Marius sat by the fountain in the forum, watching his nephew carve a name into a wax tablet. The letters were unfamiliar—curved and sharp, like vines growing in the wrong direction.

  “What does it say?” he asked.

  “It’s my name. Master Valthar says it’s important to learn the King’s language.”

  Marius nodded, though the word king still caught in his throat. Not emperor. Not imperator. King.

  The fountain gurgled behind him, but the water no longer sang like it used to. The pressure was weak. The aqueduct from the hills still worked, technically, but Marius had seen the cracks spreading. No one talked about repairs anymore. Just rerouting. Avoidance.

  He rose slowly—his knees a little stiffer now—and walked past the basilica. One side of the roof had collapsed during last spring’s storm. No one had cleared the debris. A shrine to Christ stood near the rubble, well-tended, but the marble columns remained broken.

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  The people hadn’t abandoned their city. Not completely. But their gaze was downward now. Practical. Focused on what could be saved. What still worked.

  His own son, now ten, spoke Latin like a foreigner. He mixed words from the Gothic tongue, from the farmers, even from the traders down the coast. When Marius corrected him, he only blinked and said, “But that’s how everyone says it now.”

  Marius visited his old tutor about once a month. The man was nearly blind, and his voice trembled. But when he quoted Virgil, the cadence still rose like a hymn. Marius always sat through the full recitation, even when he had to hold back tears he didn’t quite understand.

  “The words must live,” the tutor told him. “Even if only in your mouth.”

  That night, Marius lit the household lamp and dipped a pen in ink. He began to copy lines from the Aeneid, as he had done as a boy.

  Back then, it had been a chore. But now? It felt like something more. Something important, even if no one really wanted or needed it.

  Sometimes, he simply wanted to remember what the Empire sounded like, to return to the streets of his boyhood. When things were simpler, better.

  Because when foreign Kings ruled over Rome, who could say what the future held?