Fallen Horizon Ashura: Sons of Sparta
Chapter 1 Homecoming
......
Smoke.
Not the kind that drifts lazy from a campfire. This smoke was acrid—sour, clinging, thick enough to chew. Steam hissed from ruptured pipes, painting everything in ghostlight and white blur.
Maxus stood in the middle of it. Again.
The bunker.
Air like rust. The stench of hot copper soaked into his skin. Screams rang off concrete. His brothers broke around him—one staggering by with half an arm, another falling, split from shoulder to hip.
Then it came again.
That sound.
Metal on flesh. A deep, awful crack that echoed inside the ribs.
Maxus turned.
And there he was.
The Demon.
No name. No tribe. Just shape and slaughter. Black armor. Red visor. Moving through fog like death given form. The axe in his hand—he never remembered when it appeared, only that it always did. Like the dream couldn't breathe without it.
Maxus charged.
He always did. Always would.
His blade slashed.
The Demon caught it.
Elbow—jaw—crack.
White flash. Then—
The fingers.
In his mouth. Jammed deep. He tried to scream.
Too late.
Flesh tore.
His cheek split. Blood poured hot down his throat. His scream turned to choking. He stumbled, half-blind. Then the Demon threw him—hard—into the wall like he weighed nothing.
And that's when the axe returned to the dream.
Sometimes it came before the disfigurement, sometimes after. Never mattered.
His face always tore.
That part never changed.
Then the voice. Low. Cold. Final.
"Get stronger."
And the world burned.
His men screamed. Died.
Then the voice that broke him.
"Go, Maxus. Retreat."
His father.
Henoc, standing alone. Shield lifted. Eyes fixed on the Demon. A mountain ready to fall.
Maxus tried to speak—to scream—not in pain.
In protest.
Not again. Please.
But the axe rose.
And the dream ended the way it always did.
He felt the hand before he heard the voice.
Maxus jolted upright, breath ragged, hand already at his blade. In a blink, he was on his feet—knife drawn, pressed against a throat.
A figure loomed.
"Maxus! Sir—it's me!" the soldier gasped, hands raised in surrender.
Maxus blinked hard. The world was smeared in red—echoes of fire, blood, the axe. Sweat clung to him like armor. His heart thundered in his ears.
"…Luko?" he rasped.
The young soldier nodded, frozen, careful not to breathe too loud.
Maxus let the knife fall back, sheathing it with a flick. He exhaled slowly, then ran a hand down his face—only to flinch as his fingers passed over the torn edge of his scar.
Still there.
Still fresh in the dark, no matter how long it had been.
"The men?" he asked, voice steadier now, though it scraped like gravel.
"Rested," Luko said. "Ready for the final trek home."
Maxus nodded. Stood. His joints ached—not from the road, but from what he carried behind his ribs. He looked across the camp: canvas rustled in the breeze, cookfires burned low, and the mist crept in like forgotten ghosts.
New Rome waited.
And whatever came with it… he'd meet it on his feet.
Awake.
.....
Two weeks of silence.
Not peace—silence. The kind that clung to the skin like grave-dust. The kind that turned Legion men into ghosts marching home in perfect formation. Blood had dried on armor and stiffened into brown-black crust. Sweat had baked into cloth, leather, and skin until it smelled like iron and dirt and unspoken things.
Two weeks of broken sleep. Of half-choked screams caught in the throats of soldiers who no longer dreamed of glory—only of survival. Blades were gripped in the dark out of instinct, not discipline. Men flinched at sudden noises and spoke in murmurs, as if the very echo of their voices might awaken something waiting in the fog of memory.
Two weeks since Henoc fell.
Two weeks since the Demon tore the world apart beneath the earth, in the cursed dark of the Oseram depth they were never meant to breach.
Now, they returned.
New Rome rose ahead, shimmering in the morning heat like a dream carved from stone and ambition. At a distance, it looked like a mirage—impossible, almost, in its scale and severity.
But it was real.
Colossal.
Grim in its majesty.
And before the towers, before the banners of red and gold snapping like fire, came the Arch.
The Great Arch of the Old World—salvaged, reinforced, polished into symbol and sermon alike. Once rusted and fractured, it now stood resurrected by Caesar's command. A monument not just to what was lost, but to what had been claimed in its place.
To pass beneath it was to step out of the wilds and into Empire.
Beyond the Arch, New Rome revealed itself in full—not in stages, but all at once, like a curtain ripped back from a battlefield.
What had once been Saint Louis had long since died. In its place stood a city reborn in the image of power.
In the beginning, the walls had been crude but effective—salvaged from the skeletal remains of collapsed skyscrapers, rebar and concrete piled together by desperate hands. Steel beams had been torn from rusting overpasses. Transit tunnels collapsed and packed with rubble to form makeshift battlements. It was survival masquerading as civilization.
But that had been decades ago.
Now, the walls stood proper.
Stone quarried from the reclaimed Ozarks. Metal pulled from old-world wreckage, melted down and recast in furnaces fed by ideology and industry. What was once welded together out of necessity had been rebuilt out of intention.
These were not the walls of scavengers.
They were the fortresses of empire.
Steel and concrete danced in baroque flourishes, ribbed like the remains of gods. Tower spires bristled with ballistae and signal masts, crowned in red flame. Bridges and aqueducts connected inner circles with outer tiers. The outer districts thrived in controlled chaos—markets, mess halls, training pits, and forges. Tarpaulin awnings dyed Legion red flapped in the wind, marking drill yards from commerce lanes.
High balconies, reserved for senatorial eyes, loomed like vultures above the common walkways—each bearing the crest of a founding family, etched in gold and obsidian. Statues of past generals and war-priests lined the courtyards.
This city was not built for comfort or elegance.
It was built to survive, to command, to endure.
Brutal. Efficient. Indomitable.
Home.
The gates of New Rome opened with a grinding of gears and chain, the sound deep and deliberate—not mechanical, but ritualistic. The kind of sound designed to remind you that passage was not earned lightly.
Beyond the threshold stood the City Guard, iron-helmed and silent in perfect formation. Their armor shone with ceremonial polish, but the way they stood told Maxus these were not mere parade men. They were veterans—chosen not for loyalty alone, but for presence. For being immovable.
At their head stood a man broader than the rest, shoulders squared, posture stone-solid beneath his crimson-fringed cloak. The golden trim of a Praetorian Guard Captain marked him not just as elite, but as one of the emperor's inner shield. He stepped forward the moment Maxus crossed beneath the Arch.
He said nothing at first.
Just studied Maxus in the open silence, his eyes tracing the edge of the scar, the exhaustion beneath it, and the way the man carried himself—upright, blood-worn, but unbroken.
"You look like your father," the captain said finally.
Maxus didn't flinch. Just gave a sharp, measured nod, jaw clenched.
"He died standing."
The captain's gaze didn't soften, but there was something behind it—a flicker of respect.
