Imperator: Resurrection of an Empire

The line was breaking.

Not the Romanus line.

Theirs had held — always held.

It was the Francians now coming apart by inches, and the deeper into the kill zone they stepped, the more the snow turned red and the more their order dissolved into panic.

And in the worst of it — the eye of the slaughterstorm — stood a single legionnaire.

New armor, blackened from soot, and baked on blood.

No helmet.

Blood streaked across his face, some of it his, most of it not.

He had no name known to the officers.

No storied lineage.

Just a number — IX. Cohortus Secunda. Numerus 38.

One of the thousand men that made up the legion itself but as one of the lowest rank he was only known by his unit.

But by day's end, men would whisper of the soldier they called The Bastard of Flame.

It began when the line nearest the fourth division faltered.

Francian knights, pushing desperately from the western flank, broke the shield wall with sheer weight — trampling over their own men, trying to smash through Romanus with brute strength where discipline had failed.

Legionnaire 38 had been on the far left of the second file — not even in the frontline yet.

But he leapt the formation to meet them.

Not by order.

Not by command.

But because the fire behind his eyes had not dulled since the first scream of battle.

His first kill was clean — a gladius driven between helmet and gorget, twisted once.

The second was not.

He disarmed a noble with a sidestep, then grabbed the man's head with both hands and slammed it into the pommel of his own sword until teeth exploded like gravel.

A third knight stabbed him in the side — the blade caught under the ribs.

He didn't stop.

He bit the man's throat open, screaming like an animal through the blood.

And then the cohort behind him surged.

But the damage had been done.

He had opened the gap — not by breaking rank, but by dragging Hell itself into the breach.

A young Francian man-at-arms, barely more than a boy, raised his shield just in time to block a blow — only to have the soldier before him thrown into him.

Legionnaire 38 followed.

Not with a sword.

But with a spade, stolen from a nearby siege worker when his gladius snapped in half.

He slammed the flat of the tool into the boy's throat, then crushed the shield beneath his boot.

He didn't look like a man anymore.

His face was burned, one eye squinting through soot, his hair matted with blood and pitch.

Every motion was too fast.

Too violent.

He didn't fight for glory.

He fought like someone who didn't want to live through the day — but was determined to take the world with him before he went.

The Francian rear tried to reform.

They brought up halberds and polearms, trying to box in the breach.

It didn't work.

The shield line behind 38 caught the flank, while he drove himself into the center of their knot, swinging the spade like a cleaver.

He didn't stab.

He bludgeoned.

He broke arms.

He shattered collarbones.

He smashed one man's head so hard into the frozen mud that the face split down the middle.

He was stabbed again — in the thigh this time.

But he didn't fall.

He screamed and kicked and bit.

The soldier who tried to wrestle him went down with his jaw torn off.

Another tried to run.

He tackled him from behind, and ripped out his throat with the jagged stump of his gladius.

When his spade finally broke — bent and warped from too many skulls — he picked up a fallen halberd and kept going.

A pair of Francian sergeants managed to reach him, blades in hand, shouting commands — "Drop him!" — and closed from both sides.

One went high.

The other low.

38 ducked the first and headbutted the second — so hard the man collapsed before his blade reached the Romanus.

Then, spinning on a heel slick with gore, he caught the first sergeant in the inner elbow with the halberd shaft, then hooked the blade backward, catching under the chin, and tore.

The helmet came off with the skin.

And 38, panting, eyes wide, turned again.

He was alone.

Every Romanus behind him had stopped.

Not from fear.

But awe.

Sabellus, high on the ridge, blinked.

"Who the hell is that?"

Aide-de-camp checked the logbooks.

"Unknown. No officer's stripe. Likely green."

Julius narrowed his eyes, watching the chaos below.

"That man is no green."

The figure below them howled, then drove into another cluster of knights with nothing but raw hate and a broken spear haft.

Sabellus shook his head slowly.

"He'll be dead before the sun drops."

"Perhaps,"

Julius said quietly.

"But until then… let him burn, and if he survives we'll make sure he can burn even brighter next time."

Hours passed.

And still, he fought.

He was wounded now — slashes across the cheek, a leg barely functioning, one arm dangling from a half-severed shoulder.

But he would not stop.

Not when a standard bearer tried to rally his fellows.

He speared him through the chest and held the body upright as a human shield while archers loosed arrows.

Not when three Francian knights surrounded him.

He took two to the ground and gouged out one of their eyes with his thumb.

Not even when a mounted noble attempted to trample him.

He lunged, caught the reins, and dragged the man from his saddle — then beat him to death with the very stirrup.

His hands were black.

Not with gloves.

With dried blood and ash.

His armor was barely armor anymore — just a carapace of plate and bone, stuck to him like a second skin.

The only thing that marked him as Romanus was the faded red cloak still pinned to his back — fluttering, burning, stained with the blood of dozens.

By the third hour of battle, every man on both sides who'd seen him began to whisper.

Some said he wasn't a man at all.

That he had died in the first hour and was possessed by a war spirit.

Others said he was a punishment — a demon loosed from beneath the Ridge.

He passed through lines like a ghost.

Killed like a machine.

Bled like a god.

The Hero of Hell, they began to call him.

The bastard son of fire and rage.

He collapsed only when the line finally pushed beyond the valley's center — when reinforcements arrived to sweep the last Francian pockets aside.

He dropped to one knee.

Then slumped into the mud.

Unconscious.

Still breathing.

Barely.

They would find him there — his halberd buried in the ground, a dozen bodies in a ring around him.

And when they pulled him free and carried him to the rear, other legionnaires followed — not to help.

To look.

To see the one who had carved a legend in blood.

The one who proved that Romanus was not merely empire.

It was inevitability.