The cafe was quiet again.
It had become their sanctuary between journeys a place where the present met the past in the form of books, maps, and two weary travelers trying to grasp the vastness of what they were experiencing.
Outside, the world moved on as usual. Inside, Elian's fingers drummed against the porcelain edge of a coffee cup, his eyes unfocused.
Selene sat across from him, her presence as composed as ever, though the silence between them carried a subtle weight neither dared to disturb just yet.
Elian finally spoke. "I watched him die."
Selene looked up.
"Augustus. The first emperor. The man who changed Rome forever," he said, voice barely above a whisper. "He wasn't the monster I expected. But he wasn't a savior either."
Selene tilted her head. "And what does that tell you?"
Elian leaned back, staring at the ceiling. "That power is never simple. It corrupts, yes, but it also protects. It builds roads and monuments, while destroying lives.
Augustus was… a contradiction."
Selene nodded. "As are most figures in history. The further you go, the more blurred the lines become."
He picked up his leather journal and thumbed through it.
Pages filled with notes, impressions, questions. Some were barely legible, written in a frantic hand while fleeing crumbling cities or in the quiet aftermath of ancient violence. Others were calm, thoughtful reflections scribbled under the stars.
"What if I forget all of this?" Elian asked suddenly.
"You won't," Selene replied. "It will stay with you in ways you don't yet understand. Time leaves marks not just on history, but on us."
Elian looked at her, searching for something. "You've done this for so long. How do you not go numb?"
There was a flicker in her eyes. A rare vulnerability.
"I don't always succeed," she said. "Sometimes, it hurts too much. Sometimes I question the point of it all. But then…"
She paused, placing a hand on the table. "Then I remember someone needs to witness it. Someone has to carry the truth forward. If not for change, then for remembrance."
Elian glanced at the stack of history books beside him. The same ones he used to treat as sacred relics. Now, they felt incomplete. Sanitized. Hollow without the sounds, smells, and sorrows of the lives behind them.
He spoke again. "Is it always this hard?"
"Yes," she said softly. "But that doesn't mean it's not worth doing."
Their server brought over fresh drinks tea for Selene, coffee for Elian. The momentary clatter broke the tension.
"So where to next?" Elian asked, sipping.
Selene didn't answer immediately. She pulled from her satchel a folded piece of parchment a map unlike any Elian had seen before. It shimmered faintly as if drawn with stardust and memory.
She spread it out on the table. Cities shifted on the page. Rivers flowed. Empires expanded and collapsed in quiet animation.
"We're stepping into darker times," she said.
He watched as the map pulsed and Rome faded. "Carthage?" he guessed.
She gave a small smile. "Very good. But not just the fall. The betrayal, the politics, the cruelty. It's not easy to watch a civilization be erased."
Elian frowned. "And we can't stop it?"
"No," she said, folding the map again. "We're observers, not saviors. We learn. We carry it forward. That's the only power we're allowed."
He nodded, trying to accept that truth. But something inside him wrestled with it the helplessness of knowing what's to come and being unable to do anything.
Selene saw it in his eyes. "You're beginning to understand why time isn't kind."
The words stayed with him, long after the cafe's bell rang and they stepped into the fading afternoon light.
That night, Elian sat alone in his room, the leather journal open on his lap. His pen hovered above the page before he finally began to write:
Power is neither light nor dark. It is the reflection of those who wield it.
Augustus ruled with vision and cruelty. He brought peace and silence. He gave the world stability and fear.
I don't know if I admire him or pity him. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
But I do know this: the past is alive. And I'm beginning to hear its heartbeat.
He closed the journal.
Selene was right. Time wasn't kind.
But maybe, just maybe, that's what made it worth traveling through.