Chapter 83 - 83: Two Different Worlds

While men of state stood beneath gantries of steel and spoke of fleets, calibers, and futures written in iron, elsewhere life was very different.

Far from shipyards, ministries, and the thunder of factories, a small Polish farmhouse in East Prussia stood alone on a grassy hill. It was a sturdy two-story building with whitewashed walls and a sloping roof, overlooking a quiet rural town below. From its windows, the boy could see fields stretching outward in orderly lines, the church spire rising above tiled roofs, smoke drifting lazily from chimneys—as if the world itself wished to pretend nothing had changed.

But since the attempted assassination of Prince Oskar in October, everything had changed.

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