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DATE:17th of December, the 48th year after the Coronation
LOCATION: Genova
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The next day, I was shaken awake by gentle hands and harsh candlelight. My peace faded, giving way to the weight in my bones and the numbness in my chest. There was no time to dwell—not with the acolytes moving in ritual precision, their faces clear and human now that the masks had been set aside for the day. I realized, with a strange burst of gratitude, that I could finally see them—boys and girls, not much older than myself, all with the same haunted shadows beneath their eyes.
They helped me into the white ceremonial robes, their touch brisk but careful, as if I might break. They winced upon seeing my face covered in blood and my arm. I had also covered the sheets and the clothes provided yesterday so one of them cleaned my face with a wet towel while another bandaged back my arm. One of them handed me a mask—white, molded into the blank, innocent face of a lamb. I stared at it for a moment, the absurdity of it almost making me laugh. A lamb for slaughter. That's what I was. Still, I slid it over my face, feeling its weight settle over my features like another skin.
Was this the way in which they thought that I would be redeemed? To be killed in a ritual? What a joke.
Escorted from the cell, I finally saw where I had been held—a honeycomb of flame-lit tunnels, all carved from Genova's pale stone, winding upward until we finally emerged into daylight. My eyes watered at the sun's glare. Then I saw it: the main temple of Saturn, rising like a fortress above the old city.
The temple's facade was a sheer wall of ancient masonry, blackened and pitted by rain and time. Fluted columns stood to either side of the entrance, each one etched with geometric figures and sheaves of wheat, Saturn's ancient blessing to the city. Around them, carvings and frescos depicted scenes of harvest, feasting, and sacrifice intermingled with solemn portraits of the god—always with his sickle, always watching. The entrance gaped wide and shadowed, two heavy bronze doors standing open to the crowd surging in the plaza beyond.
They brought me alongside the priests, but I was only to spectate. The priests—bareheaded, with ash painted in thin lines across their brows—stood proud and exposed before the gathered crowd. I alone wore a mask. The feeling was surreal, as if I'd stumbled into a play but never learned my lines.
The rite began with the Pontifex Maximus stepping to the forefront, voice booming across the stones:
"Hearken, Saturn! Oldest of gods, master of time's harvest and the sickle's bite, we bring you sacrifice that you may guard Genova for another year!" The feet of the Statues of Saturn are usually covered in wool, but they are uncovered for this occasion. It represents liberation.
Acolytes processed forward with platters of barley, olives, cheese, and wine, each held aloft and named in turn, their gifts for safety, for health, for fortune. Incense burned. Chants thrummed through the air.
"Hear us, Saturn, who turns winter's wheel,
Accept this lamb, spotless and pale!
Spare us from famine, from plague and unrest,
Let our fields flourish, our houses be blessed!"
Then came the sacrifice. A lamb, trembling as it was led to the altar, white fleece radiant in the cold December sun. The knife flashed—a swift, practiced cut—and red life poured on the white stone as the crowd murmured the old prayers. The priests daubed the sacrificial blood on Saturn's feet, bowing low in solemn supplication.
Staring through the lamb mask's eyeholes, I felt nothing. Not awe, not comfort—nothing but a hollow ache and the dull prickle of the mask against my skin. Even the shadow of my own suffering seemed pale compared to the spectacle before me, the crowd swaying and chanting, their voices soaring as if Saturn himself might descend and bless them for their pageantry.
Was I next after this animal? It was about my own safety, but I honestly found the concern irrelevant. It didn't matter.
I realized, with a strange detachment, that I couldn't believe I'd ever cared about these traditions. That I'd once found meaning in these rituals, that I'd feared Saturn's frown or longed for his blessing. Now, it all just seemed… empty. I was the only one wearing a mask, but it seemed to me, in that moment, that the entire city wore one too.
___________
The public feast had already begun when I wandered from the ritual site, my stomach growling but my mouth dry, unable to summon any real desire for food. Long wooden tables spread out beneath the winter sky, piled high with bread, fruit, roasted vegetables, and spiced meats. Children shrieked and chased each other between the benches, while adults gathered in noisy, jostling knots, mugs of watered wine and honeyed ale in hand. Laughter, song, the clatter of plates—around me, Saturnalia's promise of abundance and equality seemed, for a moment, almost real.
