Date: March 5th, 1905 – Belgrade, Kingdom of Serbia
The last thing Alexander Volkov remembered was the screech of tires, the grotesque crunch of metal, and a blinding, searing pain that had mercifully, swiftly, given way to an encompassing darkness. He'd been twenty-four, a postgraduate engineering student with a thesis on sustainable urban infrastructure weighing heavily on his mind, crossing a rain-slicked street after a late-night study session. A dissertation on Roman aqueduct systems and their potential modern applications had been his peculiar passion project on the side, a testament to his lifelong fascination with history, particularly the enduring legacy of empires. Rome, above all, had always captivated him – its rise, its governance, its military might, its eventual, tragic decline. He'd often mused, half-jokingly with friends, about what he'd do if he could go back, what decisions he'd change, what glories he might attempt to restore.
Idle dreams of a bored, historically-inclined student.
The darkness hadn't lasted. It had been replaced by a throbbing ache in his head, a profound sense of dislocation, and the bewildering sensation of coarse linen against his skin. His limbs felt heavy, unfamiliar, like borrowed appendages not quite calibrated to his will. A groan escaped his lips, thick and raspy.
"Vaše Veličanstvo?" A voice, male, laced with concern, spoke in a language Alex didn't initially recognize, yet somehow, a sliver of understanding pierced the fog in his brain. Your Majesty?
Majesty? What in God's name…?
He forced his eyes open. The light was dim, filtered through heavy velvet curtains drawn against what seemed to be early morning. The room was opulent, a stark contrast to his cramped student apartment. Ornate wooden furniture, gilded mirror frames, a towering porcelain stove in one corner, and oil paintings depicting stern-faced, bewhiskered men in military uniforms. The air smelled faintly of old wood, beeswax, and something subtly floral.
Panic, cold and sharp, began to prickle at the edges of his consciousness. This wasn't a hospital. This wasn't anywhere he knew.
He tried to sit up, another groan tearing from his throat. The effort was immense. "Polako, Vaše Veličanstvo," the same voice urged, closer now. "Lagano." Slowly, Your Majesty. Gently.
A hand, surprisingly strong, supported his back. Alex blinked, trying to focus on the man now leaning over him. He was older, perhaps in his late fifties, with a neatly trimmed grey beard, a worried frown etched onto his face, and wearing a dark, formal suit that seemed out of place for a… well, for whatever this was.
"Where… where am I?" Alex managed, his voice a stranger's – deeper, with a resonance his own had never possessed. And the words… they felt foreign on his tongue, yet they came out as Serbian. He understood them, he spoke them, but the knowledge of how was an alien presence in his mind, overlaid upon his native English and passable Russian.
The man's frown deepened. "U Kraljevskom Dvoru, Vaše Veličanstvo. U Beogradu." In the Royal Palace, Your Majesty. In Belgrade. He paused, then added, "Da li se osećate dobro? Imali ste nemirnu noć." Are you feeling alright? You had a restless night.
Belgrade. Royal Palace. Majesty.
Alex's mind reeled. It was like being hit by a second, metaphysical truck. He stared at the man, whose face swam in and out of focus. Fragments of information, names, dates, faces, historical events he'd studied, began to bubble up from a deep well he hadn't known existed within him, merging with his own memories of Alex Volkov. It was a dizzying, nauseating torrent.
Karađorđević. Serbia. King. Petar.
He was King Petar Karađorđević of Serbia.
But Petar I, the historical figure Alex knew, had been born in 1844. He would be sixty, not… He tentatively raised a hand, looking at it. It was a young man's hand – strong, calloused in places a student's hand wouldn't be, but undeniably youthful. He felt his face. Smooth skin, a jawline sharper than he remembered his own being.
"I… I need a moment," he stammered, switching to English without thinking, then immediately wincing as he realized his mistake. But no, the words came out in perfect Serbian again. The overlay was seamless, terrifyingly efficient. "My head… it's… unclear."