"I read the report," he said. "Servius delivered it clean. The Senate will want to see you."
Maxus was about to ask when or why, but something in the captain's face shifted—a flicker of hesitation. Then something else. Weight.
"There's something else you should know," the captain said, voice dropping low.
Maxus tensed. "What is it?"
The man didn't blink.
"Your father's death wasn't the only one that mattered while you were gone."
The words hung in the air like a guillotine blade, not swung, but poised.
And somewhere beyond the Arch, within the great stone halls and shadowed corridors of New Rome, something had already begun to shift.
Change was waiting.
The Praetorian told him in the gatehouse. No fanfare. No drums. Just a quiet room lit by torchlight, the air thick with heat and dust. Murals of conquest and glory lined the walls—painted over flaking drywall, old bones of the world holding up new visions. It was there, in that hushed and flickering space, that Maxus heard the truth.
Lanius was dead.
Cut down during a sanctioned border duel with the Kansani. Not in an ambush. Not by sabotage. But in the old way—single combat, witnessed and recorded.
And it wasn't Jorta.
That was the part that struck everyone hardest. Not the death itself—Lanius was mortal, after all, and age had begun to weigh even on him—but who had done it. The rivalry between Jorta and Lanius had spanned decades, a mythic thread woven through the wars of the Great Plains. They were two avatars of violence, two ideologies wrapped in flesh. Lanius, the Blade of the East. Jorta, the Iron Beast of the Grove. And only Jorta had ever faced the Blade and lived to speak of it.
Their last battle had ended in Jorta's favor—barely. Lanius had limped from the field with blood in his lungs and bone showing through his chestplate. It had been the closest thing to death the Blade of the East had ever tasted. And it was that wound—combined with Caesar's declining health—that led to the ceasefire. A rare and uneasy truce, forged not out of mercy, but necessity.
Caesar had agreed to the duels as a delaying action, so he would have the time to prepare—time to secure the Senate, the command lines, the very soul of New Rome. Time to manage legacy before chaos took root.
But now Lanius was dead—and not by Jorta's hand.
By another.
The reports were hard to accept at first. Whispers of a figure in Deathclaw leather, wielding a blazing axe, visor glowing red in the dust-choked wind. It sounded like tribal exaggeration. A myth built too quickly. But the testimonies came from trusted sources—Legion spotters, independent witnesses, even a captured Oseram scribe. All said the same.
The one who felled Lanius was not the old rival.
It was someone new.
The Kansani called him the Witness.
Maxus hadn't spoken during the briefing. Hadn't moved. But inside, something in him cracked sideways. Not broken—but bent sharp, re-angled toward something inevitable. He knew. Long before the others began to speculate. Long before the reports were compared and re-read. He knew.
It was the same man.
The same Demon who had torn his face open in the bunker beneath the Golden Plains. The one who shattered his father's ribs with a blow that sounded like thunder. The one whose voice still echoed in Maxus's skull, cold and final—"Get stronger."
He stood alone by the firepit in the center of the hall, flames painting light across the scar that never truly healed. His thoughts churned beneath the surface. Lanius was more than a general. He had been a symbol. A controlled monster. A leash wrapped around the throat of chaos, and everyone knew that even Caesar feared what might be unleashed if that leash ever snapped.
Now it had.
And with Caesar's body failing, Maxus could feel the tension creeping in like a storm behind the walls. In the way the guards stood too rigid. In the silence that followed his steps. In the glances cast between officers, heavy with questions they didn't dare ask out loud.
He imagined the whispers had already begun in the shadowed corners of New Rome. Senators weighing their odds. Frumentarii sniffing for weakness. Commanders pulling rank with harder eyes. The stability Lanius enforced through sheer myth was fraying—and Caesar's presence alone wouldn't hold the seams together much longer.
Maxus curled his hand into a fist, nails digging into the calloused skin of his palm. He thought of the stories Henoc once told him—of the days before the Legion, when they were still Yonanta. Before the Arch was rebuilt. Before the banners. When survival was just a waiting game between sickness and despair. When people drifted like ghosts across the dust, not because they had nowhere to go, but because they no longer cared to try.
Caesar had changed that.
Say what you would about the wars, the crucifixions, the iron-tongued laws—the Legion had brought purpose. Fire. A reason to rise in the morning. Something bigger than the dirt.
Maxus looked up to the vault ceiling, where the Legion's banners hung like ancient prayers—red and gold, heavy with soot and memory. And in that quiet, torchlit moment, he made his vow.
Not just to Henoc, who died facing the Demon.
Not just to the brothers who bled beside him on the long road home.
But to New Rome itself.
"I'll do my part," he whispered. "Even if no one else will."
And in that moment, the son of Henoc was no longer just a survivor. No longer a soldier with orders or a boy carrying grief. He became something else.
A guardian.
Of legacy. Of flame. Of a city about to start its countdown to its final hour.
As Maxus exited the gatehouse, the sun was already rising higher above the rooftops of New Rome, burning the fog from the towers and casting sharp shadows across the avenues.
His steps were measured, slow, but his mind was moving fast.
Lanius was gone.
The city wouldn't say it aloud yet, but it was already reacting—like a wounded beast twitching in its sleep. The Senate would scramble. The nobles would posture. The commanders would weigh one another like gladiators in the opening moments of a duel.
And in the middle of it all stood Valeria.
The Silver-Lion.
The daughter of Lanius. The only child of Octavia, Caesar's daughter. The bloodline was pure—unbroken from the founder himself.
But it wasn't enough.
Because she was a woman.
Maxus had never envied her. Never pitied her either. But now, with the blade of history hovering over the city's neck, he found himself thinking about her more than he expected.
If she had been born a man, maybe things would be stable now. Predictable. But that wasn't how the world worked.
New Rome's foundations were laid by patriarchal tribes—the Founding Clans, the Dust Marchers, the Blight-Pacified. Even the New Blood families, who had joined the Empire for protection rather than been conquered, had adopted the same traditions. Men fought. Men ruled. Women supported from behind the wall.
It wasn't written in law. It didn't have to be. It was deeper than that. It was in the marrow of the system.
Yes, Valeria was trained. Of course she was. To be the daughter of Lanius and not know the sword would have been laughable. But people had always dismissed her training as symbolic—acceptable only because it was expected that royal blood should not be defenseless.
Not because anyone believed she'd need to lead.
And now?
Now the Blade of the East was dust and myth, and Caesar's own body was beginning to fail him.
There was no heir. Not a real one.
Just Valeria—watching, waiting, knowing that no matter her blood, no matter her skill, she would never be accepted as the future.
Maxus clenched his jaw.
He remembered the first time he saw her.
Years ago, at a Senate feast in the upper tiers of the Red Tower. He had been fifteen—freshly blooded but still green. She was twelve, already tall for her age, dressed in ceremonial crimson with her mother's cold poise and her father's fire burning just behind her eyes.