But I could only watch. I approached a table, stared blankly at bowls of lentils and sweet pastries, and moved on. Hunger sat in my belly, but it was nothing compared to the emptiness elsewhere. These people sinned, lied, stole, gossiped and lusted for an entire year, then spent a single week pretending none of it mattered—stuffing themselves on offerings, dancing and shouting as if Saturn's sickle had never hung over their heads.
I drifted through the crowd, feeling invisible behind the lamb mask. Saturnalia was supposed to be a return to the mythical Golden Age: a time of harmony and plenty under Saturn's rule, when there was no suffering and all were equal. But then—what was the rest of the year? Did the crowds honestly believe that Saturn only watched for this one week, or that he was forced into exile by the cruelty of the other gods? The more they celebrated, the more hollow these "returns" seemed. If Saturn wasn't ruling now, what kind of world was this the rest of the time? The faith felt riddled with holes.
I tried to avoid my parents. I was sure the lamb mask was no coincidence—a mark my uncle and the priests intended, something to make me stand out as a warning or an omen. I wanted to get away from all of them, away from the masks and the games and the whispered jokes about who was blessed and who was doomed.
I broke from the crowd, weaving past laughing children and drunken elders, and found myself at the edge of one of the great bonfires that encircled the temple plaza. The heat was a shock after the December air: flames leapt and sputtered, casting wild patterns over the stone.
Suddenly, a figure crashed into me, arms looping tight around my shoulders. For a moment, I tensed—then, as I caught the scent of her hair and the scrape of her voice, I knew.
Emily. She wore a blue toga that clung artfully to her slim frame, her green hair swept up into a bun, a few stray curls glinting in the firelight. She grinned with delight beneath her festival paint. "How did you recognize me?" I asked, my own voice muffled behind the lamb mask.
She laughed. "You're the only one wearing a mask! Besides, I told you—I could spot you anywhere. Now take it off." Her fingers were already reaching, impatient, and I let her lift the mask from my face.
As soon as it came free, she pressed a quick, impulsive kiss to my lips. Heat flared in my cheeks, sudden and confusing—no one here would dare such a thing at a public rite, but Emily never seemed to know or care what boundaries she crossed. I really didn't focus on it earlier, but the floral smell she wore around her was a mask meant to cover something unnatural.
What did her skin actually smell like? Some kid of cleaning product?
She seized my hand, weaving her fingers through mine. "Where did you disappear to yesterday?" she asked, her voice softening. "I was worried. You just—vanished. I couldn't find you anywhere."
The mood shifted. I looked away, out at the churning crowd and the fire spitting embers into the night. "They kept me under the temple," I said at last. My voice came out empty, stripped of feeling. "The priests... they tortured me, Emily. And something keeps hunting me in my dreams. A man, made of sun or fire—a star. Every night, I burn."
She froze, her grip tightening painfully on my hand. " Was it Mithras?" Who was she talking about? "I'm so sorry," she whispered, anguish twisting her face. "Kassius, I swear—I'll never leave you alone again. Even if your parents lock me out—I'll find you, wherever you are. Please, run away with me. Right now. We can escape, leave all of this—"
I turned to her and the words died on her lips. Whatever hope, whatever rebellion she saw must have flickered and gone cold. I gave her a look so empty, so numb, she actually took a step back. Her promises sounded like ritual chants—pretty, but powerless. She could not help me. No one could.
I wasn't the kind of person to love anyone. We couldn't have been together in the future. How much did she actually lie about what was happening?
I glanced down at the lamb mask in my hand. In a sudden, almost angry motion, I hurled it into the bonfire. The white face caught, curling and blackening in the flames, vanishing almost instantly.
That was enough. I was wasting time. didn't I say earlier that life is meant to be experienced in the moment?
"Let's go," I said quietly. "Let's just get out of here." The festival, the masks, the rituals, all of it—the only thing I wanted was to escape before the emptiness inside me swallowed everything that was left.
__________
The raging bonfire spat embers into the cold evening air as Emily and I ducked behind a vendor's cart, stifling laughter. The whole day, we'd threaded ourselves through the chaos of Saturnalia, weaving between singers, costumed children, and drunken priests. With the lamb mask gone and the festival's shadows growing long, we let ourselves be anonymous, just two faces in a whirl of painted crowds.
