The first to notice the girls leaving was the priest.
Father Anselm stood near the ruined well, where stone met sunlight and shadow clung like an old robe. His hand rested gently on the shoulder of a wounded boy he had just anointed. The child breathed, barely, but he breathed. A life returned—not by sacrament, not by medicine, but by something that defied everything the priest thought he understood.
His lips had just begun the final phrase of the prayer for the dying:
> "Into Your hands, O Lord, I commend this soul—"
But the words faltered.
They faltered because he saw them.
The two girls.
No taller than the crates that lined the courtyard walls. Walking side by side, their heads held high, their shoulders straight. One bore a rifle so large it nearly brushed the ground behind her. The other glowed faintly, as if her skin still held the echo of heaven.
They had saved lives. So many lives.
Without incantation. Without relics. Without demand.
No coin had been asked.
No oaths sworn.
No names taken.
They had given, and then left.
Not for shelter. Not to seek safety.
But toward the sound of gunfire.
Toward the smoke.
Toward death.
Anselm's breath caught in his throat. His heart lurched, then clenched.
His eyes swept across the courtyard—the bandaged and the bruised, the pale and the breathless, all watching. Some sat upright now, leaning against crates and walls, staring at the girls. At their backs. At the rifles they carried and the path they walked.
Then his gaze fell to Frau Gerda.
She knelt beside the stone. The stone. The one the smaller girl had given her without flourish, without speech. It glowed faintly in her bloodied palm. Warm. Alive.
> And still they asked for nothing.
No tithe.
No worship.
Not even thanks.
They had simply done what they could, and now walked away.
And in that moment, Father Anselm remembered the Book.
He remembered Galilee. The man who walked barefoot among lepers and thieves. Who healed the blind and the sick and the broken—and then left, quietly, without asking for reward. Who said only: "Go, and sin no more."
> And the people followed Him.
He had spent sixty-one years in cloth. Fifty-three as a priest. Thirty praying for a sign—not a voice in the clouds, not fire from the sky.
Just one pure act of mercy.
And here, in a ruined courtyard on the edge of war, two children had raised the dead and walked away.
He looked to the rifle leaning against the barn wall. It was old. Pitted. Taken from the hands of a boy whose chest had collapsed under the weight of war.
He had sworn never to raise a weapon again. Not since the border raids. Not since the farmers had come with torches and the gendarmes with blades.
But this was different.
This was not rebellion.
This was not justice.
This was faith—living, breathing, marching into the flames in the shape of two girls with golden hair and god-touched hands.
His hand moved before he knew what it meant to do.
He lifted the rifle.
It was heavy. Too heavy for a man of his age. His shoulders groaned, his knees bent.
But it didn't matter.
He turned.
And the words that came were not his.
They were older than him. Older than the well. Older than the gun in his hands.
> "They go to die for us!" he cried, voice hoarse and rising. "They who have saved us!"
A rustle passed through the courtyard like wind across dry leaves.
> "Will you let them go alone?"
Men stirred. Some blinked like they'd just woken. Others reached instinctively for crutches, for rifles.
> "They walk like lambs into fire—and you would sit in the blood they spared you from bleeding?"
Stillness.
Then—
> "Up!" the priest roared. "Stand! You can walk! You can hold a weapon! Then by God's name, FIGHT!"
The silence broke like glass.
Johann Fricke rose, slow and stiff, his bandaged ribs creaking. His rifle clutched in one trembling hand. A boy too young for war, too scarred for peace.
Another stood. Then two more.
Then five.
Then ten.
They were not warriors. Not anymore.
But they were something else now.
They were the chosen. The healed. The ones who had seen what most only dared to pray for.
> "God walks with them!" someone shouted, voice cracking.
> "God's with us!" echoed another.
And then the words rolled like thunder.
> "GOD'S WITH US!"
Not as a battle cry.
As belief.
As certainty.
And the wounded rose.
And followed.
---
At the street's edge, Tanya stopped.
The alley spilled out into an open thoroughfare, and from there, the front was fully in view—closer now than ever. The stone bridge, scarred by powder and war, lay half-obscured in a thick curtain of smoke. It curled around the shattered masonry like fog, rising in ghostly tendrils from craters where French shells had landed.