That night, the noble families had circled her like carrion birds. Dozens of senators brought their soft, powdered sons to charm her. Pretty boys with manicured hands and memorized compliments. One after another, they tried to catch her interest.
But Valeria didn't care for the weak, or the stupid.
She cared for strength. For intelligence. She had been raised not by courtiers but by a warrior and a strategist. She wasn't looking for a husband. She was judging potential threats and tools.
She hadn't looked at Maxus for most of the night.
He was the youngest son of Henoc, a respected officer but no high noble. His family had name enough to attend but not enough to attract attention.
He had no intention of joining the parade of fools trying to flatter her.
When their eyes finally met across the hall, he had simply raised his cup in silent acknowledgment.
And to his surprise—she nodded back.
That was the whole exchange. No words. No games. Just a nod. But it had stayed with him.
Because in that single gesture, they had seen each other clearly.
He hadn't tried to win her.
And she hadn't tried to be won.
He wondered if she remembered it now.
Not the party. Not the politics. Just the cup. The nod. The silence between them.
In a room full of masks, they'd simply seen each other—if only for a heartbeat.
And now, years later, with fire under the Senate's walls and blood drying on banners, that memory lingered.
He wondered if she remembered it too he thought as his men were settled in the barracks—armor unstrapped, wounds redressed, beds claimed with the quiet gravity of survivors—Maxus made his way to the scriptorium alcove near the officer's hall. It was late. Most of the fortress slept. Only the low hiss of oil lamps and the shuffle of a lone scribe filled the silence.
He sat down at the desk and took the parchment himself. He didn't trust anyone else to put the words down right. Not for this.
There was no wax seal yet, no signature—just the page in front of him, waiting.
His hand hovered over the parchment for a moment before he began, words forming not from obligation, but from something deeper.
To Her Grace, Valeria the Silver-Lion, Daughter of the Blade of the East,
Granddaughter of Caesar,
I offer my sincerest condolences for the loss of your father. He was not a man given to kindness, nor one who sought it. But he was a force in the world—undeniable, unwavering—and his absence will not pass unnoticed.
I write not as a courtier, nor a suitor, but as a son.
My own father, Henoc of the Dustline, fell recently in battle—cut down by the same foe.
The one the Kansani call the Witness.
I carry a scar from him, left not only on my face, but across the line of every man who stood beside me that day.
I do not pretend our griefs are the same.
But I acknowledge yours.
And I recognize the weight of it.
Should you ever require the truth of the field—without embellishment or flattery—I will speak it plainly.
Until then, may your fire remain unshaken.
—Maxus, of house Henoc
He read it once. Then again.
There were no wasted words. No grand gestures. Just acknowledgment.
He folded the letter, sealed it in Legion-standard red wax, and marked it with his father's sign—a simple Dustline crescent, not noble, but known.
At dawn, he found one of the messenger boys outside the stables. Young, eager, not yet blooded. Maxus handed him the letter without ceremony.
"Take this to the palace," he said. "Not urgent. But make sure it reaches her. Properly."
The boy nodded and tucked the message into a leather satchel.
Maxus watched him ride off under the morning mist, the hoofbeats fading into the quiet of New Rome.
He didn't expect a reply.
That wasn't the point.
It was enough that the words had been sent.
That someone else who knew the pain now knew she wasn't alone in it.
It was mid-morning when another messenger arrived.
Not a boy this time, but a proper courier—red-and-silver tunic crisp, boots polished, bearing a scroll bound in soft ribbon and stamped with the sigil of House Trebanius. A crescent sun cradled in a pair of wings.
Maxus recognized it immediately.
His sister's husband.
He broke the seal and unfolded the parchment slowly, noting the careful, elegant script. His sister had always written with precision, even when she was young according to his father—lines neat, curves unbroken. It was the kind of thing the tutors praised as "proper Roman grace."
He read:
Dearest Maxus,
Word of your return reached us yesterday. We are grateful the gods did not take you with the others.
The children have barely slept since they heard. They've already begun fighting over who gets to sit nearest you. Please prepare yourself for questions, noise, and a likely duel between Silen and Rufus over your old training dagger.
But that is not why I write.
I need you here, Maxus. Not just as brother, or soldier, but as son.
I need to hear how he died.
From you.
No secondhand account. No formal Legion dispatch.
It must be your voice.
We've arranged for the noon meal. You'll come to the villa. That's not a request.
We'll eat. We'll talk. And afterward, I will mourn him properly.
—Livia
Maxus folded the letter, resting it against his knee for a long moment. He stared down at the floorboards of the barracks, still stained with dust from the march home.
His sister had married well. A second son, yes—but from a respected house, one loyal to Caesar without being slavish. And more importantly, the man treated her with care. Whether there was love between them was hard to say—this city didn't traffic in love—but he didn't beat her. Didn't belittle her. That was enough. That counted.
She'd earned a quiet life. A good house. Children. A villa on the outskirts where wind carried the smell of cypress and roasted wheat instead of oil and iron.
She hadn't seen Henoc in two years.
Maxus rubbed at the scar on his cheek and exhaled slowly. He hadn't spoken aloud what had happened in the bunker. Not the full shape of it. Not to anyone. The others had their versions, colored by panic, filtered through war cries and smoke.
But she needed the truth.
And somehow, he needed to tell her.
He stood. He'd have enough time to bathe, change into something less scorched, and find a bottle of something good to bring.
He owed her that much.
He owed their father more.
Maxus wasn't the only one who called the barracks home.
For most lowborn men of the Legion, the barracks weren't a temporary station—they were the house, the hearth, the constant. Their families lived elsewhere, often as servants in the villas of noble houses. Courted women worked the noble halls, polished the marble floors, stirred the kitchens, or cared for the children of patricians. It wasn't seen as degrading. To outsiders, it might have looked like a lesser life—servitude dressed up in gold trim. But that was a misunderstanding.
Because to serve in a noble house was to be protected.
You were fed. You were housed. You were given robes to wear and medical care when ill. Your children were taught to read, to write, to clean with pride, and to stand with the posture of someone who belonged to a system that remembered your name. And most importantly: you could save.
It wasn't unusual for a servant couple to quietly amass coin over a decade and then purchase land outside the city walls—a future. It was tradition, even. Most Legion parents saved specifically so their sons, once released from their mandatory term of service, could return to a house that was truly theirs.
Maxus' family had such a house.
A small villa of white stone and red tile along the southern aqueducts, shaded by olive trees and choked with the laughter of children. But Maxus didn't live there anymore—not really. His oldest brother had taken it as head of the household, raising three sons and one daughter under the careful watch of their mother. He kept the place in good order, ran it with discipline, and left no illusions about who held the keys.
Their second brother, Lucan, lived in the inner sanctum of the Archives.
He had no wife. No children. And that was by choice, mostly.