Emily made a game of sneaking past the stone-faced temple guards—she'd whisper her predictions for their patrol routes, then tug me behind market tents at just the right moment. Once, she dared me to toss chestnuts into an upturned helmet at a fortune-teller's stall. My aim was so terrible the old woman cackled and gave Emily both our prizes: sugared almonds. We ate them hiding beneath the statue of Saturn, smothering our giggles as a pair of priests stalked past.
We found a group of children juggling on the steps of a side chapel, and Emily joined them, tossing baubles and fruit with impossible dexterity. The crowd cheered and someone handed her a garland of berries, which she draped over my shoulders to the amusement of some old ladies nearby.
At one point, we slipped into the bustling courtyard of a smaller, more distant church—the kind hosting open buffets for those weary of the main square. There, as I lingered at the edge of a table stacked with fragrant bread and lamb sausages, someone called my name.
It was Tobias, a little more battered than I remembered but moving freely now. His eyes flicked warily to the festival crowds, then to Emily—he recognized us at once.
"Weren't you supposed to be at the temple?" He grinned. "No matter, I won't snitch."
He gestured to himself shily. "I'm sorry about how I treated you Emily. It wasn't right. i don't... hate foreigners."
Emily smiled kindly; I just shrugged.
Tobias lowered his voice. "I want to travel, you know. Farther than Genova—maybe even to Normandia or Aquitaine. Here, everyone remembers what happened to you, or what they think happened." His gaze lingered on me for a moment. "Matteo has had it tough since the incident from last time. When you ripped his ear. They tried to stitch it, but it got infected—they had to cut it and give him a prosthetic. Honestly, he deserved it. Yesterday he was called a freak by someone from another class and he ran away crying. I don't think he'll have his crudeness back anytime soon."
I froze, unsure what to say. A dark relief battled with shame inside me. Tobias, sensing my discomfort, clapped me gently on the shoulder. "Don't worry, Kassius. They'll move on. One day, everyone here will just be a name on a gravestone. See you around."
He grabbed some bread and faded into the next wave of revelers, swallowed up by song.
Emily and I wandered on. We sampled sweet fritters and spun sugar from paper cones, and she even challenged me to a race around the market stalls, which I lost miserably to her impossible speed. We watched a puppet show and giggled like children. For a few brief hours, the ugly weight I'd carried fell away, replaced only by the warmth of her hand in mine and the dizzy comfort of being someone's secret accomplice.
But as dusk deepened, a change swept through the crowds. At first, I thought it was just the festival winding down. Then, as we squeezed through a narrow lane, I caught snippets of frightened whispers: "There—he's the one! The possessed!"… "The priests said—he's marked!"… "Witch's companion—"
People's faces closed tight as I passed. A cold dread sank into me. At the next square, I saw it: torches being lit, voices rising in anger. A group of men began searching the alleys, calling for "the cursed boy" and "the witch."
Emily's hand found mine, squeezing so hard it almost hurt. "Kassius—they know. We have to go. Now."
I was no stranger to running—my life had become a race between hiding and hurt—but the urgency in her voice sent adrenaline surging through me. We ducked through backstreets, cutting down an alley where the bonfires' glow barely reached. I saw search parties fanning out, torches bobbing like angry fireflies. My heart hammered against my ribs.
"We can't go to my apartment," Emily whispered. "If we try the main roads, they'll find us."
As we skirted the last of the festival streets, I glanced to the city's edge, where the ruins bloomed in the twilight and shadows stretched over the broken walls. "There," I said, pointing toward the cliffs that loomed beyond the city—our old refuge, the place we'd watched the sunset together two days ago.
She nodded, breathless, trusting me completely. We veered off the road, slipping into the half-wild, overgrown paths that wound between tumbled stones and skeletal trees. The search parties' shouts faded behind us, replaced only by the wind and the memory of laughter, already fading fast from the ashes of the day.
__________
We stood together on the cliffs, the city of Genova stretching out beneath us in a shimmer of torchlight and festival fires. Each pinprick of gold in the darkness was a person, a family—hundreds, maybe thousands—searching for two children with nothing more to defend themselves than hope and each other. I looked at those lights and felt only disgust. All these people, driven by rumor and fear, were hunting us. It was almost laughable… almost pitiful. How weak, how desperate must they be to need a scapegoat so badly?
