As the employees mopped the floors, people drifted back to their meals as if nothing unusual had happened. The fear they all expressed vanished in the span of a heartbeat, and within moments the blood was gone, with a yellow wet floor sign standing in its place. Most of the staff returned to the kitchen, as though scrubbing away blood was just another cog in their endless shift.

  One of the managers walked over to the small table, grabbed the remote, and switched on the television hanging from the wall. They flipped through a couple of channels, hesitating on each for only a second, before leaving it on the familiar drone of the news. The anchors’ voices filled the room, not with interest or concern, but with the kind of background noise people stopped listening to long ago.

  Ampelius watched the TV for a few minutes, but nothing caught his interest. He began walking toward the door, but a sudden breaking news alert caught his eye.The headline claimed a Roman military installation overseas had been destroyed. The grim report made him smile; Rome was being challenged, even from a distance, felt like a small victory.

  But when the footage showed the base engulfed in flames, the chaos flickering in the firelight made him hesitate. After a moment, he decided to turn away and head for the door.

  As he pushed it open and stepped outside, the cool air greeted him as the television droned on behind. But, just as the door began to swing shut, the broadcast shifted to footage of an erupting volcano, a glowing green ash cloud rising into the sky.

  The city met him with noise of traffic and voices, carried on the warm afternoon air. Sunlight threw long shadows across the streets of Vetera, the sky clear with scattered clouds. To most it might have been a beautiful day, but to Ampelius the warmth felt off, almost like a false comfort draped over a city still chained by oppression.

  The smell of cooking food drifted through the streets, mixing with the sweetness of different flowers from planters. Somewhere close, Ampelius could hear a street musician playing a harp, the music overlapping with the noise of the city. For a moment Ampelius felt a trace of the vitality Vetera once had. But Rome’s banners were everywhere, hanging from corners and buildings, constant reminders that the city lived under the Empire’s iron fist.

  As he walked, his eyes lifted toward Mount Nerva’s snow-covered peak in the southeast. It brought back many memories of childhood hikes that he and his father’s took, along with the stories. Back before the Romans changed the name of the mountain. Back then, it was a symbol of freedom and adventure. Now it stood distant and untouchable, a silent witness to the shadow Rome had thrown over every part of the city.

  He paused to take in its beauty, remembering an educational hike from his youth. The memory came back as if no time had passed. He still remembered the climb and the long hours it took to reach the top. The dumb jokes from his classmates came back too, and of course the view from the summit. For a moment, the memory gave him a warmth he hadn’t felt in years.

  He could still hear the tour guide from that hike, saying the peak had been renamed after Emperor Nerva once Rome seized the land. Geologists had long studied the mountain, warning that though it looked calm, it was one of the region’s most dangerous volcanoes—a dormant giant hiding the threat of sudden, catastrophic change.

  Ampelius pulled his eyes from the mountain and back to the streets around him. Vetera teemed with everyone going about their own lives.To him the crowd was more than a restless mass; it was his past and present, filled with faces worn down by the hardships Rome had imposed.

  Cars jammed the streets, crawling forward a few feet at a time. Pedestrians pushed past each other, acting like Rome's symbols weren’t staring down at them from every corner. Street vendors hollered to anyone who would listen, hoping to sell their wares.

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  The SPQR flag of the Roman Empire hung from nearly every street corner and government building, and Ampelius hated the very sight of it. He found the banners impossible to ignore as their bright colors and regal emblems caught the eye at every turn. They would flutter from lampposts and rooftops as its purpose is to remind the city who truly owned it. To Ampelius, each one was less a decoration than a warning.

  The government buildings stood tall, their facades polished to reflect the power and order of Roman rule. Imposing columns and ornate carvings carried a legacy that stretched back centuries, a deliberate testament to the Empire’s enduring strength.

  Ampelius lived with his cousin Emmett in a run-down apartment complex buried in one of Vetera’s poorest districts. The shift from Rome’s polished facades to these streets was jarring—the monuments and marble columns felt like another world compared to the cracked walls and peeling paint around him. This was a neighborhood heavy with neglect, where poverty and homelessness were part of the scenery.

  Graffiti covered almost every wall, splashed in layers of fading color across the brick and concrete. To Ampelius, each mark felt like a quiet protest, the only voice some people had left. Some tags screamed defiance, others were just names barely clinging to the surface, but together they told the story of a city fighting to be seen.

  Hardship showed itself everywhere. Homeless camps pressed into whatever corners offered cover, such as under bridges, in alleys, or against the sides of buildings. Those tattered tents leaned against one another, and cardboard shelters sagged in rows. The people inside them were thin and hollow-eyed, clutching signs that begged for food, drugs or coins. But, it was the part of Vetera the Empire liked to pretend didn’t exist, but Ampelius couldn’t avoid it; he walked through it every day.

  The homeless camps were the city’s hidden underbelly, a world far removed from Rome's glittering monuments. At intersections and doorways, there was always someone who held a cardboard sign begging for food, money, or anything to keep going.

  Ampelius wasn’t much better off than the beggars. He didn't have a job, no income, but at least he wasn’t living on the streets. For that, he owed Emmett. His cousin had taken him in on the condition that he kept looking for work, and Ampelius was grateful for the roof over his head, even if it came with strings attached. Still, the thought crept in sometimes, why would Emmett choose to live in a place like this, surrounded by decay and desperation?

  Emmett’s job was something he almost never talked about, and that only made it stranger. Ampelius couldn’t help but wonder, his thoughts drifting anywhere from something ordinary to something dangerous. The secrecy around it would bother him at times, and more than once he caught himself asking what kind of life Emmett really lived once he walked out the door.

  The apartment was modest and worn at best, really no different from most of the neighborhood. The walls were scuffed, while the furniture was beaten down and threadbare. Even the paint had given up years ago, leaving the place looking tired and old. Still, it was a kind of refuge, much better than what waited outside. From his window, though, the view was nothing but a reminder of the city’s struggles.

  Each day, Ampelius walked the streets looking for work, and every day he ran into the same poverty. He often saw it in the clothes people wore, usually threadbare and stained, or in the way they moved like every step was too heavy. Still, there was much fight left in them, a stubbornness that refused to die out. To him, just making it through the day in Vetera was its own kind of defiance. Passing those faces again and again only made the weight of it sink deeper, and it left him wanting all the more to claw his own way out.

  As Ampelius reached the front door of the apartment building, he noticed an old woman standing off to the side with a cardboard sign clutched in her hands. At first glance he took her for another homeless soul, dressed in dirty, ragged clothes with greasy white hair hanging in strands around her face. But when her eyes met his, she lifted the sign, holding it up like the words were meant for him alone.

  He read it quickly, "The reality you know is not your own."

  A chill worked its way down his spine. He blinked, reread the words, but they made no more sense the second time than the first. Bewildered, he pushed through the door, footsteps echoing in the small lobby. Something tugged at him though, and he turned back for another look.

  The woman was gone.

  The doorway swung shut behind him with a soft click, the sound sharp in the silence, like it was sealing him into another world altogether.