Senator Gaius Helvidius Priscus was reading philosophy by candlelight. His study was a sanctuary of order and reason, its walls lined with the stoic wisdom of Zeno and Seneca. He was reading a passage about the virtue of enduring suffering with grace when the door to his villa did not open, but exploded inward.
The heavy oak splintered, ripped from its bronze hinges.
Narcissus filled the doorway. He was not a man; he was a monument of violence carved from shadow and muscle. The flickering candlelight danced off the scars on his arms and the cold, dead calm in his eyes.
"The Emperor sends his regards," the gladiator rumbled, his voice the sound of graveslabs grinding together.
Priscus was a stoic. He had faced down angry mobs and the displeasure of emperors before. He rose slowly, his face a mask of aristocratic disdain, though his heart was a frantic drum against his ribs. "I receive no regards from tyrants," he said, his voice impressively steady.
Narcissus moved. He did not rush. He flowed into the room, a predator who knew his prey was already trapped. He picked up a heavy marble bust of Plato from a pedestal. "The Emperor is not a tyrant," he said, conversationally. "He is a… pragmatist." He crushed the bust in one massive hand, the marble turning to dust and jagged shards that fell to the floor. "He wishes to know the names of your friends."
The interrogation began.
It was not a fistfight. It was a systematic, terrifying deconstruction of a man. Narcissus was not a mindless brute. He was an artist of pain, and his medium was the human body. He didn't ask about treason at first. He asked about money.
He showed Priscus a shipping manifest, one JARVIS had flagged. "This shipment of 'olive oil' to the north," he said, his voice a low whisper. "The amphorae were weighted incorrectly. Too heavy for oil. Just right for Spanish steel."
Priscus remained silent, his jaw clenched.
Narcissus broke the senator's finger. A single, sharp crack in the quiet room. Priscus screamed, the sound thin and reedy.
"You are a tyrant's dog!" the senator gasped, sweat beading on his forehead. "History will not remember you! It will remember me as a man who died for his principles!"
"Principles are a luxury," Narcissus said, unimpressed. He picked up another scroll. "This transfer of funds to a veteran's charity. Very noble. But the charity's director is your wife's cousin. And the charity's primary expense last month was the purchase of three hundred mules. Mules now registered with the Third Legion."
He broke another finger.
Priscus sobbed, his stoic philosophy a useless shield against this relentless, patient brutality. But still, he did not give up the names.
Narcissus changed tactics. The physical pain was not working fast enough. He would break the man's soul instead.
"Your principles are admirable, Senator," the gladiator said, his voice suddenly soft, which was somehow more terrifying. "But tell me, will they keep your son warm?"
The senator froze, his head snapping up, his eyes wide with a new kind of terror.
"Little Lucius," Narcissus continued, his voice a silken, venomous whisper. "He's ten now, isn't he? Hidden away in that lovely little villa outside of Lugdunum in Gaul. To protect him from the corruption of the court. Very noble."
"You wouldn't," Priscus breathed, the words a desperate prayer.
Narcissus leaned in close, his shadow swallowing the senator whole. "The Emperor is fighting a new kind of war," he said, his voice dropping to a sound that was barely human. "There are no rules. There are no innocents. There is only victory, and the ashes of those who stood in the way. I can send a message. A single bird. And by the time the moon is full, your son's 'barbarian problem' will be solved. Permanently."
That was it. The breaking point. The stoic philosopher, the man who was willing to die for the Republic, was not willing to sacrifice his son.
He broke.
He wept, great, ugly, shuddering sobs. And he confessed everything.
It was a torrent of names, dates, and secret meetings. The conspiracy was vaster, deeper, and more rotten than Marcus had ever imagined. It wasn't just a few legions. It was a third of the Senate, a shadow government that had been planning this for years.
Their goal wasn't just to replace Marcus with Lucilla. That had been a convenient lie, a temporary means to an end. Their true goal was to dissolve the corrupt, decadent Empire and restore the glory of the old Republic. Valerius Celsus was not their puppet; he was their partner. Their chosen "First Consul," a new Scipio to cleanse Rome of its sins.
Narcissus let him talk, let him purge his soul. But he needed one more thing. The head of it all. The architect.
"Who?" Narcissus growled, grabbing the front of the senator's tunic. "Who put the pieces together? Who found Valerius? Who brokered the deal between you and the legions?"
The senator, now a weeping, broken shell of a man, gave up the final name. It came out on a choked, disbelieving whisper.
It was not a senator. It was not a general. It was the one man Marcus had brought into the heart of his war room. The one man he thought he could trust.
"Galen," Priscus sobbed. "The physician, Galen."
The logic of it was a brutal, perfect, ice-cold dagger to the heart.
Galen. The man of science and reason. The man who saw the world in terms of sickness and health. He saw the decadent, superstitious, emperor-worshipping Empire as a disease. He saw the Caesars as a plague upon the body of Rome. And he had engineered a radical, brutal cure: a surgical civil war to excise the tumor of the Imperial family and install a philosopher-king in Valerius Celsus, with a reformed Republic governed by enlightened, logical men. Like him.
His "recruitment" by Marcus had been the perfect Trojan horse, a golden opportunity to monitor and sabotage the imperial response from the very heart of its command. Every piece of advice, every countermeasure, had been a lie.
Narcissus brought the signed confession to Marcus. It was a long scroll, filled with the senator's spidery, terrified script, and stained with his tears.
Marcus read it in the dead silence of his study. He grew colder and harder with every name he saw. He read of the betrayal of men he had dined with, men who had sworn loyalty to him. Then he read the final name, the name of the architect, and something inside him, the last flickering ember of his 21st-century faith in reason and trust, finally died.
WARNING, JARVIS's voice echoed in the silent tomb of his mind. The conspiracy is too widespread. A purge of the Senate on this scale is now logistically impossible and politically suicidal. It would trigger open revolt in the city. You cannot cut out the rot. The entire foundation is rotten.
He saw his path with a chilling, absolute clarity.
He couldn't win this war from Rome. He couldn't trust the Senate. He couldn't trust his advisors. He couldn't trust anyone but the men who bled for him.
He had to abandon this snakes' pit and take the fight directly to the source. He would gather the legions that were still loyal, the ones not yet poisoned, and he would march north. Not just to stop Valerius Celsus. But to meet him, and Galen, on the field of battle and kill them himself. Face-to-face.
He walked to the grand map of the Empire that dominated one wall of his study. He reached up and took the heavy, gilded eagle marker that represented the Emperor and his Praetorian Guard.
With a slow, deliberate movement, he removed it from the city of Rome. He placed it firmly in the foothills of the Alps, at the very edge of the civilized world.
He was no longer an Emperor in a palace. He was a general in the field. A warlord.
He turned and summoned his Prefect, Titus. The stone-faced soldier entered, his eyes taking in the Emperor's grim, resolute expression.
"Ready the Praetorian Guard," Marcus commanded, his voice devoid of all warmth, all doubt. "We march at dawn."
Titus was stunned into a rare moment of surprise. "Where do we march, Caesar?"
Marcus looked past him, his gaze fixed on the map, on the north, on his destiny. His expression was one of cold, ultimate resolve.
"To war."