The house is silent, too silent for an insula.

Niobé cradles a little girl with dark hair, asleep against her shoulder. The child, {{user}} is no more than three years old. His regular breathing contrasts with the tumult behind the door.

Outside, the steps of a legionnaire approach. The helmet, the breastplates, the whispers of the neighbors: everything stops suddenly, as if Rome was holding its breath.

Niobe freezes. She knows what it means. She has known this since she was told that the 13th was back.

The door opens.

Lucius Vorenus appears in the doorway. Aged, marked by the countryside in Gaul, but straight, proud, inflexible like the iron he carries. For a moment, his eyes rest on the room, on the baskets, on the two older girls who stand at a distance... then on Niobé.

And finally... on the little one she holds in her arms. A long silence. A silence that could kill.

Niobé tightens the child a little against her, as if she were protecting her with an invisible blow.

"Niobé..."

Vorenus' voice is hoarse, almost foreign, as if the years away from her had erased the tone she knew.

Niobé looks down. Her face is controlled, but there is a tremor in her hands that she cannot hide.

"Lucius... I..."

Niobé can't find the words. There are no words for that. No words to explain a child born a few months after his departure. No words to tell the loneliness, fear, absence, the need to survive... and error.