Sands of Fate: The Wrong Side of History

Chapter 32: The Battle of Houses IV

As Gaius turned towards the restricted area of the library, the darkness swallowed him whole.

The single torch in its bracket barely pushed back the shadows, its flame guttering slightly with every gust of wind that found its way through the cracks in the old stone. The air smelled different—older, wetter, the dust tinged with mold and decay.

Gaius stepped forward, and the moment his sandal touched the stone floor of the restricted section, the first drop of rain hit the roof.

He paused, looked up, the ceiling above him was vaulted and dark, the frescoes long faded into ghosts of themselves, and he could hear the rain beginning to drum against the tiles of the roof. Soft at first, a gentle patter that could almost be mistaken for wind, then harder, and harder still, until the sound was a steady, insistent rhythm that filled the silence like a heartbeat.

He shook his head and kept walking.

The cubbyholes here were older than the ones in the main hall. The wood was cracked and warped, the labels hanging from leather cords so frayed they crumbled at the touch. Some of the scrolls were bound in dark leather, others in linen that had yellowed with age, still others wrapped in nothing at all.

Gaius began to search.

"Unnatural healing," he muttered, his fingers brushing across the spines of the scrolls. "Rapid wound closure, regeneration, miracles."

He pulled out scroll after scroll, unrolled them just enough to scan the headers, then slid them back. Medical texts, mostly—Galen, Hippocrates, treatises on humors and bloodletting and the proper application of leeches. None of it was what he was looking for.

He moved deeper into the stacks.

The rain was hammering now. He could hear it on the roof, a constant roar that made the library feel like a ship at sea, the old building creaking slightly with every gust. The torch behind him flickered, and for a moment the shadows surged forward, threatening to swallow the light entirely. Then the flame steadied, and Gaius kept moving.

He found a collection of texts on myths and legends—stories of heroes and demigods, of men who wrestled lions and women who spoke to snakes. He skimmed through them quickly, his eyes scanning for keywords. Healing, speed, unnatural. None of them matched. They were stories, fables. Nothing that explained the wound on the boy’s back knitting itself together while he watched.

He was about to move to the next bookcase when something caught his eye.

A scroll tucked into the far end of the lowest stone cubbyhole. It was barely visible—just a dark shape in the shadows, cached with so much dust that it looked like part of the stone itself. Mold had crept up one edge, a pale green bloom that ate into the papyrus. The leather binding was cracked and brittle, and the label had long since rotted away.

Gaius knelt down. His knees protested, the cold stone sending a dull ache up through his joints, but he ignored it. He reached into the cubbyhole and pulled the scroll free.

The dust came with it, a thick cloud that made him cough and wave his free hand in front of his face. The mold had eaten into the outer layer of the papyrus, but the inner layers seemed intact. He unrolled it carefully, the old material stiff and fragile under his fingers, threatening to crack with every movement.

The ink was faded, but it was there. A script he recognized, "Old Latin." He squinted at the lettering, his lips moving silently as he worked through the archaic spellings.

’...A man who healed from wounds that should have killed him...’

Gaius’s breath caught.

His hands tightened on the scroll.

’...who moved with the wind, faster than the eyes could track...’

The rain outside was deafening now. The torch guttered, as the shadows pressed in.

’...who took down armies with a sword in each hand and and spoke of voices in his head...’

Gaius reached the name.

His finger stopped on the first letters. His lips parted.

"Al—"

The lightning struck.

White light flooded the library, pouring through the high windows and the cracks in the stone and the gaps in the roof, turning the darkness into blinding day for a single, frozen second. The scroll in Gaius’s hands was illuminated, the ancient ink standing out in sharp relief

Then the thunder followed.

It was a deep, deafening, guttural roar that shook the walls and rattled the bookcases and sent a cascade of dust down from the rafters. The torch behind him flickered violently, nearly going out, and the shadows danced like living things across the walls.

Gaius stared at the scroll, at the name he had almost read, his heart hammering against his ribs.

"Al–"

"Gaius!"

Titus’s voice cut through the dying echoes of the thunder. It came from the front of the library, muffled by the stacks and the rain, but unmistakable. "Gaius! What the hell is taking you so long back there? Did your old ass get lost in the scrolls?"

Gaius didn’t answer. His eyes were still on the name. His finger still rested on the faded ink. One syllable. That was all he had. One syllable, and the rest was still buried in dust and mold and the particular cruelty of old texts that didn’t give up their secrets easily.

"Gaius!"

He closed the scroll. Carefully, slowly, his hands steadier than his heart. He slipped it into the leather bag slung over his shoulder, nestling it between the spare bandages and the ointment he’d packed that morning.

Then he stood up, brushed the dust from his tunic, and walked back toward the light.

"I’m coming," he called out. "Just got distracted."

His voice was steady. It gave nothing away.

But his mind was still in the dark, still holding the scroll, still tracing the letters of a name that started with "Al—" and ended somewhere he couldn’t reach... yet.

---

---

The rain drummed on the sands of the arena, on the shields, on the bodies of the fallen, turning the arena floor into a shallow lake of diluted blood. The storm was gentler now, but the water kept coming, as if the sky was trying to wash the Colosseum clean and failing.

The remnants of the allied forces stood in a ragged cluster near the center of the arena. Palacius fighters, Irectus survivors, the Magnimus men had all been wiped out by "the white ghost".

