In the heart of the Imperium, the Curia Soli seethed with voices. Marble pillars swallowed the sunlight pouring through high windows, casting long shafts of light across the senators' benches. The air was thick with sweat, perfume, and the faint reek of parchment oil.
Senator Lucullus rose first, his rings flashing as he gestured to the chamber. "The famine worsens! Three provinces cry out for bread, yet the stores in the southern ports remain untouched. Grain ships linger at the harbor while men, women, and children scrape at dirt for roots. If we do not release the stores now, we will have corpses lining the aqueducts."
A chorus of voices rose—agreement, jeers, and the rustle of silk.
Senator Varo, broad-bellied and smug, pushed himself upright. "And see the treasury bled dry? Shall we open the gates for every beggar who howls at our door? The grain is reserved for those who matter—the city, the legions, the heart of the Imperium. Would you have us weaken our strength for the sake of every mud-hovel peasant?"
Laughter rippled through his allies, a hollow sound against the stone walls.
Diana Arkanis sat near the edge of the dais, her eyes tracing the exchanges. She noticed the way a purse changed hands beneath the benches, how certain senators nodded in practiced rhythm, their outrage rehearsed.
"Strength?" Lucullus spat, pointing a trembling hand. "Strength is nothing without the people who till our fields. If the villages die, the legions starve with them. Or would you have them march on empty stomachs against the Dionians?"
At that name, the chamber shifted. Senator Crassian stood, his thin frame quivering with restrained anger. "The raids grow bold. Just last month, a Dionian warband struck Ravenstone, burning crops meant for winter stores. The villagers buried their dead in the Ashen Fields while this body debated tariffs! Tariffs!" His voice cracked. "Are we so blind?"
A senator draped in violet leaned lazily on his bench. "The Dionians are savages who bark louder than they bite. If villages are lost, they can be rebuilt. Gold, once spent, is gone forever."
Diana's hands tightened in her lap. She watched their faces: smug, defensive, calculating. The corruption was not whispered in dark alleys—it strutted openly, gilded in rhetoric. Even famine had become a bargaining chip.
The debate spiraled—accusations, counter-accusations, words hurled like javelins. Some senators demanded grain relief, others pressed for harsher levies, and still others argued for mercenary contracts rather than stationing legionaries in the marches. Every argument, Diana realized, circled back to profit.
At last, one voice cut through the din: "If the legions cannot be spared, then who defends our borders?"
Silence fell for a heartbeat, and Diana felt the weight of it. She could already see the answer forming on the lips of the senators: no one.
The silence that followed the last question hung like a blade. Senators shifted in their seats, their gazes darting from one another, waiting for someone else to answer. Diana rose.
Her chair scraped sharply against the marble, drawing every eye. She did not shout, but her voice carried—clear, honed, and firm.
"You speak of grain and raids as if they were the whole of our troubles," she said. "But the famine and the Dionians are only the smoke. The fire lies elsewhere—far darker, and far closer than you dare admit."
Murmurs rippled through the Curia Soli. Senator Varo scoffed, already reaching for his cup of wine.
Diana ignored him. "In the province of Ashkara, villages are vanishing. Entire households gone, livestock left tethered in fields, tools scattered as if dropped mid-work. Not slain, not plundered—erased. I have seen the reports myself. Men whisper of shadows in the forest, of fires that burn with no fuel, of strangers with no names."
A senator rose from the opposite bench, his face pale with mock astonishment. "Ghost stories from peasants, Lady Arkanis? Shall we empty the treasury to chase after children's tales? The Dionians are the threat. Barbarians with blades, not… phantoms."
Diana's eyes narrowed. "And yet the raids grow bolder each time they skirt near Ashkara. Have you not wondered why? They are not striking for spoils alone. They are driven—as if by something behind them. The famine weakens us, yes, but something else is shaping these attacks. Something that thrives in the silence of vanished villages."
The chamber erupted. Some senators barked laughter, others muttered oaths, and a few, the older ones, fell into uneasy silence.
Diana stepped down a single stair toward the center. Her voice sharpened like a drawn blade. "You call it superstition because it suits you to ignore it. But when your estates in the outer province fall quiet, when your grain silos are found emptied overnight, remember that I warned you. The Imperium rots from within, and something is clawing at our borders."
For a heartbeat, the chamber hushed. The shafts of sunlight had shifted, leaving Diana's figure framed in shadow as if the dome held its breath.
Then Senator Varo raised his cup in a mocking salute. "Lady Arkanis speaks of omens and nightmares," he drawled. "Shall we appoint her augur of the Imperium?" Laughter spread, brittle and loud.
Diana stood unmoved, her gaze sweeping across the chamber, taking in each smirk, each purse of lips, each empty-eyed nod. Her voice softened, but it cut deeper for it:
"Laugh, if you must. But when the enemy walks through your gates, it will not be the Dionians who come first."
A cough broke the laughter. Senator Marcellan, one of the elder statesmen with hair like bleached straw and a voice frayed by years, rose slowly from his bench. He leaned heavily on his staff, yet when he spoke, the chamber quieted.
"I served on the frontier once, long before most of you ever saw the curia's marble," Marcellan said, his tone grave. "In Ashkara, I saw things no legion steel could cut. Cult fires in the hills, shapes that walked through walls of flame. Men vanishing from their tents without a scream. We put it down to bandits then, because we had no name for it. But I hear the Lady Arkanis, and I know the scent of old evils returning."
