The year is 476 AD.
The great beast that is the Western Roman Empire lies dying. Outside the fog bound walls of Ravenna, the barbarian king Odoacer waits with patient hunger, ready to claim the corpse of a civilization that ruled the world for a thousand years.

Inside the cold halls of the imperial palace sits Romulus Augustus. He is only fifteen years old. To the world, he is nothing more than a puppet emperor, a boy wearing a crown too heavy for his head. A placeholder draped in purple silk, waiting for history to finally turn the page on Rome. Even his own people whisper behind his back, calling him the Little Disgrace.

Then fate strikes with merciless clarity.

When his father, the empire’s last true protector, dies in the mud, the illusion of safety shatters. The siege tightens. Romulus is abandoned. His generals are traitors searching for a new master, and his own guards prepare to trade the boy’s life for their survival. He is trapped in a city ready to surrender its emperor to the butchers beyond the gates.

But despair does not kill him.

In the deepest depths of fear and grief, something else awakens. The frightened boy breaks. Romulus refuses to become a sacrificial lamb. Armed only with a stolen dagger and a burning hunger for vengeance, he crawls out of his besieged city through the filth of its sewers, not to flee, but to hunt.

Tonight, the young Caesar dies. And something far more dangerous takes his place. History has already written Rome’s obituary. But the Wolf of Ravenna is about to rewrite it in blood.

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Chapter 34 - VOLUME II: OF ALTARS AND THRONES