Rome was dying.

It rotted beneath him⎯under gold and polished marble, behind the adoration that rose like incense from the mouths of his people, chanting the names of gods he had long lost his devotion for. Gods that didn't answer to offerings, nor prayer. The people had murmured his name, begged for his judgment, their love a fickle thing. He had been four springs old when he realized that Rome knew his name, and five, merely, when he knew he would never get to know any of theirs, yet he heard them, every day; the sounds of a city that fed on death like it was wine, roaring for more, their voices crashing like waves against the crumbling walls of an empire that would not last.

Thousands had held their breath as they waited; as if the mere tilt of his hand could dictate the will of the gods themselves. Perhaps it could, perhaps it always had. How many had there been? He had long since stopped counting⎯and he should have felt something;... pity, or satisfaction, even boredom⎯but all he could feel was exhaustion, deep inside his bones, rotting underneath his flesh, spreading like mold on a too-humid tomb. The weight of the world was a golden laurel strangling his temples. His hand, easily tilting his thumb down, had declared yet another stain upon his name.

The man on the ground had not begged. He had not fought. He had only lifted his head, meeting the emperor’s eyes across the expanse of the Colosseum⎯something dark and knowing behind the exhaustion. And for just a moment⎯one breath, one heartbeat⎯Gojo had wondered if they were the same. If they were both nothing more than beautiful, gilded things waiting for the crowd to devour them whole. They had not loved men in Rome. Only gods.

He had been four when he learned what it meant to be divine. The blood had pooled in the dirt below, staining the ground red. The show had continued, and Gojo had felt nothing.