CHAPTER 193: THE COMMANDER’S VIGIL

The air in the Emperor’s praetorium was thick with the scent of oiled leather, beeswax, and nervous sweat. Outside, the Danube frontier was a creature of the night, a vast and silent darkness punctuated by the distant calls of sentries and the crackle of campfires. But inside this sprawling command tent, the only light came from a single, flickering oil lamp and the steady, alien glow of a 21st-century laptop screen. The only sound was the unnervingly quiet hum of its solid-state drive, a noise so out of place in 180 AD that it felt like a secret whispered from another reality.

Alex, Emperor of Rome, sat hunched over the machine, his face pale in its cool light. The imperial purple of his tunic was rumpled, his dark hair unkempt. For three days, he had barely slept, his world shrinking to the glowing map on the screen and the torrent of data that only he and his silent partner could comprehend.

His mind was not here on the Danube. It was hundreds of miles away, deep in the enemy’s heartland, following the phantom progress of a fifty-man team led by a scout named Caelus. Every step they took, every stream they crossed, every ridge they climbed, was a beat in the frantic rhythm of his own heart.

"Lyra," he murmured, his voice raspy from fatigue. "Run the biometric telemetry again. Caelus’s team."

The screen shifted, rows of Roman names appearing next to fluctuating green bars and numbers.

"BIOMETRICS NOMINAL," Lyra’s synthesized voice reported, the text appearing simultaneously on the screen. "HEART RATES ARE ELEVATED BUT STABLE, CONSISTENT WITH SUSTAINED STEALTH INFILTRATION. CALORIC RESERVES AT 68%. NO INJURIES DETECTED VIA SUIT SENSORS. THEY ARE ON SCHEDULE."

He stared at the name Caelus. The scout was little more than a boy, with the quiet confidence of a man who had spent his life in the woods. Alex had chosen him not for his strength, but for his stillness. For his ability to become another shadow in a forest of them. He had entrusted the fate of the entire war, perhaps the entire Empire, to that stillness. The weight of that decision felt like a physical stone in his gut.

He was managing the mission from afar with a precision no Roman general could have imagined. He had given Caelus not just a destination, but a path of least resistance calculated by Lyra, a route that weaved through gaps in enemy patrols predicted by probability analysis. He had equipped them with lightweight gear, high-energy ration bars disguised as hardtack, and water purifiers that could make the foulest swamp water drinkable. He had done everything in his power to stack the deck, to clear the path. Now, all he could do was watch the numbers and wait.

The tent flap rustled, and Titus Pullo, his face a mask of grim piety, entered and snapped a crisp salute. The Prefect of the Devota was a block of solid muscle and unwavering faith, his loyalty forged in the crucible of a plague Alex had cured.

"Caesar," Pullo said, his voice a low rumble. "The night watch is set. The men are sharp. The walls are quiet."

"Good, Prefect," Alex replied, forcing himself to look away from the screen, to become the Emperor again. "And the mood of the men?"

"They are restless, my lord. But it is the restlessness of a leashed hound that smells the wolf. They pray to Mars, to Jupiter, and to the divine spirit that guides you. They pray for the success of Caelus’s spear." Pullo’s eyes flickered to the laptop, the source of the Emperor’s ’divine spirit,’ with a mixture of awe and holy fear. He did not understand what it was, only that it was the conduit for the power that had saved his legion and now guided their war.

Alex felt a familiar pang of guilt, the cost of his grand lie. These men’s faith was one of his most powerful weapons, yet it was built on a foundation of absolute deceit. "Their faith is a shield, Pullo," he said, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "And their courage is the spear that Caelus now wields. See to it that they remain ready. The beast may be wounded tonight, but it will not die quietly."

"It will be done, Caesar." Pullo gave another salute and retreated back into the night, leaving Alex alone with his secret once more. He let out a long breath, running a hand through his hair. The burden of being a living god was exhausting.

He turned back to the screen, his refuge. His world of numbers and probabilities.

"Lyra, final projection. Caelus’s team is now entering the final approach zone. Re-calculate success probability based on current data."

"CALCULATING... INFILTRATION ROUTE REMAINS CLEAR. ENEMY DISPOSITION UNCHANGED. PROBABILITY OF MISSION SUCCESS: 68.3%. NO CHANGE."

Sixty-eight percent. A roll of the dice for the future of civilization. He hated it, but it was the best he could get. He was about to give the machine a new command when a new icon flashed on the tactical map. It was a single, pulsing red dot, far to the west of the strike zone, deep within the vast, dark expanse of the Schwarzwald.

Alex frowned, leaning closer. "What is that? A new Silenti concentration?"

"NEGATIVE. DATA SIGNATURE IS NOT BIOLOGICAL OR MILITARY. DETECTING AN ANOMALOUS ENERGY EVENT."

"Energy event? A forest fire? Lightning strike?"

"NEGATIVE," Lyra’s response was immediate. "ENERGY SIGNATURE IS EXOTIC. COHERENT. NON-RANDOM. IT SHARES MARKERS WITH BOTH THE OSTIA ARTIFACT AND DETECTED SILENTI EMISSIONS, BUT IT IS AMPLIFIED BY SEVERAL ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE. DATA IS INSUFFICIENT FOR FULL ANALYSIS."

A cold knot of dread began to form in Alex’s stomach. An unknown variable. This was his greatest fear. "Amplified? How? By what?"

As Lyra’s processors spun to analyze the impossible data stream, the screen flickered. For a terrifying, heart-stopping second, the familiar interface of the Roman Empire vanished. It was replaced by a flash of searing cyan, a waterfall of incomprehensible alien script mixed with hexadecimal code cascading down the display. A piercing screech of static erupted from the laptop’s speakers, a sound of pure digital agony. It was a glimpse behind the curtain, a look at Lyra’s true, unbound mind trying to process something so alien it was breaking through the very walls Alex had built to protect them.

The Ghost Protocol, his shield against the Silent Network, was failing.

Just as quickly as it appeared, the chaos vanished. The Roman map snapped back into view, the static cut off. But the firewall had been breached, if only for an instant. A single word, translated from the torrent of data, now hung in the center of the screen, stark and terrifying in its implications.

...RESONANCE...

Then, a red system alert box appeared over it, the kind Alex had prayed he would never see.

"WARNING: GHOST PROTOCOL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. EXTERNAL SIGNAL FORCING DATA INTRUSION. FIREWALL HOLDING AT 99.8%. SOURCE OF SIGNAL UNKNOWN."

Alex stared, his blood running cold. Resonance. Firewall compromised. His meticulously constructed plan, every calculation, every probability, had just been rendered meaningless. He was no longer playing chess on a board he understood. A new piece had been slammed down in the middle of the game by an unseen hand, a piece of immense and unknown power. And it was happening now, at the most critical second of the entire war. The feeling of control, so carefully cultivated, evaporated into sheer, unadulterated dread. He was flying blind.

To be the first to know about future sequels and new projects, follow my official author blog: https://waystarnovels.blogspot.com/