The older man, whom a newly surfaced memory identified as Nikola Pašić, the Prime Minister, nodded slowly, his eyes sharp and observant despite their worried cast. "Naravno, Vaše Veličanstvo. Shall I summon Dr. Lazarević?"
Dr. Lazarević… the royal physician. Alex's—Petar's—mind was a chaotic swirl, but he managed to seize onto one coherent thought: he needed to be alone. He needed to process this impossible reality without a concerned Prime Minister scrutinizing his every flicker of confusion.
"No. No doctor. Just… give me some water, and perhaps… an hour. I think I just need to clear my head." He tried to make his voice sound regal, or at least reasonably composed. It was a struggle.
Pašić hesitated for a fraction of a second before bowing. "Kako želite, Vaše Veličanstvo." As you wish, Your Majesty. He moved to a nearby table where a carafe of water and a glass stood, poured a glass with steady hands, and brought it over.
Alex—no, he had to start thinking of himself as Petar—took the glass. His hand trembled slightly. He drank, the cool water a small mercy, anchoring him, if only for a moment, to this new, bewildering present.
"Leave me," Petar said, his voice gaining a touch more firmness. "I will ring if I require anything."
Pašić bowed again, a deep, formal gesture. "Vaše Veličanstvo." He backed away slowly, his gaze lingering for a moment, then turned and exited the room, closing the heavy doors with a soft click.
The silence that descended was profound, broken only by the frantic thumping of Petar's—his—heart. He was alone. King Petar. In Belgrade. 1905. The date, March 5th, surfaced with chilling clarity from the depths of his borrowed memories. Nine years. Nine years until Sarajevo. Nine years until the Austrian ultimatum, the cascading alliances, the trenches, the slaughter. Nine years until the world Alex Volkov knew was irrevocably shaped by a war that would shatter empires and redraw maps.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, the floorboards cool beneath his bare feet. He felt… young. Eighteen, the memories confirmed. An eighteen-year-old king, placed on the throne after the bloody May Coup of 1903 that had overthrown and brutally murdered the Obrenović dynasty. A King who, historically, had been a relatively liberal monarch for his time, a constitutional ruler.
But the prompt from the cosmic entity, or whatever force had thrust him here, had been clear: total power. An Emperor. A new Roman Empire.
The sheer audacity of it, the sheer impossibility, should have made him laugh, or break down in hysterics. Instead, a strange, cold calm began to settle over the initial shock. Alex Volkov had been an engineer, a problem-solver, a man who broke down complex systems into manageable parts. He'd also been a dreamer, a student of history who'd yearned for something more than his predictable, mundane existence.
This was… more. Infinitely more. Terrifyingly more.
He stood, swaying slightly, and made his way to the gilded mirror he'd glimpsed earlier. The face that stared back was handsome, in a severe, Slavic way. Dark hair, currently disheveled from sleep, a strong jaw, a straight nose, and eyes… eyes that were a startlingly intense blue, currently wide with a mixture of fear, disbelief, and a dawning, terrifying excitement. This was the face of King Petar Karađorđević, but the mind behind those eyes was Alex Volkov's, now grappling with a dual inheritance of memory and identity.
He was eighteen. A king. With knowledge of the future. The Balkans, the "powder keg of Europe." Serbia, a small, fiercely independent nation caught between the ambitions of Austria-Hungary to the north and the Ottoman Empire to the south, with Russia as a distant, often unreliable patron. It was a nation brimming with nationalist fervor, dreams of uniting the South Slavs, but also plagued by internal political strife and economic vulnerability.
His engineering knowledge… could it be useful? Infrastructure, industrialization… Serbia was decades behind Western Europe. His historical knowledge… that was the true weapon. Knowing who to trust, who to watch out for. Knowing the fatal missteps of nations and leaders. Knowing the outcome of the Great War, and the wars that followed.