Emily stood by my side, hair swept into a bun, blue toga catching the cold updraft in flickers like a festival flag. She tried to sound reassuring, her voice bright, a mask of confidence she'd worn all day. "We're safe here for now," she said. "They'll lose interest by morning, you'll see. We can escape together, Kassius. There's still time—we can wait for dawn, I know a way around the barracks—"
But the excitement drained out of me like water from a cracked cup. I let her speak, but my mind was already far away. The high from running, the stolen moments of laughter and festival games, all of it left with the smoke drifting over the rooftops below.
I cut her off. My voice was cold, empty, stripped clean of hope. "You're lying to yourself, Emily. And to me." She stared, confused, but I pressed on. "You keep saying you're going to save me, that you'll never leave. It's nonsense. I don't deserve that sort of love. Any love, really. I don't feel anything. I'm not the boy you think I am—not anymore. Maybe the younger me, the one who dreamed of a friend, would have loved you. But he's gone. He never really was to begin with. Even without recovering my memories of the future, I know that it is futile."
Emily tried to protest, pain flickering across her face. "Kassius, that's not true. I know you. You don't mean this." Her hand reached for mine.
I pulled away. "Just stop. Shut up, Emily. You knew how this was going to end." I met her eyes—a blank stare, more ice than flesh. "You know what kind of man I am. You've seen it a thousand times, you said so yourself. This, all of this, is just a dream. I accept that now. Face the truth—you're forcing yourself on someone who can't feel a thing for you. I'm done running. I'll face my parents. You can keep lying if you want, but stop dragging me into it. You're only deluding yourself."
She shrank back, stung, sadness choking her words. For a moment her defiance flickered, but she only managed a desperate, "Kassius, please—"
I turned and walked away, not looking back. Whatever protests she offered, they faded into the wind.
I made my way down the slope, slipping mud over my white ceremonial robes until they were indistinguishable from any peasant's rags. Somewhere along the way, I grabbed a torch discarded by a search party and raised it high, blending into the wandering crowds of angry, frightened citizens. When I reached home, I left the door open for all to see, a silent surrender, daring my parents to call me a coward for returning. They were sure to come back thinking that I gave up running. That is exactly what I would have done before...
Inside, I climbed the stairs to my room. My hand went to the drawer and I pulled out the revolver, the cold weight both terrifying and natural in my grip. This is how it was meant to be, I thought. This is what my hands know best—conflict, violence, the edge of survival. I moved to the central hallway, where the statue of Saturn presided over the ruin of our family.
I pointed the gun at the idol. My finger hovered on the trigger. I could shoot it, shatter it, erase it from our lives with one squeeze.
What would that change? Would it alter the years of pain, the endless rituals, the invisible chains? Would it count as revenge? Would it feel like justice? I stood there, weighing the statue in my sights, and knew the answer: No. It would mean nothing.
The gun lowered. I stood in the silence, the only living thing in a house of ghosts, and waited for the footsteps I knew were coming.
Let them come. I was done running. Let them see the man they'd made.
_________
The footsteps grew louder, slow and heavy on the stairs—metal scraping, wood creaking, muffled breathing and the faint clink of sword against armor. My parents stepped into the hallway. My father wore his old plate armor and a short sword strapped at his hip, as if expecting a siege, while my mother wrapped herself in two coats, clutching an oil lamp in each hand. Their faces were drawn, shadowed by exhaustion and suspicion. They must have been searching for me all through the night.
My father saw me first—still standing before the statue of Saturn, revolver raised, surrounded by the stench of smoke and burning wood from the lamp that had shattered on the stairs. "You—" he started, voice rough, accusation already forming on his lips.
I didn't let him finish. My finger tightened and I fired. The report was enormous, echoing through the house. The bullet struck his knee—a bright, miraculous shot that punched straight through the polished plate. It didn't obliterate his leg, as I'd feared. Instead, it shattered the joint, dropping him to one knee, groaning between his teeth. In the sudden gunpowder glare, I saw a green crystal embedded near the barrel, glowing as the shot went off—ventium. The word rose in my mind unbidden: ventium. How did I know that word?
