The Tsar's message left a somber atmosphere across the room. He had announced that within a year at the latest he would be dead. And his son would succeed him as Emperor of Russia.
It was a monumental statement to his family who hadn't the slightest clue of his condition. And Bruno himself stayed silent for the rest of the gathering.
Whatever festivities were had with a brief reunion were thoroughly stifled by the Tsar's speech.
And there in the silence, Bruno realized what was happening. He was getting older, and he was witnessing that even titans of history cannot emerge victorious against death itself.
Franz Ferdinand had been dead for a decade. Svetozar had lived just long enough to be given a funeral worthy of his service.
Hindenburg was on death's list, and so was Kaiser Wilhelm II in just a decade he would pass. And now Tsar Nicholas II within the year.
Men who had forged an era whose legacy Bruno had preserved in a defiant battle against fate itself.
