The message went out at midnight.
Not by courier. Not by relay crystal passed hand to hand through a chain of operators. It went out through the LATIUM DIVINE NETWORK — the empire's sacred communication infrastructure, a system of linked Soul-Stones embedded in every major city's central temple, every provincial capital, every military garrison above a thousand men.
A system designed to carry the Emperor's voice to the entire empire simultaneously.
It had been used eleven times in four hundred years. Coronations. Wars. The death of Empress ISOLDE, which needed to reach fourteen provinces before the succession crisis could be managed.
The network activated at midnight, and every Soul-Stone in LATIUM — four hundred and thirty-seven of them, from Byzantium to the outermost border garrisons — began to glow.
---
People woke up.
That was the first wrong thing. The network had protocols — morning activation windows, structured announcement formats, preliminary tones to give listeners time to gather. It did not activate at midnight without warning. It did not pull people out of sleep with sudden light blooming from the temple stones.
But it was glowing. So people came.
In the border garrison town of NAVARRA, soldiers stumbled out of barracks half-dressed. In the provincial capital of ARAGON, the governor's staff crowded around the temple Stone in their nightclothes. In the mountain city of BOHEMIA, where it was snowing, citizens pressed in from the cold streets and stood in the temple warmth with their breath clouding and their eyes on the light.
The light steadied.
And then the voice came through.
---
Straze was awake when it happened.
He was always awake at midnight — an old habit from campaigns where the third watch was when attacks came. He sat at his command table in the Macedonian fortress of PRUSSONIA PASS with Kane across from him and four tactical maps between them, working through supply route calculations by lamplight.
The relay stone in the corner of the room began to glow.
Both men looked at it.
The network activation tone was wrong — no preliminary sequence, no morning-window protocol. Straze was on his feet before the light fully stabilized, because in thirty years of military service he had learned that anything that broke its own protocol was important.
The voice came through.
It was calm. Unhurried. The same quality Straze had read about in every survivor report from Rūme and Byzantium — a voice that contained no performance, no effort to impress, no recognition that the audience was anything other than a logistical consideration.
Three sentences.
"The Latium Empire is under new administration effective eight days ago. All existing provincial authorities, garrison commands, and civic structures remain operational pending review. Those who function well will continue. Those who do not will be replaced."
A pause.
One more sentence. Not part of the official declaration — an addition, quieter, the way you add something you almost forgot:
"Commander Straze of Macedon: I know where you are."
The network deactivated.
The room was silent.
---
Kane sat very still on his side of the table. His hand, Straze noticed, was pressed flat against the wood — the unconscious gesture of someone using a solid surface to confirm they were still in the physical world.
"He used the divine network," Kane said.
"Yes."
"That requires the Emperor's Soul-Key. It's biologically bound to the imperial bloodline — it can't be transferred or—"
"He burned through the binding," Straze said. "Or around it. Or he found a third option we haven't thought of." He looked at the relay stone. Dark again. Quiet. "It doesn't matter how. He did it."
Kane absorbed this. "He named you specifically. On the open network. Four hundred and thirty-seven stones. Every garrison in the empire heard that."
"I know."
"That's — he's telling every provincial authority that you're his priority. That you're the threat he's already identified." Kane leaned forward. "That could work for us. It signals the resistance that there is a resistance, that you're—"
"It signals," Straze said, "that he already knows where I am, has already factored me into his planning, and is comfortable enough to announce it publicly." He pulled the nearest tactical map toward him. "It's not a threat. It's a status report. He's telling his new administrative network: this is the outstanding variable. I'm aware of it."
Kane was quiet for a moment. "Four provinces moved their garrisons east today. Away from Byzantium."
"They're not joining us," Straze said. "They're getting out of the way." He stared at the map. "There's a difference."
He drew a line with his finger — not on the map, just in the air above it, tracing the shape of a problem he was still assembling. The problem was this: a military campaign required three things. A cause your soldiers would fight for. An opponent your soldiers believed they could defeat. And a plan that held both of those things together long enough to execute.
He had the first. Thirty years of service, fourteen campaigns, three thousand soldiers who would follow him into a burning building — he had never once had to question whether his men would fight.
The second was harder.
He had read the Rūme reports until he could recite them. Studied every survivor account, every tactical observation, every detail about how the Hellfire moved and what it did and what it didn't do — because there was always something it didn't do, always a gap, always a seam in any power if you looked long enough and thought clearly enough and didn't let the scale of it convince you it was absolute.
