Chapter 172 - 172: Skulls on the Map

Deep beneath the palace at Potsdam—in the secret chamber that had become more of a war room than a laboratory—Karl stood on top of the table.

Quite literally.

He paced back and forth across its surface with his hands clasped behind his back, boots thudding softly against reinforced wood as if it were a parade ground instead of a map table. Beneath his feet lay Thrace, rendered in ink and pins and carved relief: rivers cut like veins through the terrain, roads traced in thin, deliberate lines, villages reduced to careful marks. The new border after the First Balkan War slashed across the whole thing like a fresh scar—one ugly stroke dividing Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire.

...