The air around him smelled like blood and gun powder. War hadn't returned to Europe for the simple reason that it'd never actually left. They all drifted through names and conflicts as smoothly as water. It had since long before his birth and, come the inevitability or just possibility of his death, it would continue for the rest of time.
It had Prussia excited though, if he was pushed, the feeling was far more tense than joyous. It wasn't as if he enjoyed the feeling of being impaled by swords and guns, but it was what he'd been bred and raised for. He might as well greet it with a smile.
He tried to leave all that outside as he entered the building. He allowed the smell of cold, slightly-damp, stone fill his nostrils. He shut the door and let it echo through the halls. As it faded, he was left with his own footsteps and the creak of the kerosene lantern.
French generals had spoken with disdain for the Prussians, and the German tribes beside that. They scoffed at the idea that they could pose any sort of threat, much less a serious one. It wasn't much of a surprise, the French army was deemed invincible by people who believed in things like that.
What Prussia realized, what France knew but wouldn't bring himself to admit, was that his well-armed, well-trained army was rendered impotent without Napoleon. Any allies France could have had sidestepped, meekly or proudly, any form of alliance.
Of course, Prussia had known this would happen. He'd been preparing for this war for years, even if he hadn't had any idea when it would be. This was why he spent so many nights befriending degenerates in the south German states; this was why he'd forced himself to cozy up to Brits and Russians.
It wasn't a sure-thing, but it was as close as they would ever get. Prussia had grinned as he told his brothers as much. And, despite a chorus of 'Bitte?' while he laid out the ground work, they didn't voice objections. It wasn't so much because they didn't see his strategies as full-hardy, but they were contractually obligated to go along with him or face uprising which would have torn them apart form the inside.
There was one person, the only one who really counted, who believed in his plans. Prussia smiled as he entered the burial chamber and found that the boy, as he'd believed he would, had begun to wake up.
The boy lay on a slab in the center of the room. His skin was as pale as a porcelain doll and his breathing was near undetectable, but it was far better than the shallow-skinned corpse Prussia had brought back when the empire collapsed. He looked ready to open his eyes for the first time in... Prussia had lost track of how many years, but it'd been a while.
He was a clever boy, though. Maybe he was able to smell the air, too, even from deep within his mausoleum. He'd put in all this work to revive, it'd be a shame to disappoint him.
Prussia kissed him on the head, and promised to return victorious or not at all.
He left the boy for the outside world, to spill blood and build the climate necessary for him to grow up. As he emerged into the light, and was drenched in the scent of what was to come, he came to a conclusion.
The boy's name would be Ludwig.