Gunfire cracked again—dry, sharp, like kindling splintering underfoot. Musket shots echoed through the town, followed by the deeper, thunderous bark of cannon farther upriver. The air was thick with soot and the iron tang of blood.
Tanya squinted through the haze.
The bridge was holding. Barely.
Prussian riflemen crouched behind makeshift barricades of timber and broken wagons. The French pressed steadily from the opposite bank, advancing in columns of red and blue, bayonets glinting in rhythmic waves. More were coming—always more.
Tanya turned to Lili.
Her voice was low, even. Controlled.
"Make three."
Lili blinked, surprised. "Three?"
"One for the wounded. One for the front. One for the fallback point," Tanya said, not looking at her. Her eyes remained fixed on the shifting lines ahead. "They'll need it if we don't come back."
There was no drama in her tone. No doubt. Just planning.
Lili hesitated. "You're not… you're not going alone, are you?"
Tanya met her gaze, her own eyes dark and steady. "We need to help them hold the line. This might buy them time. That's all we need."
Lili swallowed. Then nodded.
Without another word, she dropped to one knee beside the road. The dirt here was dark and packed, scattered with shrapnel and debris, but near the curb, tucked beneath a collapsed flower pot, her fingers found a stone—smooth, flat, and water-worn.
She closed her eyes.
Her hand hovered over the stone, her other hand pressed lightly to her chest. Light moved through her—not a flare, but a flow, like water seeking the cracks in old stone.
The core responded.
Her fingertips pulsed with warmth, and as she touched the stone, it changed—gray fading to pale white, then shimmering like opal, until the stone gleamed with its own quiet heartbeat.
She did it again. And again.
Three stones. Three small beacons of hope.
Tanya reached for them as Lili held them out. They glowed like miniature suns in the soot-dark morning.
"Give them to the priest," Tanya said. "He'll know what to do."
And with that, she turned—no fanfare, no farewell—and sprinted into the smoke.
---
The barricade loomed ahead.
Gunfire roared. Bullets sang through the air, chipping stone, rattling off wagon wheels. A Prussian soldier shouted something guttural and hoarse, then dropped to one knee to reload. The world was motion and noise and fear.
Tanya didn't hesitate.
She ran full tilt and vaulted the barricade—her feet scraping the wood as she landed in a crouch behind a row of kneeling riflemen.
They turned at the sound.
Eyes widened.
And what they saw made them freeze.
A girl.
A child.
Wearing a man's coat, rifle slung awkwardly over her shoulder, pistol bouncing at her hip.
She stood, back straight, face smudged with dirt but calm.
One soldier blinked. Another stood halfway, uncertain.
"What the hell—?" he muttered in rough German.
"ZURÜCK!" a sharp voice barked behind him.
An officer.
He pushed forward through the men, his sword drawn, boots splashing through shallow puddles of blood. His eyes locked on Tanya, then flicked to her weapon. Then back to her face.
He shouted something—harsh and clipped, gesturing wildly.
> "Was machst du hier?!" — What are you doing here?!
Tanya didn't understand the words.
But she understood the confusion.
She didn't try to answer with her mouth.
She pointed.
To a nearby cart, shattered but still on its wheels. Half-filled with hay, scorched but dry. Bits of broken barrel jutted from the pile.
Then she pointed to the bridge.
Then to the French lines.
Then she made a flicking gesture with her hand—fire.
One soldier stared at her.
Another whispered, "Ist sie verrückt?"
She repeated the motion.
Light it.
Push it.
Let it burn.
> Fire. Push. Boom.
The officer hesitated.
Then one of the men near the cart grunted.
And nodded.
Another moved to grab a lantern.
Tanya stepped aside as they began to work—dragging the cart into place, stuffing it with dry cloth, soaking it in oil drawn from a ruptured drum nearby.
The officer said nothing more.
He watched her.
And for the first time since the battle began, he didn't see a child.
He saw a tactician.
A symbol.
Something older than her form.
He looked up at the heavens, lips moving silently.
> "God… if this is your hand, let it burn."
A match was struck.
And the cart began to glow.
---
And then—
From behind—
They came.