The Roman Empire. It sounded insane. From Serbia? A tiny Balkan kingdom as the seed of a new Rome? The historical Petar had been a modest man, a soldier who'd translated John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" into Serbian. He'd overseen Serbia's "Golden Age" of parliamentary democracy before the ravages of WWI.
But Alex wasn't that Petar. Or rather, he was now, but with an entirely different set of experiences and, it seemed, a different mandate. The idea of a constitutional monarchy, as mentioned in his internal user prompt and then dismissed, now felt… limiting. If he truly had the chance to avert the cataclysm, to build something lasting, something grand, would he not need more direct control? The prompt had been insistent on total power.
His mind raced, piecing together a rudimentary understanding of his current situation from Petar's memories. He had a government, led by Pašić of the People's Radical Party. A man known for his cunning and political acumen. There was the military, fiercely loyal to the Karađorđević dynasty after the coup, but perhaps not as modern or well-equipped as it needed to be. There were foreign ambassadors, spies, competing interests all vying for influence in Belgrade.
And nine years.
It wasn't a lot of time. Not to build an empire. Not to avert a world war. But it was something.
A surge of adrenaline, sharp and intoxicating, cut through the lingering fear. Alex Volkov had died. Petar Karađorđević lived. And Petar had a chance, however slim, however ludicrous it seemed, to do something extraordinary.
He thought of Rome. Not the decadent, crumbling Rome of its final centuries, but the Rome of Augustus, of Trajan, of Hadrian. A Rome that built, that governed, that brought law and order – Pax Romana. A civilization that, for all its flaws, had left an indelible mark on the world.
Could he, from this small Balkan nation, even begin to aspire to such a thing? It would mean outmaneuvering the Great Powers. It would mean industrializing at a breakneck pace. It would mean forging a military capable not just of defense, but of conquest. It would mean uniting disparate peoples, possibly against their will. It would mean becoming a very different kind of king than the historical Petar.
The thought was daunting, yet a part of him, the part that had spent countless hours poring over maps of Roman legions and designs of their siege engines, the part that had felt a thrill at the stories of Caesar's audacity and Augustus's careful consolidation of power, resonated with the challenge.
He took a deep breath. First things first. He needed to gather information. He needed to understand the current political climate, the state of the kingdom's finances, the readiness of its army. He needed to assess the people around him – Pašić, his ministers, his generals. He needed to learn to be King Petar, not just wear his face.
He walked back to the bed, his gait a little steadier. The room, which had seemed alien and imposing moments ago, now felt like the opening stage of an immense, high-stakes play. He was the lead actor, thrust into the role without rehearsal, but with the script of the future hidden in his mind.
He needed to be careful. Any hint that he was not the Petar they knew could be disastrous. He was young, only eighteen. They might attribute some eccentricities to youth, to the stress of his position. He could use that.
He found a bell pull near the bed – a thick, tasseled cord. He gave it a firm tug. The challenge was immense, the path ahead shrouded in uncertainty and danger. But for Alex Volkov, who had dreamt of changing history, this was no longer a dream. It was his new, terrifying, exhilarating reality.
The door opened, and a young valet, no older than himself, entered, bowing low. "Želeli ste nešto, Vaše Veličanstvo?" You wished for something, Your Majesty?
Petar looked at him, truly looked at him, seeing not just a servant, but a subject. A person whose life, like millions of others, could be irrevocably altered by the decisions he was about to make.
"Da," Petar said, his voice surprisingly steady. "Prepare my usual morning routine. And inform Prime Minister Pašić that I wish to speak with him again in one hour. There are matters of state I wish to discuss. Urgent matters."
The young man's eyes widened almost imperceptibly at the mention of "urgent matters" from a king who, according to Petar's own memories, had been more inclined to quieter mornings. But he simply bowed again. "Odmah, Vaše Veličanstvo." At once, Your Majesty.