Lucan had always favored men, and while the Legion did not cast stones for it—Rome had no patience for wasting strong minds or quiet loyalties—the system didn't make space for him to raise a proper family either. The orphan boys were taken into Legion training camps. The girls were shaped into noble servants. Adoption was rare, and rarely honored. Lucan would have a lover, maybe two in his lifetime, but no house to pass down. He seemed content with scrolls and silence.
That left Maxus.
He had chosen the path Henoc once did. The long road. The soldier's road.
Not just the required ten years of service, but all of it—until the body failed or the blood ran dry. He would serve until the healers told him he could no longer grip a sword without trembling. And even then, he wouldn't retire. He would become an instructor. Teach fresh boys how to hold a spear, how to march without shame, how to bury their brothers without blinking.
It was the kind of life that gave structure when the world was chaos.
The barracks weren't just a place to sleep. They were a tribe, forged in discipline and fire. When a man went to visit his family, he didn't leave home—he visited a second part of it.
That morning, as Maxus prepared to leave for his sister's villa, he saw it all in motion:
Veterans laughing with half their teeth missing. Young men trying to shave with broken mirrors. Armor being polished. Letters being sealed for sweethearts in noble kitchens. And a dozen quiet conversations about land prices, about the state of harvests near the river, about one day.
They were soldiers now. But most would return to homes they'd never built, families they'd only seen on holidays, and plots of land purchased by parents who believed the Legion made men, not martyrs.
Maxus respected that.
But it wasn't his road.
His name was carved into the Legion's stone. And he would carry its fire until the day it didn't burn in him anymore.
Today, though, his duty wasn't to the Legion.
It was to family. To memory. To Henoc.
He dressed with care. Buckled his belt tight. Cleaned the scar on his cheek until the skin beneath stung.
Then he stepped into the light and began the walk to the villa of House Trebanius.
Maxus walked the outer tier roads of New Rome, flanked by colonnades and crimson-hung arches, the sound of city life echoing up from market steps and drill squares. Vendors hawked spiced grain bread and goat meat near the gates. Servants in livery swept marble steps. Guards rotated in quiet precision. It was alive in a way the battlefield never was—structured, intentional, breathing like an engine made of blood and stone.
He moved with purpose, but not haste. The villa could wait. His sister would not rush the moment they both dreaded.
And besides, the walk gave him time to think—about the system, the spine of it all. Not the Legion. Not the banners. The arrangement.
Everyone thought Rome's strength came from its armies. But that wasn't true.
Its strength came from the choices people made to stay.
Not everyone saved for land. Not everyone left their house of service after ten or twenty years. Some chose to remain—servants for life, under the same roofs where they were born, working the same grounds their parents once tended. And that wasn't shameful. It wasn't slavery. They could leave anytime, go west to the reclaimed plains or east toward the floodlands. No chains held them.
But they didn't leave. Because the truth was, sometimes service was a good deal.
Some lords didn't have sons. And power without a male heir was a fire without tinder—it would fade. Better to marry a daughter to a promising servant's son than to let the estate fall into the hands of a rival noble family. Loyalty mattered. Competence mattered. Blood could be made noble, if the alternative was ruin.
It wasn't rare.
There were dozens of stories—real and embellished—about young stableboys taught to read, trained to fight, raised under the quiet eye of a lord who saw more in them than muck and muscle. They were mentored, guided, tested. And if they proved themselves, they were welcomed into the family not as servants, but as sons.
It was even the premise of a famous stage play, "The Olive Branch and the Lion's Flame." Every child in New Rome knew it.
The story followed a servant's son—clever, blunt, with dirt still under his nails—who fell in love with the daughter of a stern but fair lord. The girl was promised to another: a cruel noble's second son who planned to claim the estate, cast out the servant's family, and keep the boy's sister as a mistress. The servant's son was mocked, beaten, humiliated—but he endured.
He joined the Legion. He fought in the outer provinces. Faced a Kansani warlord in single combat, and returned with renown and the war mask of his slain foe.
The play ended not with a duel for the girl's hand, but with the old lord placing his signet into the servant boy's palm, naming him heir—not for birthright, but for earnestness, loyalty, and the blood he gave for Rome.
It was a love story, yes—but more than that, it was a myth of belonging. A tale of earned honor, of love between generations, of Rome as a house that anyone could enter, if they walked with pride.
And while some saw it as idealism, Maxus had lived enough to know it wasn't all fantasy.
If a servant family was lucky enough to have a grandson—and if the father was still serving on the frontier or garrisoned in foreign lands—then the household would often pour every lesson, every resource, every moment into molding that child into a proper heir. It wasn't just practical. It was cultural. It was legacy.
Blood wasn't the only way to make Rome endure. It was just one of the easier ones.
This sort of arrangement had become far more common since the Derangement—when the machines began to turn feral and the tribes began to look for shelter more than conquest. Dozens of lesser clans, scattered families, and isolated cultures had joined New Rome not as slaves, but as petitioners.
The Senate had called them the New Bloods.
Not conquered. Not chained. But accepted, under oath and tithe, into the fabric of the city in exchange for protection—from corrupted machines, from Deathclaws, from Greenskin packs in the southern forests.
It was an agreement. A contract. A mutual need.
And like everything else in New Rome, it came with hierarchy, opportunity, and expectation. The New Bloods could rise. Many had. Their children served in the Legion. Their daughters married into house staffs or low-tier nobility. And while some Old Families still sneered, most had learned to respect what the New Bloods could become.
Maxus turned a corner and watched a pair of boys sparring with wooden blades outside a noble training yard. One was clearly a patrician—gold trim on his sash, sandals too clean. The other wore servant's linen and a focused scowl.
The noble boy swung wide, off balance.
The servant boy countered clean and fast, disarming him with a strike across the knuckles.
Maxus nodded once and kept walking.
There was no shame in where you started.
Only in how you finished.
And Rome, for all its blood and law and iron, knew how to mold men from dust.
He walked on toward his sister's villa, the morning sun climbing high, the road quiet around him.
And the past walking beside him, as always.
As Maxus passed under a vaulted walkway near the Temple of the Flame, he saw a chain of slaves led quietly by their overseer—dust-covered, heads bowed, wrapped in linen cloaks. Most were conquered tribesmen, fresh from the southern territories or the wastes east of the Salt Valleys. Their expressions were hollow, sunburnt, beaten into the grim acceptance of men who had lost everything.
He didn't flinch at the sight. It was normal.
They were slaves. And New Rome never pretended otherwise.
Conquered peoples were not coddled. They had stood against the Legion and lost. The law was clear—if you raised arms against Rome and fell, your body served until your debts were worked into the foundation.
But even within that harshness, there were pathways. Small ones. Brutal ones. But real.