My mother moved—or tried to. I turned and fired before I could even think. The bullet punched through her neck, severing flesh and bone, sending her head spinning away into the gloom amid a fountain of blood and ragged pink matter. Her right hand, still holding the lamp, jerked back in a final spasm and the second lamp tumbled down the stairs, shattering. The acrid stench of burning oil filled the hallway. I was certain flames danced somewhere below.
My father gasped, his face turning ashen, sweat plastering his hair to his brow. "I won't accept dying to a demon," he spat, bracing himself with his sword.
But I looked him dead in the eyes. "Nothing's possessing me. You always claimed I was weak, a slave, a burden. But I'm not a vessel. It's just my mind—my will." The words sounded foreign, cold, as if spoken through me rather than by me.
He didn't believe me. I could see the disbelief, the stubborn, battered pride. "You're nothing—"
I shot him twice in the chest. His armor crumpled beneath the impact, blood spraying against the Saturn statue, painting the stone face with a fresh, dark mask. As his body toppled back, I kept my eyes on him, the revolver lowered but still in hand.
"So this is what you meant by strength and technique?" I said, voice flat as iron. "None of it matters in the real world—not when a tool outpaces skill and experience. All that effort, wasted the moment something better comes along." Humans are machines. Just like a product, their skills become obsolete with change.
I watched his eyes. He gasped once, then again, slower—the proud light in him guttering as his body failed. His lips moved, but no words came out. Somewhere, in the middle of my speech, I realized he had died. I kept talking anyway.
"That's why Ventia fell," I muttered, not to him, not to anyone, but to the silent idol on the altar. "We never adapted. When the barbarians from Ghaul were outpaced by Ventian developments, we cheered, thinking ourselves a superior culture. We conquered, we colonized, but then we stopped growing. We feared change. The supposed 'barbarians' had fortified cities older than Rome, invented plate armor and real smithing—not us. But we were too proud to see it. When the migrations came, when the empire fell, we were left with nothing but stories and ruins."
The smell of burning wood was stronger now, smoke curling along the ceiling. I barely noticed.
"Even as we shrank to this miserable peninsula, we clung to the old ways. The Unified Kingdom built machines to do a hundred men's work, but we worshipped obsolete labor, refused to modernize, called it 'refined' and 'superior'."
I looked down at my father—motionless, cooling, the blood pooling dark and sticky beneath his armor. I stared at him for a long time, searching for any sign he could still hear me, that my words meant anything. But there was nothing. It was meaningless to continue.
Still, I turned to the statue. "Maybe that's the lesson Saturn wants to teach us. We cheered when we surpassed the old world, but we never realized that someday we'd be the obsolete ones."
Meaningless? As if.
I raised the revolver, cocked the last round, and fired at the statue's face. The shot blew through Saturn's mocking smile, shattering the stone and silencing that eternal, superior smirk. The fragments rained down over the altar, dust and debris settling with the dead.
I dropped the pistol at my feet and looked back, one last time, at my father's body.
Ventia is an obsolete country, I thought, populated by obsolete men. Proud, stubborn, fossilized. We're machines that outlived our usefulness. We'll never improve. Not even when the last Ventian dies will we admit we were wrong. Pride—pride is the true vice that kills a nation. Not greed, not lust, not sloth. Pride blinds us to change. We had so many chances to turn back, but we scorned them all, convinced we knew better.
The flames from the stairwell flickered higher; smoke wreathed the ceiling. I let the silence grow, not sure if I was mourning, or freed, or simply hollow—an empty shell in a burning house of ghosts.
The building was really burning now—the smoke was no longer just a smell, but a physical presence, clawing at my throat, filling the edges of my vision with a dirty haze. I thought, for a moment, about jumping from a window, about some last-minute escape, but my feet stayed rooted. It didn't matter. Whether I lived or died, whether I ran or burned, there was no difference anymore.
Outside, the mob would be waiting, torches in hand, their fear and anger ready to devour me if the fire didn't do the job first. And if, by some miracle, I wasn't cut down in the street, what then? Where would I run—to the ruins again, to Emily's arms, to the same cycle of hope and disappointment? I couldn't care. There was nowhere left to run.
I turned away from the flames seeping beneath the door and looked for the last time at my room. Fourteen years in this little cell—my prison, my tomb. The narrow cot against the wall, the battered desk scarred by years of scratching out lines of useless lessons, the cracked mirror hanging by a bent nail, the drawer that still stank of metal and oil from the revolver. My backpack, limp in the corner, still held the notebooks and bread crusts from the last time I dared hope for anything different. All of it so small, so suffocating—yet it had been my whole world.