The fire ate attacks. It didn't eat terrain. It didn't eat distance — it burned distance, which was different, which meant it required activation, which meant—
Means nothing, said a voice in the back of his head. He activated it three hundred kilometers in thirty-six hours. Your distance calculations are irrelevant.
He pushed the voice back. Replaced it with the next question. Always the next question. That was how you stayed functional in front of impossible things.
"Send word to every Rank 4 officer we have," Straze said. "I want assessments. What can their abilities do that standard attacks can't. Anything that operates differently — different energy type, different application method, different conceptual basis." He straightened. "The fire eats things that function as attacks. I want to know what doesn't function as an attack."
Kane wrote. "And the declaration? We need a response — the provincial authorities who are wavering will be watching to see if—"
"No response."
Kane's pen stopped.
"He told the empire I exist and he knows where I am," Straze said. "Responding confirms I'm listening. Confirms I'm reacting to him." He moved to the window. Outside, the Prussonian Pass was dark — mountain black, soldier-quiet, a fortress that had held against Hyperborean incursions for sixty years. "I'm not responding to him. I'm building. When I'm done building, the building will be the response."
Kane looked at his commander's back.
"He said he knows where you are," Kane said quietly. "If he knows — why hasn't he come?"
Straze looked at the dark mountain pass.
"Because I'm not ready yet," he said. "And he knows that too."
---
In Byzantium, in the administrative office, Mort was having his worst week.
This was a remarkable achievement because his previous worst week had involved a succession crisis, a poisoning attempt on the Emperor, and a trade delegation from CATHAY that spoke no Latium and communicated exclusively through hand gestures that meant different things in their culture.
The morning after the declaration, he arrived at the office to find Yogiri at the desk — had he slept? Did he sleep? Mort had quietly asked the night guard, who had quietly said he wasn't sure — reviewing what appeared to be a complete restructuring proposal for the eastern provincial tax system.
"The declaration went out," Mort said, because something had to be said.
"Yes." Yogiri turned a page.
"The response has been — varied." Mort opened his notes. "Fourteen provinces have sent acknowledgment correspondence. Seven have sent correspondence that is technically acknowledgment but contains enough conditional language to constitute qualified resistance. Three have sent nothing." He paused. "And the province of CASTILIA has sent a military communique addressed to Commander Straze, not to the capital, which—"
"Which means Castilia's governor has already committed to the resistance." Yogiri made a note in the margin of the tax document. "Put Castilia on the review list."
Mort added it. He had a review list now. It was getting long. "There is also the matter of public response within the capital itself. Citizens are — processing the declaration. There have been gatherings. Some of them are—" He chose the word carefully. "—large."
Yogiri looked up.
"How large?"
"The central plaza." Mort's headache intensified. "This morning, approximately nine thousand people."
For the first time in eight days, Mort saw something shift in the white-haired man's expression. Not concern. Not alarm. Something more like genuine interest — the look of a man whose attention had been caught by an unexpected variable.
"What are they doing?" Yogiri asked.
"Mostly standing," Mort admitted. "Some are — speaking. About the Emperor. About the declaration. Some are angry. Some are frightened. Some appear to be simply—" He checked his notes, because he had written it down because he had not been sure how to interpret it at the time. "—waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
"I believe," Mort said carefully, "for you to appear."
Yogiri set down the tax document.
He stood. Moved to the window that faced the central plaza — not the strategic map window, the other one. Below, Mort knew without looking, nine thousand people were assembled in the grey morning. Waiting.
"Send the guard captain," Yogiri said.
---
Mort sent word.
The guard captain arrived — a solid man named ELRIC who had served four emperors and survived each transition by being the most professionally indispensable person in any room. He stood at attention and waited.
"The plaza gathering," Yogiri said, still looking out the window. "What's the composition? Civilian? Organized?"
"Mostly civilian, sir. Mixed — merchants, craftsmen, some from the residential districts. A few organized groups, religious primarily. Seraphic followers." Elric paused. "One group near the fountain has been there since before dawn. They have — signs."
"What do the signs say?"
A pause. "Various things. The most common—" Elric's professional composure developed a slight strain. "'Where is the Emperor' and 'Restore the Mandate' and one that reads 'We Will Not Be Owned.'"