The laughter faltered, but only for a breath. Varo's lips curled in disdain. "Old soldier's tales," he muttered, waving a jeweled hand.
Another senator rose, shaking a scroll. "What matters are the ledgers, not phantoms. The markets stagger, the treasury is strained, and merchants demand their dues. If we empty our coffers chasing shadows in Ashkara, we will have no gold left for the famine relief. Or have you forgotten the starving mouths at our gates?"
Nods rippled through the chamber. Quills scratched, clerks tallying costs against rumors. The debate turned, not on the fate of vanished villages or whispers of cults, but on tariffs, taxes, and who would profit or lose from the grain dispersal.
Marcellan lowered himself back to his seat, ignored as though he had never spoken.
Diana remained standing, her fists curled at her sides. She felt the shift—her words, Marcellan's memories—swallowed by the hunger of coin. The chamber thundered again with arguments over supply routes and merchant contracts.
She looked around the Curia Soli and saw not guardians of the Imperium, but men fattened on profit, deaf to the silence spreading from Ashkara.
The chamber had dissolved back into noise—quills scratching, voices bickering, laughter echoing like carrion crows. Diana had heard enough.
She rose, the scrape of her chair sharp against marble. Without waiting for recognition, she strode for the great bronze doors of the Curia Solis. The senators' laughter followed her out like a jeer.
Sunlight struck her as the doors groaned open, spilling her onto the Forum Solis. The vast square stretched wide beneath the dome of heaven, crowded with monuments: marble emperors on horseback, bronze lions mid-snarl, arches carved with the Imperium's victories over the Dionians and tribes long forgotten. The air smelled of incense, sweat, and horse dung. Citizens parted in murmuring waves as she crossed the plaza, their eyes flicking to her crimson-trimmed robe, their whispers following in her wake.
Ahead loomed the Golden Walkway, the colonnade that rose like a ribcage of stone from the forum to the Imperial Palace perched on the Palatine rise. Each mosaic along its ceiling depicted conquest—Arkanis triumphant at sea, Arkanis subduing the marches, Arkanis crowned beneath the sun. Diana walked beneath them without looking up. To her they were not triumphs but illusions: golden veneers over a body already rotting.
Praetorian guards in crested helms snapped to attention as she passed. None dared speak. She climbed the causeway stairs, her sandals striking like drumbeats, until the gates of the palace opened before her.
Inside, shadow replaced sunlight. The air cooled, heavy with the scent of marble polish and oil lamps. Corridors stretched in ordered grandeur, mosaics giving way to gilded panels and carved oak doors. Attendants glanced up, then lowered their eyes quickly at the storm in her stride.
She did not slow until she reached the eastern wing. The double doors of her office slammed open at her push, cracking against the stone. Attendants with scrolls flinched upright.
"Leave," Diana said, her voice like a drawn blade.
They fled. The doors shut.
At last, she was alone, the city's din muted by thick walls. She braced her hands against the desk, head bowed, the sound of her own breath filling the silence. The laughter of the Curia still rang in her ears. The mosaics of conquest still burned behind her eyes.
Her fist struck the desk, rattling the inkwell. "Blind fools," she hissed. "They'll choke on their gold before they see what hunts us."
She turned to the window, the palace gardens lying below, the rooftops of Arkanis sprawling beyond. How many of those thousands had any inkling of what stirred in Ashkara's forests?
"If the senate will not act," she whispered to the glass, "then I must."
Diana stood at the window a moment longer, the city sprawling beneath her, then turned sharply. She reached for the bronze bell on her desk and struck it once. The sound rang low and steady, a tone reserved only for her personal retinue.
Moments later, the door opened. A tall figure entered, armored in dark steel trimmed with crimson leather: Captain Alaric, commander of her household guard. His scarred face was weathered from years on campaign, but his eyes held the same sharpness as when he had first sworn his oath to her family.
"You called, my lady," he said, bowing his head.
"Yes," Diana replied. She moved around the desk, standing squarely before him. "The senate is blind. They argue over tariffs and grain levies while the Ashkara province bleeds in silence. Villages vanish, raiders grow bold, and something darker moves behind it all. I will not sit idle while they pretend it is nothing."
Alaric's jaw tightened. "You wish us to ride to Ashkara?"
"Not yet." Diana's gaze hardened. "First, I want answers. Quietly. Send word to our agents in the marches. Every whisper, every disappearance, every survivor's tale—I want it on my desk within a fortnight. And prepare a detail of loyal men. When the time comes, we will go ourselves."
Alaric nodded without hesitation. "And if the senate objects?"
Her lips curled into something cold, closer to a sneer than a smile. "Let them. They have already chosen gold over truth. This is not their burden anymore. It is mine."
The captain pressed a hand to his chest in salute. "As you command."
When the door closed behind him, Diana exhaled slowly. The weight in her chest had not lessened, but now it was shaped into purpose. She crossed back to the window, watching the sun sink toward the horizon. The shadows of the city lengthened, as if the Ashkara forests were already reaching for Arkanis itself.
Her unease had grown into certainty. Something was moving out there, something worse than famine or raiders. And if no one else would name it, then she would.