The priest appeared first, emerging from the smoke like an apparition pulled from scripture, rifle in hand, cassock flapping around his knees. His breath came in gasps, but his eyes blazed—not with madness, but with purpose. His boots splashed through blood and soot. The rifle looked wrong in his hands, yet he held it with both reverence and resolve, like a relic returned to its rightful hour.
Behind him marched the rest.
Ten.
Then twenty.
Then more.
Some limped, bandages stained dark around their ribs and shoulders. Others moved with fists clenched around iron tools—shovels, rusted swords, hunting rifles, pitchforks, axes passed down from fathers to sons. A butcher still wore his apron. A farmer had no weapon but a heavy length of oak. One boy—no more than fifteen—carried his dead brother's cartridge belt across his chest and his eyes filled with fire.
They came like a storm, pulled not by command or coin, but by something older than both: faith repaid.
Tanya heard the footsteps first—the muffled thud of many feet on stone. Then she turned.
The sight stole her breath.
She had seen charges. She had seen last stands. She had seen men rush forward into the jaws of death.
But she had never seen this.
Not the wounded. Not the weak. Not the saved, returning to the fire.
Because of us, she thought.
The Prussian officer beside her turned too, speechless. His sword dipped slightly as he watched the priest approach, wild-eyed, white-haired, breathing hard but unyielding.
Father Anselm didn't slow.
He came up the hill with rifle in hand and fire in his voice.
"Für sie!" he shouted. "Für die Engel! Für Saarbrücken!"
The men behind him echoed the call—not with coordination, but with fury.
"FÜR DIE ENGEL!"
Tanya stepped up onto the barricade, the flames of the cart behind her lighting the air in streaks of orange and gold. She raised one arm and pointed toward the French lines. Toward the red tide that still pushed across the bloodied bridge.
"For them," she said.
Her voice was quiet.
Low.
But it carried.
The officer didn't understand the words.
But he saw her.
And in her eyes, he saw no child.
Only purpose.
Only fire.
He nodded once.
Then turned to his men.
"Schwenkt die Kanonen!" he barked. "Bereit machen!"
The cart was already ablaze, smoke billowing high. Hay crackled. Oil spat fire. It rolled forward down the slope, pushed by two men with scorched sleeves and teeth gritted against the heat. Others grabbed more barrels, more broken wheels, anything that could be made to burn.
The priest dropped to one knee beside a fallen soldier, muttered a prayer, then lifted the man's rifle and passed it to another. He directed others to refill cartridge belts, to carry crates, to reload field guns.
He was no commander.
But in that moment, he was more.
He was the shepherd.
And they were his flock.
The cart hit the midpoint of the bridge.
A musket shot struck the wheel.
It bounced once.
Then tipped forward—
—and exploded in a gout of fire and smoke.
The French line—so confident, so sure—broke.
They didn't flee, not yet. But they stumbled. Cries rose. Officers shouted. Bayonets clattered to stone.
One man dropped his rifle and ran.
Then another.
Tanya turned back to the priest.
He met her eyes.
And nodded.
And for one breathless moment—
The war turned.
***
Private Lucien Moreau had seen many strange things in his short life. But perhaps more importantly, he had heard of even stranger things—from men older, harder, more weathered than he.
His grandfather had marched with Napoleon's Grande Armée, all the way to the gates of Moscow, and then all the way back—half-dead, half-frozen, carrying wounds no surgeon could fix. He had spoken little of that journey, save for one thing: "There are moments when war opens a door to something older than reason. Something that listens when men bleed."
Lucien had always dismissed it as old man's superstition.
Until now.
He crouched behind a half-toppled statue in the shattered plaza near the north end of the bridge, musket cradled in shaking arms, heart pounding behind his ribs. The air was thick with powder and smoke—but it wasn't just the fire that made him sweat.
It was the girls.
He had seen them with his own eyes. Two of them. One with a rifle far too big for her, issuing silent orders like she'd been born with a sword in her hand. The other one—that one—knelt beside the dying and brought them back. Just… brought them back. No chants. No oil. Just light.
Light like dawn in a cave.
Lucien had fought in Morocco. He'd seen men set ablaze by cannon shot, seen the desert devour entire regiments. He'd seen the faces of officers turned gray with shock when their formations crumbled under sudden fury. But nothing—nothing—had undone him like what he saw here.