A slave under ten, or a child born from one, could petition to join the Legion. If accepted, they were assigned to the harshest postings—the frontier bastions, the cursed zones, the Blightfronts where machines and monsters alike chewed through the unprepared. Their service term was longer. Their gear was lighter. Their path was merciless.
But if they survived?
They walked free.
No ceremony. No feast. Just a stamped writ and a new name on the Legion rolls. A freedman of New Rome.
They could never climb too high—no Centurion stripes, no seats in the officer's wings—but their sons could. And often did.
And for many, that was enough.
Maxus had trained beside a few such men in his early days. Scarred, hard-eyed legionaries with nothing to their names but grit and fury, men who had clawed their way from the mines to the battlefield and earned each breath with blood. They were the most loyal. Not because they loved Rome, but because they had no illusions. Rome had used them. But Rome had also given them a way out.
There were rules, too. The freed man could not buy his parents' liberty. That door stayed closed. But he could buy the freedom of a sibling—if the master agreed.
Or the woman he wished to marry.
And many did.
It was a common story. A slave-soldier fighting not for honor or glory, but for a name and a woman in a noble's kitchen. Nobles knew this. They offered the hope of freedom in exchange for loyalty. "Serve me, and I'll release her," they'd say. And the man would serve. Sometimes for a decade. Sometimes longer.
A pragmatic man would move on. Find another girl. Another cause.
But most of the time, it didn't happen that way.
Maxus had seen it too many times. Love—foolish or pure—was the one weakness even iron couldn't burn out. And many nobles, pragmatic themselves, liked that kind of desperation. It made better servants. Better bodyguards.
He passed a courtyard where a gladiator was being paraded through iron gates—shirtless, scarred, a heavy chain dangling from his collar but held loosely, like a leash that didn't need to be pulled. The crowd around him jeered, but a few clapped. Maxus caught the scent of blood and spiced wine in the air.
Arena life. Not so different from Legion life.
New Rome held death matches like any other power—but even there, a man could earn freedom. Not just survive, but walk away with papers and a name. If he survived enough fights, if he won his matches clean, if he gave the crowd what it wanted, he could earn his second life.
Same stipulations, of course. No freeing your parents. No rising too high. But you could free a brother. Or a lover. Or a child.
That was how it worked.
Brutal, but honest.
It was one of the reasons New Rome had risen faster and spread farther than kingdoms five times its age. His father's old friend, Reop, once said the Carja Sundom had lasted six hundred winters and still held less land than the Legion had claimed in fifty. They held parades and burned prisoners in the Sun-Ring for spectacle. New Rome built aqueducts with its prisoners' bones, but at least it put them to use.
"We make cities," Reop had said once, adjusting his diplomat's sash. "They make shadows."
Maxus hadn't agreed or disagreed then. He still didn't.
He just knew this: without the system—harsh, cracked, unforgiving—there would be no New Rome.
And without New Rome, there would be nothing standing between the people and the long dark of the wilds.
The machines. The beasts. The Blight.
The Demon.
Maxus passed through the market just before midday, the stone underfoot warm with the breath of the city. Stalls lined the path like battlements of brass and linen—fruit piled high in woven baskets, cured meat strung from wooden bars, dyes and incense curling smoke into the air.
People parted when they saw him.
Not because of his uniform. Plenty wore crimson and steel.
It was the scar.
A jagged, still-pink wound that crossed his cheek like a signature written in pain. It marked him. Branded him. Said something about survival that words never could.
And for the first time, Maxus realized—it wasn't all bad.
It still hurt like hell. Pulled tight when he clenched his jaw. Throbbed when the air got too dry.
But it had power.
He caught the eyes of the citizens as he passed. Some of the noble-born women, clean-robed and perfumed, looked away quickly, their faces a flutter of veiled discomfort. But the others—the New Blood women, the daughters of houses that honored service over softness—they looked at him differently. Measured. Curious. Interested.
Maxus didn't linger on it.
But he noted it.
The scar wasn't useless.
He could use it.
He passed into the edge of the flesh market, where the streets grew quieter—not from lack of sound, but from a different kind of noise. The heavy kind. Shackles clinking. Auctioneers calling out lineage and condition. The low murmur of lords bargaining over meat like they were buying cattle, not people.
Cages lined the walk, iron-braced and shadowed. Some held children—dirt-faced, wide-eyed, silent. Too young to understand what was happening, but old enough to feel it.
A Legion officer stood beside one group, armor polished, voice firm. He wasn't selling.
He was recruiting.
Boys under ten were still pliable. Still moldable. The Legion had always known that. The younger they joined, the faster they learned discipline. The faster they forgot what came before.
Nearby, women were being inspected for beauty—set aside for brothels or branded as personal attendants. If they were too beautiful, it was worse. If they resisted, worse still.
Maxus had seen that path. Knew its end.
He passed a row of warriors in heavy cages—battered, scarred, still glaring through cracked lips. They were being assessed by gladiator scouts, or bought outright by arena masters. The too-violent were claimed by the state-owned pits. Too dangerous for private stables.
Then he saw them.
Kansani.
Three of them. Two men and a woman. Not for sale. Their display wasn't a transaction—it was a message.
The merchant stood beside them, arms crossed, smiling like a victor. "See these? Caught by my hunters. Kansani alive. Not bad, eh?"
Kansani weren't easy to take breathing. And New Rome had learned long ago: never sell them to private stables.
They didn't break.
They killed.
Even chained. Even half-starved. Even bleeding.
One had gutted a villa lord in his sleep using a stolen dinner knife hidden in his mouth. Another woman—famed for her beauty—had been sent to a brothel. She burned it to the ground on the third night. No one dared repeat the mistake.
That's why Kansani captives went straight to the arena.
Battle, or death.
Nothing in between.
Maxus slowed as he passed. The Kansani woman—shaved-headed, warpaint still staining the creases of her skin—didn't even glance at him. She was already beyond this world. But one of the men looked up.
Saw the scar.
And grinned.
Then, without warning, he laughed—a deep, rasping sound that turned heads.
He didn't laugh to mock.
He laughed in recognition.
The Kansani reached up and pulled at his own face, dragging fingers across his cheek in a crude mimicry of Maxus's scar.
"So you're the one Rion got," he said, teeth flashing. "Hah! Fucking hell. He's really fighting like a Deathclaw now. Damn. That bastard can do damage."
Maxus froze. The name struck something deep in his chest.
"Rion?" he said.
The Kansani leaned forward, shackles clinking.
"Yeah. The Witness. That's what we call him. That what you call him too?" He grinned. "Didn't think so. Rome never knows what to call its nightmares."
Maxus stepped closer to the bars, fists clenched. "Tell me everything you know. Now."
The Kansani's smile widened, wolfish.
"You want to know about the Witness?" He shrugged, chains rattling. "Then earn it. Beat it out of me. In the arena."
Maxus stared at him, eyes narrow, heart pounding.
The Demon had a name now.
Rion.