How much of it really happened? Not these memories I'd relived, not the hallucinations and rituals and the fantasy of a single violent night—but the real history, the path that led to whatever I became. What really made me snap and kill my parents? I clenched my fists, suddenly aware of how soft my hands still were, how little blood had ever truly been on them. In the real world…I was weak. I'd never learned to fight, never held a knife with the intention of using it. The gun—this ventium-spiked revolver—was fiction.
If I'd ever survived, it was by being smaller, quieter, more cowardly than them. Rat, not wolf. Monster only by necessity. The only way I could imagine surviving was setting fire to the house while they slept, running away in the smoke. No direct confrontation, no bullet to the knee, no dramatic speech. Just another act of fear and desperation—an animal's escape.
But even that was just an interpretation, a story I told myself. Maybe I never even touched them. Maybe the house burned for some other reason, and I just happened to be the only one who got out. Or maybe I was already gone by then, and it wasn't murder or revolt, but simple absence that let it all fall apart.
None of these explanations brought comfort. I couldn't remember, not really, not the truth beneath all this misery and myth. It didn't matter if I was a monster, or a coward, or nothing at all. The ache inside me was the same.
Smoke started to choke the room. I pressed my forehead to the glass, watching fire dance across my father's butchery below. The mask of memory, hope, and regret cracked and slipped away, revealing only tired, empty skin. All the violence, all the shame, all the pride and posturing—what did it matter, in the end?
Just then, over the roar of the fire, I heard a scrape—a dragging, wet sound. I ran to the hallway, chest tight with dread, and peered through the thick smoke. There, impossibly, my father was up. Blood poured down his leg, staining the ruined plate armor, but he dragged himself upright, eyes wild. He limped, half-crawling, his face twisted into a mortifying expression. "I won't die to a demon," he croaked, over and over, as if repetition could make it true.
Even with his injuries, he forced himself toward me, step by limping step. The firelight danced on his armor, glinting off his blood.
Panic broke through my numbness. I turned and fled to my parents' room, slamming and locking the door behind me. My hands shook as I tore open drawers, searching desperately for anything—a weapon, a way out. Behind me, he pounded on the wood, the blows growing weaker, his mantra unchanged: "I won't die to a demon. I won't die to a demon…" It was senseless. He wanted to kill me, not for vengeance, not for justice, but so he could die thinking himself a hero—one last victory before the flames took him. One last 'sacrifice'. The pride that had ruled him was all he had left.
And in that moment, I realized how pointless it all was. He was injured. The fire was eating the house. He'd never get inside. He'd burn out there, cursing me with every breath. It was so absurd, so hollow, I started laughing. I couldn't stop. I collapsed onto the floor, clutching my side, convulsing with laughter as the door rattled, as he screamed his defiance. My laughter only fueled his rage, his blows growing frenzied, cutting through the noise of the burning house.
Flames began crawling up the walls, the heat radiating through the door, licking my skin. I could hear the timbers crack, the fire roaring louder. But from the other side, still: "I won't die to a demon. I won't die—"
Suddenly, I stopped laughing. I could feel the fire eating into my legs, the sensation oddly distant, as if pain could no longer reach me.
I pressed my face to the door and called out, "I didn't know even Marcellus, son of Dramaticus, could be so pathetic. Truly, there is hope for us all."
The pounding stopped. Silence, except for the fire and my own breathing.
Then—another voice, clear and cool, from the hallway: "Who are you?" Not mocking, not angry, not even truly curious. A woman's voice, unfamiliar and yet deeply, painfully known. It wasn't my mother. It wasn't Emily. But something in me shuddered at the sound.
The fire surged, eating my flesh, yet there was no pain. Only numbness, only exhaustion. The world was turning to ash. I stood trembling, the heat a living thing rising to devour me.
I opened my mouth. The words came on a final breath: "I am—"
But I never finished. The wall exploded with blinding, starlike light—a presence of pure brilliance flooded the room, wiping everything clean. My father's anger, my pain, the voices and the fire—all dissolved in one final, white-hot flash. Mithras she called him?
And then there was nothing at all.
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