Yogiri looked at the last one for a moment longer than the others.
We Will Not Be Owned.
"Open the main gates," he said.
Elric and Mort both turned to look at him simultaneously. It was, Mort thought, possibly the most synchronized reaction he had ever participated in.
"Sir," Elric said. "Nine thousand people—"
"Open the main gates. Then come with me."
Mort followed because following was what he did, with the specific helplessness of a man who had been following emperors for twenty years and had no framework for what was currently happening to his career.
---
The central gates of the Imperial Palace had opened before for processions, for celebrations, for the annual MANDATE FESTIVAL when the Emperor appeared to the public for exactly twelve minutes. They had never opened for anything that wasn't scheduled, ceremonial, and controlled.
When the gates opened, nine thousand people went quiet.
The silence moved through the crowd like a wave — from the gate outward, person by person, until the whole plaza was still. Yogiri walked out through the gates and stopped at the top of the broad steps that led from the palace to the plaza.
He looked at them.
They looked at him.
Nine thousand faces — angry, frightened, grieving, defiant, curious. Some of them were holding signs. Some of them were holding their children's hands. Some of them were old enough to have been alive for three emperors. All of them were looking at the white-haired man at the top of the palace steps with the black-and-white flame moving slowly around his shoulders like something breathing.
Nobody in the crowd spoke.
Yogiri looked at them for a long moment.
Then he said — not loudly, not projecting, just clearly: "You want to know what happened."
Not a question.
From somewhere in the crowd, a woman's voice. Clear, steady, not brave exactly but resolved — the voice of someone who had decided the night before that if she was going to come to this plaza she was going to actually speak. "What are you going to do with us?"
Yogiri was quiet for a beat.
"The same thing the previous administration did," he said. "Govern. Maintain infrastructure. Move grain from surplus provinces to deficit ones. Defend the borders. Collect taxes at the rates I will shortly be reforming." He looked at the crowd with the same evaluating calm he had looked at everything else. "The primary difference is that under the previous administration, you were told you were protected by divine mandate. Under mine, you are protected because you are productive, and protecting productive people is efficient."
The plaza was absolutely silent.
"That's a terrible comfort," the same woman's voice said.
Somewhere near the fountain, someone laughed — sudden, surprised, immediately suppressed.
"Yes," Yogiri said. "It is."
He turned and walked back through the gates.
Behind him, nine thousand people stood in the plaza and processed what had just happened. Mort, following three steps behind, glanced back once at the crowd.
They weren't dispersing.
But the energy had changed — the hot, collective tension of a crowd preparing itself for something had shifted into something more complicated. More confused.
It was, Mort thought, possibly the most honest thing he had heard anyone say from those palace steps.
That disturbed him far more than the fire.
---
At the Prussonian Pass, Straze received word from a scout at dusk.
He read the scout report twice. Set it down. Picked it up. Read it again.
The report was three lines: Province of Castilia — garrison commander has declared support for Commander Straze's authority. Province of Bohemia — wavering, no declared position. Province of Navarra — governor arrested his own military commander this morning for suggesting resistance.
His officers were watching him.
Straze set the report down.
"Three weeks," he said. "He's been in that palace for eight days and three weeks from now, if I don't move, there won't be enough organized opposition left to field an army." He stood. "Cancel the extended preparation timeline. We start the coalition-building phase now." He looked at Kane. "Get me every Rank 4 officer who has committed. Every one. And send a message to—" He paused. Chose the name carefully because it mattered. "—to the SOLOMON INSTITUTE in Achaemenia."
Kane's eyebrows rose slightly. "The Sage King."
"He'll already know what's happening." Straze pulled on his coat. "I want to know if he has a plan."
"And if he doesn't?"
"Then we build one together." He moved toward the door. "Because the alternative is watching that man turn a fourteen-province empire into his administration one governor at a time, and I won't stand still for that."
He walked out into the cold Prussonian night.
Above him, the stars were hard and clear. Below him, the pass fell away into darkness.
Somewhere out there — three hundred kilometers south in a palace that had belonged to an emperor nine days ago — a white-haired man was reading tax reform documents.
I know where you are.
Straze looked south.
And I know what you're doing, he thought. Every day you spend governing is a day I spend building. Keep reading your documents.
One of us is going to run out of time first.
I intend to make sure it isn't me.