Reincarnated as the Crown Prince
Chapter 57: A Flame that Won’t Burn Out Part 1

Chapter 57: A Flame that Won’t Burn Out Part 1

The Iron Serpent carved its path through the Andalusian hills like a blade of judgment—steam hissing through pine-covered ridges, signal flags fluttering from its flanks. It had not yet entered Granada, but word of its approach had. Telegraph wires, horse messengers, and fearful whispers moved faster than iron.

Inside the command car, Prince Lancelot reviewed a fresh dispatch. Juliette stood across the table, flanked by Bellido and two newly promoted Civic Brigade officers from Carmona.

"Granada’s nobility has sealed the Alhambra," Lancelot said, voice low. "They’ve requisitioned old cannon from their family arsenals. Artillery from another century—but with powder, still deadly."

"They intend to make a last stand," Bellido said grimly. "A symbol. Hold the palace, hold the past."

Juliette crossed her arms. "Then we tear down the symbol without destroying the city. We won’t become what they accuse us of."

Easier said than done.

The closer they neared Granada, the more complicated the terrain—politically and physically. Nobles had bribed peasant militias, flooded farmland to slow train lines, and erected false checkpoints on the trade roads. More than once, the Iron Serpent was forced to halt while workers cleared debris or disarmed crude explosives laid beneath wooden bridges.

At midday, Juliette disembarked with two dozen civic scouts to inspect a collapsed trestle near the village of Padul. They found a sign left behind—painted in crude red on wood:

"The Light Brings Plague. Turn Back."

She ran her hand along the rough grain of the plank. "They’ve begun equating sanitation with sin."

Back on the train, Lancelot received a private letter from a contact in Glanzreich: the Vatican had issued an informal decree against "technological evangelism." It did not name Aragon directly, but everyone knew.

"They call us blasphemers now," he muttered.

Bellido spat out the window. "Good. You know you’re close to victory when the powerful abandon reason for superstition."

But not everyone was ready to follow the plan.

That evening, Lancelot called a meeting of Civic Brigade leaders in the refitted cargo car. Heated voices filled the space. Some engineers, hardened by sabotage and martyrdom in Carmona, demanded blood. The brigades had been conceived as civil protectors—but many now carried scars, and with them, fury.

"They hanged our teachers," said Captain Echevarría, a railway surveyor turned officer. "They poison the wells, they spread lies, and you want us to build gardens?"

Lancelot stood. "I want you to win."

He paced the car, eyes passing over each grim face.

"You know what we’re building. A world where might does not dictate right. Where a student with a wrench has more power than a duke with a musket. But that world cannot be built with vengeance. If we salt the earth behind us, there’ll be nothing left to inherit."

A heavy silence.

Then Juliette spoke.

"I’ll go first."

Eyes turned to her.

"I’ll enter the city alone. With tools, not weapons. Let them see it—let them fear the truth. That we don’t need to fire a shot to win. That the future walks calmly, and refuses to kneel."

Lancelot wanted to object. But he saw the fire in her. It was not recklessness—it was clarity.

He nodded. "You’ll not go alone. But you’ll go first."

—

They entered Granada not with fanfare, but with work.

The Iron Serpent halted outside the city proper. A smaller column formed: carts, wires, lamp posts, water pumps, iron supports. The Civic Brigades marched behind the convoy, boots coated in soot, eyes alert.

Juliette rode at the front on horseback. Not regal—resolute. She wore her engineer’s coat, stained from days of work and travel. Her hair was tied back tight. No jewelry. No flag.

At the first checkpoint, they were stopped.

"You will not pass," barked a local officer, backed by twenty arquebusiers.

Juliette dismounted and approached with a leather tube in hand. She unrolled it on the officer’s makeshift table.

"This is your water main," she said. "It collapsed two weeks ago. This blueprint will fix it. You can keep the gun, or keep the water."

The man hesitated. Behind him, villagers were watching. Children, barefoot and thin. An old woman coughing into a rag.

After a moment, he stepped aside.

The convoy passed.

—

Over the next three days, Civic Brigades moved like veins into the city’s broken body.

They rethreaded cables, rebuilt aqueducts, patched rooftops. They gave away tools, taught classes in the open air, set up streetlight generators, and offered hot meals to anyone willing to work.

But in the shadow of the Alhambra, resistance brewed.

High atop the red citadel, nobles gathered in secret. The Marquis of Alba, a man whose wealth stemmed from slave-mined mercury in the colonies, issued a decree: "No citizen of Granada shall yield to the Iron Princes. The light they bring is Lucifer’s fire."

That decree was read aloud in every parish, backed by the local bishop—Don Vicente.

On the fourth morning, Juliette found a crude effigy of herself hanged near the southern well. Scrawled on the chest: "Builder of Babel."

She burned it silently.

Then she set her plan in motion.

—

The Cathedral of Granada was a hulking gothic mass—grand, ancient, and cold. Juliette had visited it as a child, and always thought it looked like a tomb pretending to be a palace. But it had a secret advantage.

It sat at the city’s heart. And it had enough elevation to be seen from every major ward.

She approached the bishop that afternoon.

"You desecrate sacred ground," he told her.

"I illuminate it," she said. "Literally."

Behind her, twenty Civic Brigade electricians carried copper coils, dynamo cranks, and bulbs encased in thick glass.

"You have no right—"

She cut him off. "And you have no candles. The people are already watching. If you wish to throw me out, do it now. But they will know who kept the dark."

The bishop paled.

He did not stop her.

—

By sundown, wires trailed across the cathedral floor. Juliette stood at the base of the central spire. Wind whipped her coat. Rain threatened.

The city below was silent.

The crowd outside the cathedral had grown—thousands now. Nobles in their balconies. Farmers on carts. Bakers, children, widows, priests.

Juliette glanced to the engineer beside her. "Are we charged?"

"Yes, Ingenera."

She nodded.

"Do it."

With a lever pull, the dynamo surged.

And light exploded from the windows.

For the first time in history, electric light filled a cathedral. Golden and white. No flames. No smoke. Just pure, radiant power humming through ancient stone.

Gasps echoed through the plaza.

From across the city, families stared. Faces lit for the first time at night by something other than fire.

It was not just a spectacle.

It was a declaration.

—

From London to Naples, the image spread.

Sketches. Descriptions. Panic in noble houses. Elation in industrial guilds. Scandal in Rome.

"He has weaponized God’s house," read one Glanzreich paper.

"He has given it back to the people," said another—secretly printed in Seville.

—

Back in the Iron Serpent, Lancelot read the reports with a glass of water in hand.

Juliette entered, soot-covered, eyes gleaming.

He set the paper down.

"You lit the cathedral," he said.

"I didn’t just light it," she replied. "I rewired history."

He smiled—then stood, placing a hand on her shoulder.

"Tomorrow," he said, "we meet the city council. Not to ask for permission. But to offer them a seat at the table we’ve already built."

She nodded.

The train’s whistle blew again.

Granada had been turned.

And now, ahead, the rest of the south waited—still in darkness.

But the lights were coming.

And they would not go out again.