A child glowing like heaven.
Soldiers rising like saints.
And fire surging through a cart as though the hand of God had lit the match.
He didn't know what he was witnessing.
But he knew he needed to run.
---
General Charles Auguste Frossard stood beneath the ridgeline's tattered command canopy, hands clasped behind his back, gaze fixed through a brass telescope mounted on a tripod dug deep into the clay. The canvas above him creaked softly in the breeze, its corners stained with ash and pollen from crushed grass. Around him, aides murmured, scribes scratched in ledgers, and a colonel argued quietly about artillery timing with a battery commander.
But Frossard heard none of it.
His eye remained locked to the lens.
The smoke drifting over Saarbrücken was thicker now, less white than before. It had taken on a darker, oilier character, the kind that hinted at more than gunpowder—fire, lit with purpose, not accident.
The bridge, narrow and old, twisted with the echoes of fighting. He could make out the blurred chaos at its center: French skirmishers shifting formations, red trousers moving in waves, some hesitating now, some pulling back.
> Why are they slowing?
His brow creased.
He had calculated this assault like a textbook—soften the line with artillery, advance under cover, drive through with shock and mass. The Prussians should have broken two hours ago.
Instead, they held.
And then he saw it.
The fire cart.
It surged into view—a mess of blazing wood and shattered iron, hurled down the center of the bridge like a battering ram lit by hell itself. The smoke haloed above it, and in its wake, the front began to stagger.
He narrowed his eye to the lens.
A small figure stood atop the barricade.
Slim. Upright. Unafraid.
Frossard's mind raced.
> A girl? A child?
He blinked and adjusted the focus.
Yes—two of them.
The first bore a rifle across her back and a pistol at her hip. She stood with unnatural stillness for someone her size, like a miniature officer carved in wax.
The second was harder to make out. She moved between the wounded—one fell, she knelt. And then they rose. That was impossible.
He stepped back from the scope.
> Fatigue, he told himself. Smoke distortion. Delusion. Field rumors.
But even he didn't believe it.
A few aides turned as he exhaled. One handed him a report from the artillery battery. Another muttered something about troop displacement on the left flank.
Frossard said nothing.
His mind wasn't on flanks.
It was on miracles.
He had seen a man's arm blown off in Crimea and heard him beg to be drowned in morphine. He had watched Bedouins fight to the last child in the Algerian dunes. He had studied the campaigns of the First Empire, walked the bloodied soil of Waterloo, and committed to memory the mistakes of Austerlitz.
He believed in steel, and resolve, and clear fields of fire.
He did not believe in saints.
And yet—
> "General!"
The cry snapped his attention.
Private Lucien Moreau appeared at the crest of the hill, panting, uniform streaked with ash and sweat. His chest heaved, and one of his boots had come untied during the sprint. A guard moved to intercept him, but Frossard raised a hand.
"Let him pass."
Lucien stumbled forward and saluted with more desperation than decorum.
"Report," Frossard said calmly.
Lucien opened his mouth—and hesitated.
What could he say? That children were leading a counter-charge? That a glowing girl had raised the dying with her hands?
"Sir…" he managed. "There's something you need to know."
Frossard didn't flinch. "Then speak."
Lucien swallowed.
"There are… girls, sir. Two of them. Young. Armed. One of them… she set the cart alight. I saw her direct the others. She gave orders like a captain. And the other one—"
He stopped.
"What about her?"
Lucien's mouth went dry. "She… she glowed, sir. Not from fire. From herself. I saw her place her hands on a man's chest—he was dead. And then he wasn't. She healed him. Others too."
The aides laughed—nervous, confused.
Frossard raised one finger.
Silence.
He turned back to the telescope. Lifted it. Focused again.
There they were.
Smaller than the rifles they carried.
Moving with a purpose born not of fear, but of knowledge.
Leading.
Behind them, men rose. Wounded. Civilian. Holy. Following.
Frossard stepped back.
"Have the 8th Battalion hold position. Do not cross the bridge again until further notice."
"But sir, we have the momentum—"
"Do as I said," Frossard snapped. Then, softer: "If they are symbols, they must be broken. If they are saints…"
He didn't finish.