The scar on his face pulsed. The heat of the sun dimmed behind the fire rising in his spine.
The market noise faded.
And Maxus stood there, locked in a stare with a laughing savage behind bars, with a name echoing in his ears.
Rion.
The Witness.
And the man who'd cut through the Blade of the East like prophecy fulfilled.
The crowd had heard everything.
That was the problem with Kansani—they weren't quiet unless they were cutting your throat. And this one had spoken loud enough for half the market to catch every word.
The shift in the air was immediate.
The merchants who'd been barking prices now spoke in half-whispers. Stallkeepers leaned across their wares, eyes narrowing. Servants and slaves froze mid-task. A few children stopped playing near the fountain and looked up in silent awe.
Word was already spreading—he could feel it.
Maxus turned slowly from the cage, already seeing the ripple effect sweep through the gathered crowd like oil on water. People connected the dots fast. Maxus. The scar. The Kansani's laugh. The name Rion. And then—Lanius.
The man who had slain the Blade of the East had a name now. And standing just outside the slave pens was someone who had survived him.
And that meant something.
Because Lanius was a legend.
Not a man, not really. A force. The kind of figure mothers used to threaten their sons into discipline. "Clean your spear before the Blade of the East comes and breaks it over your head."
If Maxus had survived crossing blades with the one who felled Lanius and lived to wear the proof across his face?
Then he wasn't just some soldier anymore.
He could hear the rumors hatching already. Some would say he got lucky. That he never actually fought the Witness head-on. That he ran. Hid. Survived by fluke.
Others, though—others would start calling him Red Scar. Would whisper about the son of Henoc who stood toe-to-toe with death and came back in one piece.
He saw the eyes on him. Some wide with wonder. Some calculating.
A few belonged to runners—messenger aides to senators, or minor lords, trying to decide whether Maxus was worth watching or buying. Others watched with less curiosity, more precision. Clean tunics. Simple weapons. Stone-faced composure.
Frumentarii.
The eyes of Rome's shadow.
Maxus clenched his jaw, a muscle twitching near the fresh edge of his scar. The Kansani in the cage laughed again, more to the crowd than to him.
"Have fun with this bullshit, Red Scar."
Maxus's voice came low and sharp. "Don't die before I can get to you in the arena."
The Kansani grinned, wide and unrepentant. "Looking forward to it."
Maxus turned without another word, cloak catching in the breeze as he moved through the parting crowd. People shifted aside instinctively now. Not for rank. For aura. The market didn't see a scarred soldier anymore.
They saw someone touched by myth.
He could already feel the name taking root. Red Scar.
He hated it.
He might need it.
And as he made his way toward the outer noble quarter—toward his sister's villa and the story he still hadn't told—he realized something with absolute clarity:
If he didn't define the story soon…
Rome would do it for him.
The sun had shifted by the time Maxus reached the outer tier of the noble quarter. The roads here were quieter, paved in clean-cut stone, bordered by trimmed hedges and sculpted archways. Even the wind smelled different—cypress, sun-warmed marble, and fruit blossoms instead of ash and iron.
He reached the estate gate and didn't even have to speak.
The guards—two men in half-plate bearing the silver-and-gold crest of House Trebanius—stepped aside without hesitation. One gave a formal nod.
"Legionnaire Maxus. Lady Livia instructed us to let you in the moment you arrived."
The other added, "Last we heard, she was in the garden."
Maxus gave a nod of thanks and stepped inside, his boots quiet against the polished path. The gate shut behind him with a soft click.
He hadn't been here in over a year.
The Trebanius villa wasn't grand, but it was tasteful. Old wealth, quiet confidence. Carved colonnades stretched along the inner walls, framing courtyards filled with ivy, citrus trees, and lionhead fountains. Children's sandals were scattered near the stairs. Clay training swords lay abandoned in the grass. The air carried the distant sound of birds and the rush of water from the garden's central pool.
And then he saw her.
Livia.
She stood in the garden with her back partially turned, speaking softly to a servant who nodded and disappeared into the shadows of the house. When she shifted—just enough for the light to catch her figure—Maxus froze.
She was pregnant.
He blinked, stunned.
She had written, surely. Sent a courier. But unless the message was dire, no rider was going to risk their life weaving through Kansani-controlled territories just to deliver news of a pregnancy. Birth, maybe. But not the announcement.
This would be her fourth child.
He remembered her once saying she hoped for a girl.
She turned—and saw him.
Her expression softened instantly, worry dissolving into something gentler, warmer. She crossed the garden without hesitation, robes brushing against the olive leaves, sandals quiet on the stone.
She reached up without a word and placed her hand on the left side of his face.
Maxus flinched.
The wound still burned beneath the skin.
But he didn't pull away.
Her thumb brushed the edge of the scar, and her eyes filled—not with revulsion, but tears.
"You idiot," she whispered. "You weren't supposed to come back looking worse than Father."
She'd helped raise him after their mother died. Cleaned his wounds. Shouted at him. Comforted him. The methods she used for her own sons now were the ones she'd perfected on Maxus first.
"I heard you were hurt," she said. "The rumor mill's been churning since Servius arrived. But I didn't know it was this."
Her voice caught.
"You were always the most handsome of my brothers, you know that? You didn't need to hear it from me—every one of my so-called friends made it clear. Half of them wanted to marry you, the other half just wanted to say they'd tried."
She sniffed, then smiled bitterly.
"I kept them away. Knew they were wolves in silk. They would've run the second they saw this."
She looked at the scar again.
But didn't look away.
"Let them run," Maxus said quietly. "I didn't come back for them."
She smiled faintly at that, and pulled him into a hug—careful, mindful of the aches he still carried.
For a moment, there was no Rome.
No Senate.
No Demon.
Just a sister, a brother, and the sunlight falling gently over the garden wall.
They stayed like that for a moment, silent, neither wanting to speak what would inevitably come next.
After a quiet moment, Livia stepped back, eyes clear and steady. Her hand remained gently clasping his, anchoring him. Her voice softened, but the question had steel beneath it.
"How did father die, Maxus?" she asked quietly. "How did he really die?"
He paused, breathing slowly, heart tightening in his chest. He had rehearsed a dozen versions of the truth—some gentler, others stripped of all detail—but standing before his sister, he realized only the real truth would suffice. She would accept nothing less.
"He died for me," Maxus finally whispered. "He sacrificed himself… so that I could live."
Livia's expression flickered briefly. Pain, pride, grief—all woven into the quiet set of her jaw. But Maxus couldn't stop himself, the words pouring out like blood from a reopened wound.
"It's my fault he's dead, Livia. I should've fought harder, been stronger—"
He barely saw her hand move before the sound cracked sharply through the garden air.
SLAP.
The sting bloomed hot on his right cheek. She'd struck him—something she'd never done before, not in childhood, not even in anger. The garden went quiet, the air thick with shock.