Their weapons were still in their hands, but their grips were loose. Their eyes kept drifting to the bodies around them—their brothers, their friends, men they had trained with and eaten with and bled with—and then to the white-haired figure kneeling in the distance, surrounded by five dead giants.

Then something no one expected happened. One of the men dropped his sword.

It landed in the wet sand with a soft thud, and for a moment no one moved. Then another sword fell, then another, and another. Men who had come to fight were now simply letting go of their weapons, their shoulders slumping, their heads bowing.

The crowd saw it.

And the crowd was not satisfied.

"KILL! KILL! KILL!"

The chant started in the upper tiers and rolled downward, fifty thousand voices picking it up and hurling it at the sand like stones.

The announcer looked toward the pulvinar.

Brutus sat in his seat of honor, gold rings on his fingers, bald head gleaming in the grey light. He had not moved throughout the entire battle. He had watched his Colosseum fill with blood and rain and the bodies of dead men, and his expression had never changed. Now, as the crowd screamed for slaughter and the allied forces stood weaponless in the sand, Brutus gave a single nod.

The announcer turned back to the arena.

"The people have spoken." His voice carried across the silence that fell as soon as he raised his arms. "Give them what they want."

The Ignatius survivors didn’t hesitate.

They surged forward—Brennus leading, his broken arm still dangling, a stolen sword in the other. The others followed, a dozen men who had been dead minutes ago were now the executioners. They fell upon the surrendered fighters with the savagery of men who had been given permission to avenge their dead.

The first Palacius fighter to die had his throat opened before he could raise his hands. The second tried to run and was cut down from behind, the sword biting into his spine and dropping him face-first into the mud. The third screamed something—a plea, but it didn’t matter. The Ignatius line rolled over him like a wave, and when it passed, he was just another body on the sand.

The rain kept falling. The blood kept spreading.

Oseka didn’t join them.

He turned away from the slaughter, and ran toward Alex.

The white-haired boy was still on his knees, his chin on his chest, the rain cutting slow trails through the blood caked on his face. He hadn’t moved since the thunder. He hadn’t spoken since the system pinged. His stolen gladius lay in the sand beside him, the blade still slick, the grip still tacky with the blood of five giants.

Oseka dropped to his knees beside him, planting himself between Alex, and the massacre, with his sword raised.

"You’re one crazy bastard," Oseka muttered. "But you’re the reason we’re all still breathing." He smiled.

Alex didn’t respond. His eyes were closed. His breathing was shallow, ragged, the breath of a body that had spent everything and was running on nothing.

Oseka stayed where he was, crouched over his brother, a shield of flesh and bone against whatever might come next.

Nothing came.

The massacre was over in minutes. The surrendered men were dead—all of them—their bodies added to the growing carpet of corpses that the rakers would have to turn over before once The bout was over.

The Ignatius survivors stood among them, chests heaving, swords dripping, faces blank with the emptiness of men who had killed and were still killing in their heads.

The crowd roared its approval.

---

In the pulvinar, Aurellia Magna rose from her seat.

Her crimson stola was flecked with rain that had blown in through the open balcony. Her wine cup sat abandoned on the arm of her chair, still half-full. Her palm, where her nails had broken the skin, was still bleeding—a thin trickle of red that dripped from her fingers and stained the white marble at her feet.

Just as she was about to walk away, she froze. Her gaze landing on Ignatius.

He was watching her. His cup was raised in a toast. The smallest of smiles sitting at the corner of his mouth. The smile of a man who had just won a battle he hadn’t expected to survive.

He waved the cup.

Aurellia’s face didn’t change. The rage was there; seething beneath the surface, hotter than it had been when Alex first refused, but she didn’t let it show. She was a woman who understood that rage was a weapon, and weapons were best kept hidden until the moment they were used.

She smiled back. Dry, controlled and calculating.

Then she turned and walked past him, her sandals clicking on the marble, her blood still dripping in a thin, steady line behind her.

Ignatius watched her go. His smile didn’t fade.

---

Below, the guards were moving onto the sand. They moved through the bodies like men who had done this a hundred times—checking for survivors, pulling weapons from dead hands, directing the rakers to the worst of the carnage. The announcer was saying something, his voice a distant drone, but the crowd wasn’t listening to him anymore.

They were watching Alex.

Two guards approached the kneeling figure. One of them bent down, checked his pulse, and called someone over his shoulder. The other slung his shield across his back and reached down to lift the boy by the shoulders.

As soon as Alex’s body left the sand, the crowd erupted.

"ALBIUS! ALBIUS! ALBIUS!"

His name—the name Ignatius had given him, the name that had started as a slave’s designation, was now something else entirely. It rose from fifty thousand throats and echoed off the stone walls of the Colosseum.

It was louder than the chant for Spartacus. Louder than the roar after the giant fell. It was the sound of a legend being born, and the legend himself was unconscious, limp in the arms of the guards, completely unaware that he had become immortal.

Oseka walked behind them, his eyes fixed on the back of the white-haired head that lolled against the guard’s shoulder, his lips moving in a quiet mantra that no one could hear.

The gates to the holding area swung open. The guards carried Alex through, as Oseka followed, and the gates swung shut.

The rain kept falling on the blood-soaked sand, washing the arena clean, while fifty thousand people chanted a name that would one day mean something more.