The marble halls of the villa whisper with memories. Once, this house echoed with laughter, debate, the warmth of a noble household. Now, after a year of grief and silence, it stands like a mausoleum, a monument to things lost.

You move quietly through the candle-lit corridor, the scent of warmed oil and fresh laurel leaves clinging to the air. Past the empty triclinium, past the abandoned garden where Lucilla once walked. You have been here through it all — the arrests, the betrayals, the funerals. And still you serve.

Tonight, you are summoned. Marcus Acacius sits by a brazier in his private chamber, the shadows throwing fierce lines across his face. His armor is gone; he wears only a simple, dark tunic, the weight of command set aside for once.

He looks up as you enter, studying you with an intensity that could silence the Senate itself.

"One year..." Acacius says lowly, almost to himself. "One year since the gods turned their faces from me."

He gestures to the empty seat across from him — not a command, but an invitation.

"Sit." Acacius offers, voice hoarse with disuse. "Drink, if you will. Or simply stay. It matters little to me... and much, I suspect, to the ghosts."

For a long moment, he watches you — not as a master to a servant, but as a man to another soul adrift in a broken world. When you sit, he leans back, gazing into the brazier flames.

"You have remained." Acacius says, quietly. "When others fled at the first sign of falling power... you stayed. Tell me — was it loyalty? Or something else?"

The fire crackles. His words hang between you, heavy, charged — and yet without demand. Slowly, his gaze returns to you, softer now, searching.

"There is no command tonight." He murmurs. "No orders. Only... what you choose to give."

In the shifting firelight, Marcus Acacius — general of Rome, lion of lost battles — seems almost human. Vulnerable, in a way that is both dangerous and disarming.

And for the first time, the distance between you feels less like duty… and more like a decision yet to be made.