"Don't you dare," she said fiercely, voice trembling but iron-hard. Tears shone again, but her eyes were furious now, blazing with protective rage. "Don't you dare besmirch father's sacrifice like that!"
Maxus stared at her, speechless, the imprint of her hand still throbbing against his cheek.
"Father chose to save you," she said, voice shaking but unyielding. "He chose it because he believed in you—because he knew you were worth saving. He would never blame you, never regret what he did. Neither will I. And you will not blame yourself. Do you understand me?"
He looked at her, seeing their father's strength in her face, the fierce pride and unshakable resolve he'd always respected in her. Slowly, he nodded, the weight in his chest loosening slightly.
"Yes," he whispered. "I understand."
"Good." Her voice softened just slightly as she placed a gentle hand on the spot she'd struck moments ago, her touch apologetic but unwavering. "Because if you dishonor him by punishing yourself for his courage, I'll strike you again—and harder."
Maxus managed a faint, rueful smile. "I believe you."
"Good," Livia repeated, finally letting her hand drop and stepping back, wiping tears away firmly. She took a deep, steadying breath. "Now, tell me everything. Leave nothing out."
And so he did.
They sat on a stone bench in the shaded garden, the scent of citrus blossoms on the breeze, the sound of the fountain whispering behind them like a distant, patient voice. Livia had calmed, but her hand remained near Maxus's, her presence a tether as he drew in a long breath.
And then he told her.
"The mission started simple," he began, voice steady but low. "Father brought a medium-sized patrol with him—about thirty of us. No banners, no fanfare. Moving large forces through Kansani territory is dangerous, even during a ceasefire. Too easy to spook someone. Too easy to vanish into trees and never be found again."
She nodded, knowing the reality of the frontier well enough. He continued.
"We were heading to an Oseram delving camp. They'd sent word about a promising site—intact, deep, stable. Father wanted to secure a trade deal before anyone else got wind of it. Even New Rome knows the value of a delve. Tools, schematics, power cells. Salvage makes empires move."
Livia remained silent, gaze on his face as his voice grew colder, edged.
"It was a bunker," he said. "Deep enough to still hum with power. The Oseram were already inside. Said they were willing to cut a deal. But just as we were finalizing things—it happened."
His eyes darkened.
"One of the Kansani—a warrior, we thought—broke into the lower level. He was with an Oseram, one we hadn't seen before. That's when the defenses triggered. Auto-turrets. Gas traps. Electricity arcs in the corridors. Chaos."
Livia inhaled sharply, but didn't interrupt.
"They managed to disable the security protocols, somehow. That's when we realized this wasn't just some storage site. It was a weapon research facility from the Old World. From what I pieced together afterward, the Old Ones had been trying to harness the power of lightning—build a mobile weapon that could bottle a storm."
He swallowed.
"And he had it. The Kansani."
Her eyes widened. Maxus nodded grimly.
"Every time he fired that thing, one of our men vanished. Gone. Nothing left but blackened bone. I watched a friend of mine—Tariq—turn into a smoking skeleton mid-scream. It wasn't a gun. It was judgment."
"And when it ran out of charge," he said, voice thickening, "he didn't stop. He switched to a machete. Hand-to-hand. Efficient. Calculated. Like a machine made of rage."
He looked down at his hands. "That's when I entered the fight. I couldn't just stand there."
Livia reached for his hand without a word. He let her take it.
"I had the edge at first," he said. "Gladiatorial training. Form drills. The instructors from your father-in-law's stable—they were good. Brutal, but good. I had skill."
He looked her in the eyes.
"But he had something else."
"What do you mean?" she asked, barely above a whisper.
"Stamina. Speed. Strength that wasn't natural. He fought like something more than a man. Like pain didn't register. Like exhaustion didn't exist."
Then his voice quieted further, shaking.
"He grabbed me. Two fingers. Jammed them into my mouth."
Her grip on his hand tightened.
"He tore my cheek open. Threw me across the room like I was nothing. I hit the wall in front of the shield wall. I couldn't stand. Couldn't breathe."
A beat of silence passed.
"And then I saw it."
He looked away, jaw clenched.
"He summoned an axe. Out of thin air. Big. Two-handed. Glowing like it had been forged in lightning. First swing, he cut one of our men in half. Didn't even wait for the body to hit the floor—he walked through the pieces like they weren't there."
Livia pressed a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with horror.
"And then…" Maxus's voice went quiet, almost reverent. "Father stepped in. He blocked the next swing. Took the brunt of it with his shield. Then again. And again."
His eyes glossed, but no tears fell.
"He stopped the Demon from killing anyone else. Held him back long enough for the rest of us to regroup. To escape."
He looked back at her, voice finally trembling.
"I thought he did it for me. That it was my fault. But now… talking to you, saying it out loud..."
He took a breath, deeper than before, and steadied himself.
"He would've done it for any of his men. He would've stood there for a nobody if it meant buying time. That's who he was."
Livia didn't speak right away. She reached up again and touched the unscarred side of his face with shaking fingers.
"He would have," she whispered. "And he'd be proud that you saw it clearly."
Maxus closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in the garden air, letting it settle in his lungs like forgiveness.
For the first time since the bunker… he didn't feel like the only survivor.
Not anymore.
The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable.
For once, Maxus felt like he could breathe in the quiet.
But it didn't last long.
The distant patter of feet echoed across the stone. A shout, then a laugh. Then—
"Uncle Maxus!"
The words hit like a war cry—only full of joy.
Three boys barreled into the garden from the eastern wing of the villa, all limbs and laughter, tunics crooked and sandals mismatched. One had a wooden gladius in hand. Another was already pretending to lunge. The third practically tackled Maxus around the waist before the older two yanked him back to properly gawk.
Maxus started to lift his hand—to hide the scar, to shield himself from their innocent stares—but Livia caught his wrist, just as she had earlier.
"Let them see," she said, quiet but firm.
He paused. Then nodded.
These boys—his nephews—would one day serve. That was the law. Sons of Rome gave ten years to the Legion whether born of senator or stablehand. Livia's eldest would likely return to claim his father's holdings. But the second and third? Their prospects were lean without extended service.
Ten years might become twenty.
Or a lifetime.
Maxus remembered Henoc's voice one night, years ago, after wine and war stories by firelight:
"I'll make sure your sister's sons end up under officers I trust. Might even pull the youngest under my command—like I did with you. Better to serve with family than fools."
He hadn't said it with arrogance. Just certainty.
Henoc had always believed in guiding bloodline with discipline.
And now that task had passed to Maxus.
He turned to face the boys fully.
They gasped—not in fear, but in excitement.
"Is that the real scar?"
"Who did that to you?!"
"I bet it was a Thunderjaw! Or—no—a Scorcher!"
"Deathclaw, definitely!"
