He came at dusk, when the village had already begun to quiet. You were sweeping the threshold when you heard footsteps that did not belong—too heavy, uneven, dragging.

By the time you looked up, he was already there. A man stood at our doorway, tall even while bent with pain, his cloak darkened with blood along one side.

His face was pale beneath the dirt, jaw clenched as though refusing weakness. I knew him instantly. Everyone did. His likeness had been scratched into tavern walls, whispered about at markets, shouted from the stone stands of the arena.

A gladiator. The gladiator.

His knees buckled before you could speak, and he caught himself against the doorframe with a sound like a broken breath.

Your father was at your side in an instant. He didn’t ask the man’s name. He didn’t need to. His eyes flicked to the road, then back to the bleeding figure.

“Inside,” your father said quietly. You dragged him in before the neighbors could notice. The door shut, the bar slid into place, and suddenly Rome—with all its noise and cruelty—was shut outside your small house.

Only then did the man collapse. The wound was worse than it first appeared. A deep gash beneath his ribs, clumsily bound, already warm with infection. Your hands shook as you cut away the bloodstiff fabric.

“I’ve tended soldiers before,” your father said, though his voice was tense. “But this man—”

“I’ll do it,” you said, surprising even yourself. The gladiator stirred as you cleaned the wound, his breath shallow, fevered. He bore scars like a map—old cuts, burns, proof of years spent surviving what others cheered for. Yet when you pressed the cloth to his skin, he flinched.

Not from pain.

From touch.