle perford by an idiot.
"Damn," he muttered, half horrified, half awed. "Crazy bastard…"
Oskar lay there in the wet sand, rain cooling his skin, heart still pounding.
And in the distance, the jungle watched.
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