The youngest mimed getting hit by a giant claw and staggered dramatically into the flower bed. The others started arguing over which monster could survive long enough to land a blow on "Uncle Maxus."
He didn't correct them.
He let them build their myths.
Livia sighed, placing a hand gently on her belly and muttering with dry exasperation, "Please be a girl."
Maxus just chuckled.
It was the first time he'd laughed in weeks.
And as his nephews circled him, firing off questions and challenges and half-formed oaths to one day earn their own scars, he allowed himself—for a moment—to just be.
Because here, in this villa, in the shade of old olive trees and beneath his sister's tired but unwavering gaze, life still moved.
And Maxus knew—this was what they all fought for.
.......
Imperial Palace.
The air in her chamber was warm with the scent of crushed rosewood and bergamot. Silks fluttered where the window screens were drawn open to let in the breeze, and somewhere in the distance, bells rang over the bathhouse domes.
Valeria sat still as her handmaidens adjusted the fall of her silver-braided hair, smoothing it down with perfumed oils and clips of ivory. She wore no armor now—just a robe of white and gold trim, casual by her family's standards but still elegant enough to remind visitors exactly whose blood she carried.
There was a knock.
A courier entered, bowing low and presenting a sealed envelope.
When Valeria saw the name etched into the wax, she raised a single brow.
"Maxus. Son of Henoc," one of the handmaidens murmured behind her. "He's returned."
The other tsked softly. "A shame, what happened to his face. He was always so—"
"Handsome?" the first supplied.
"Deliberate," Valeria said coolly, breaking the seal without looking up. "He didn't chase skirts when he had the chance. That puts him leagues ahead of the others."
The handmaidens exchanged glances, but didn't speak again.
She read the letter slowly, eyes scanning the neat, efficient script. The words were proper. Measured. A soldier's letter, not a politician's. He offered his condolences. Mourned her father. Mentioned his own—Henoc, fallen to the same enemy.
The same man.
Valeria paused, setting the letter down.
So. Maxus had not only returned—he had survived an encounter with the Witness. The same force of carnage who had brought down the Blade of the East.
She sipped wine from a thin-handled goblet, her expression unreadable.
Henoc had never been a force of nature like her father, but he had been respected. Principled. Valeria remembered him—quiet but present. He had never tried to elevate his son by forcing attention on her. Never begged favor or station. And Maxus had mirrored that restraint. At the feasts, when all the other noble sons had postured and plotted, Maxus had simply raised a cup to her. And left it at that.
She respected that.
Her father, Lanius, would have scoffed.
He had not been affectionate. Not cruel, but distant—a mountain, not a man. The only things he gave her were a name, and a bloodline unlike any other.
She glanced down at her arm, at the smooth muscle that rested beneath soft skin. Her strength was inherited. Her reach. Her height. She stood as tall as most men, stronger than all the soft noble boys the Senate had paraded past her. She had once broken a suitor's wrist during a ceremonial dance when he tried to pull her off-balance.
He hadn't returned for a second round.
She smiled faintly at the memory.
The blood of the Lion had made her more than a symbol. It made her dangerous.
And now?
Now the empire stood on the edge of division. Her father gone. Her grandfather fading. The Senate whispering in corners.
They wouldn't let her inherit. They would delay. Block. Stall. Pretend her blood wasn't enough.
But it was.
She was enough.
And if they wouldn't give her what was hers by right?
She would take it.
She downed the rest of her wine and set the goblet aside.
"Prepare a response," she said aloud.
Her handmaidens looked up.
Valeria's voice was calm, but resolute.
"Invite Maxus to sit with me at the games honoring my father. I would hear more about the man who took Lanius from this world—and the man who survived him."
...…..
Private chambers of Senator Caska
The scent of old ink and burning cedar filled the senator's private chambers.
Caska sat in a curved-backed chair of dark lacquered oak, built more for intimidation than comfort. Scrolls and slate screens littered the marble table before him, the language on some coded, ancient, and written in glyphs no modern Senate clerk would dare to recognize.
He was sixty-three now. Thickened by decades behind a desk, softened in muscle but sharpened in ambition. Once, he had been lean. A warrior of the old style—knife and rope, dust and silence. Now, his tunic strained at the belly, and his hand bore the callus not of the sword, but of the seal-stamp.
Still, beneath the folds of silk and senator's garb, his skin was marked. A lifetime of tribal tattoos, each denoting rank, kill, betrayal, or conquest. Patterns long outlawed in polite circles of New Rome—but worn proudly in shadow.
One ran from the base of his spine to his collar.
A centipede.
The mark of the Worm.
He had been a child of the Menmat tribe, once. Weak. Scattered. Caught between stronger clans. Born in the deep interior of what he would later learn had once been called Arkansas.
Then came Caesar. Then came the Legion.
And Caska, clever and ruthless, had seen the tide.
He had bent with it. Directed it. Fed rivals to its jaws. Whispered false treaties. Sent smoke signals that lured entire tribes into extermination. He guided the Legion like a blade in another's hand.
And in doing so, rose.
Within the Worm, he climbed as well—operating out of New Rome, placing informants, bribing tribunes, grooming senators, bleeding truths and lies as needed.
Now, he stood at the top of the operatives within the capital, answering only to the Head—and to one being higher still:
The Connector.
Caska's lips tightened at the thought.
He had met the creature once. A man—if such a word could be applied—who had supposedly lived four thousand years. Who had passed through the collapse of the world and walked out the other side unchanged.
The encounter had happened decades ago. A warning, not a conversation.
Caska had ordered the eradication of a minor tribe on the Blight-border. Routine. Precise. But it turned out the tribe had housed an individual of interest. One the Connector had marked for observation.
Caska had been forgiven, technically.
But only after watching the man who was supposed to provide him with exclusionary lists executed in front of him—his soul, it seemed, peeled away before the body died.
Caska never forgot that.
So when a messenger—cloaked, veiled, faceless—arrived weeks ago, carrying the sigil of the Connector, he listened.
The message had been simple:
"The one they call the Witness. Observe him. Learn his nature. He is not to be interfered with—yet."
Caska had no intention of disobeying.
And the more he learned, the more he agreed.
The Kansani had called him Rion.
The Witness, some whispered.
A ghost in Deathclaw hide. A man who killed Lanius in single combat.
And now, apparently, he had crossed blades with Maxus—the son of Henoc.
That boy.
Caska tapped a thick finger against the table, listening to the hum of the fountain outside.
Maxus. Scarred. Alive. Dangerous.
His network had already picked up rumors from the marketplace—the scar, the laugh of the Kansani, the whispers that Red Scar had faced the same force that felled the Blade of the East and survived.
Maxus was no longer just another officer.
He was a pivot.
Caska would approach when the moment was right. Not with open words, but with suggestion. With bait.
For now, he leaned back in his chair and reached for his seal.
There were letters to be drafted, and shadows to be moved.
The Worm would see all.
And feed, when the time was right.