The earth had been restless for days, trembling beneath our feet like a dying animal in its final throes, but my master paid it no mind. I remember the morning clearly—the sky hung heavy and gray over Pompeii, pressing down on the city like a shroud.
The air was thick with sulfur that clung to my lungs like poisoned honey. I was twenty-eight then, though I had stopped counting the years since I'd been taken from my village, each one bleeding into the next like ink in water, yet each memory rotting separately.
My name was Alexios, though here I answered only to "boy" or whatever my master chose to call me in his wine-drunk rages. I lived in his villa on the Via dell'Abbondanza, a sprawling house with frescoed walls that depicted gods and heroes—beings who had never known what it meant to be owned, whose painted eyes seemed to mock my captivity.
That early August morning, as I carried water from the courtyard fountain, I glimpsed my master's son Titus. My hands tightened around the amphora, though I told myself it was only the weight of the water.
He was above me in every way—I was not supposed to look at him the way I did, was not supposed to notice the way the morning light shone on skin like carved olive wood. I was not supposed to remember the gold snake bracelet he had given me on my birthday.
I did not know then that the mountain would soon erase everything like a fiery bull's rage—the villa, the street, my master's cruelty, and even those whispered moments: the ghostly sweet glances in the noon sun, the small smiles that felt sharp as finely honed steel.