An aide cleared his throat. "The Prince, sir. He's watching."
Frossard glanced up the slope.
The young Louis-Napoléon stood under his white pavilion, golden telescope raised, lips parted in wonder.
He was watching the twins.
Frossard turned away.
> Let him watch, he thought. But I will understand.
He turned back to Lucien.
"You will guide a detachment. Quietly. Approach the far right flank. I want those girls taken—alive if possible."
Lucien blinked. "Me, sir?"
"You saw them. That makes you the expert."
Lucien hesitated. Then nodded.
Frossard looked out over the smoke again.
And the world seemed—just for a moment—to tilt.
---
The air atop the western ridgeline was thick with heat and the steady murmur of courtiers, aides, and officers speaking in tight, clipped tones. The gold-and-white pavilion of the French high command fluttered softly in the rising wind, its silks brushing against polished saber hilts and the trimmed coats of men more used to drawing maps than blood.
And in the center of it all stood the Prince.
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte—the Prince Imperial of France, heir to the throne of his uncle's legend—stood stiffly on the edge of the command knoll, his polished boots planted in the mud, one gloved hand gripping the brass telescope set atop a wheeled tripod.
He had been standing there for hours.
Watching.
Waiting.
And seething.
His eyes—wide, pale, and tired—flicked over the battlefield with a burning hunger that no aide could miss.
He had read of Austerlitz a dozen times. He had memorized the formations of Jena, the storming of the Tuileries, the march into Moscow. He had recited his uncle's words before he could even ride:
> "The battlefield is the stage upon which glory is made manifest."
But today—his first true battlefield—he had not moved.
He had not given a speech.
He had not drawn a saber.
He had not led.
And it ate at him like fire.
---
The fire cart had caught his attention instantly.
From his vantage point above the town, he had watched it roll across the old stone bridge like a relic from another war. His aides had gasped. One had cried out that the Prussians were mad.
But the Prince had leaned forward.
Eyes wide.
> "Magnificent," he had whispered.
Then he had seen the girls.
At first, just blurs.
Then clearer.
Two small figures. One aglow, like a saint from stained glass. The other upright, calm, giving orders.
> Children? No... Messengers. Saints. Myth.
And yet no one moved.
No orders were given.
He spun, his coat catching the wind.
"Where is General Frossard?" he barked.
"Still at the forward line, Your Highness," an aide stammered.
The Prince didn't wait.
He crossed the command tent's threshold, grabbed his riding gloves, and stalked toward his waiting horse.
"Your Highness, you mustn't—"
"I am not a prisoner," the Prince snapped, mounting with more grace than his slight frame suggested. "And France does not tremble at shadows."
"But the general—"
"Has forgotten how to win."
He kicked his heels.
The guards scrambled to follow.
---
He arrived at the forward post in minutes, his guards barely keeping pace. The men saluted stiffly, stunned to see royalty at the ridge.
Frossard was still at the telescope when the Prince dismounted with a clatter of boots.
"General," the Prince said, voice sharp.
Frossard turned slowly. "Your Highness, this position is not secure—"
"Nor is the dignity of France secure if we let ourselves be bested by peasant carts and children," the Prince snapped.
Frossard blinked.
The aides froze.
The Prince stepped closer, eyes burning. "I saw it. Everyone saw it. The enemy is broken, ragged. A single push, a charge led by our own hands, and we can scatter them. Reclaim the bridge. Make this day our own!"
"Your Highness," Frossard said evenly, "we are dealing with more than irregular resistance. There is something—unusual—on the field. I will not commit the men until I understand what we face."
The Prince's jaw tightened.
"So we hesitate because of two girls? We retreat because our soldiers speak of saints instead of steel?"
"No," Frossard said. "We hesitate because legends cause panic. And panic kills faster than bullets."
The Prince looked past him, to the smoke, the flickering figures.
"I want to see them," he said.
Frossard didn't answer.
"I want to go to the front. Let them see who leads France."
"That is not your role," Frossard said firmly. "Not today."
The Prince stepped back.
And for a long moment, said nothing.
Then he turned away.
Not in surrender.
But in planning.
---