Imperator: Resurrection of an Empire

The first full month of the spring campaign offered no thunderclap triumph.

No toppled monarch.

No banners hauled down from citadel towers in dramatic surrender.

But it brought motion.

Romanus didn't surge forward.

It enveloped.

Elheat's raids on the western coast struck like a smith's hammer—loud, brutal, efficient.

In the east, Julius moved slower, more deliberate, drawing his siege lines tight like a noose with each passing day.

The Francian Kingdom wasn't crumbling.

Not yet.

But it was shrinking, folding in on itself, as if even its borders had grown afraid of the dark.

And fear, Julius knew, could be a weapon sharper than any blade.

~

Eastern Advance Camp — Outside Bellenne

The fire had burned low, spitting now and then like it resented the cold.

Julius hunched over the latest scout reports, one hand on his sword hilt, the other flattening the creased corners of a worn township map now bloated with fresh red ink.

Three possible approaches.

Four fortified bastions.

A dozen vulnerabilities if the timing was right.

His gaze snagged on the final note.

Just four lines, hastily scrawled:

"Unusual movement near the Saint-Agrais ruins. Smoke signals. No army banners. Civilian patterns—organized, not fleeing. Advancing."

He slid the parchment across to Sabellus.

The older general read it, his eyes narrowing.

"Joan?"

Julius's reply was low.

"Or worse. People who believe they are Joan."

"They're unarmed."

"They were unarmed."

Julius refolded the map with the care of a man sealing a prophecy.

"Send a light detachment. No confrontation. I want eyes on them. And send word to the Root—I want to know who leads, what they chant, and whose name they whisper before they sleep."

Sabellus raised an eyebrow.

"You think she's dividing her strength?"

"No."

Julius stood, joints creaking like rusted hinges.

"I think she's birthing another."

~

Western Front — Veylot Ruins

General Elheat walked through cinder and ruin like a man who had long ago made peace with fire.

His shoulder, still stiff from the ambush at Dorneau, throbbed with every step.

He ignored it.

Pain, like smoke, could be breathed through if you didn't let it settle.

Veylot hadn't been expected to resist.

A backwater merchant port, fortified more by stubbornness than stone.

And yet, for three days, it held.

Three days of snarled alleyways, scorched bread, and blood on cobblestones.

It fell.

Of course it fell.

But it had clawed time and bodies from Elheat's ranks, and he hated it for that.

"What did they think they'd accomplish?"

his aide muttered, kicking aside a burned Francian flag.

"They didn't think,"

Elheat grunted.

"They believed. That's worse."

He turned northward, where whispers were gathering—of ragged camps in the hills, of preachers with bright eyes and too many followers.

"They follow her because they think we burn everything in our wake."

He glanced back at the ruins. At blackened walls and broken homes.

"And when all that's left is ash… they'll believe harder."

~

Hollow Heights — Joan's Encampment

They didn't call her "Saint" anymore.

Not when the firelight fell only on her people.

To nobles, she was still Sainte de l'Espoir — Hope's Saint, elevated to a position of honor, one the nobility hope to continue to control, but day by day as her personal army climbed in numbers the nobles hearts wrenched at the idea of their loyal dog possibly considering biting their master.

The peasants needed their symbols.

But among her own?

She was Joan the Flame, a rare mana art user capable of performing sword arts and inducing miracles with her blade during battle, truly a force to be reckoned with beyond her genius command abilities.

And today, the flame was speaking.

She stood atop an old stone marker, her voice firm and unadorned.

"Their legions march like tides of steel,"

she said.

"But they do not know these hills. These rivers. These trees."

Her people — bloodied, hungry, sleepless — said nothing.

They just listened.

The way one does when belief has long since replaced doubt.

"We are the rivers,"

she continued.

"We are the trees. And if we must bleed to feed this soil… then we bleed."

Her gaze flickered with something deeper than sorrow.

Not tears.

Fire.

Behind her, three hundred fighters stood at attention.

They wore no uniform—just scars and conviction, they were the partisan resistance they were not supplied by the king, nor were they commanded by the nobles, this was the peoples army, the francian people rising up on their own to defend the motherland against the hostile threat encroaching upon them.

Morn, her second, approached.

"They've shored up the Valricon line. Romanus will breach the outer defense within days."

Joan didn't flinch.

"Good."

Morn blinked.

"Good?"

"They want a battle there,"

she said, voice lowering.

"We'll give them a reckoning."

~

Romanus Eastern Vanguard — Approaching Valricon

The further Julius's army marched, the quieter it became.

Not from fear — that would be easier to crush.

From purpose.

The legions moved now not with the bombast of empire, but with the rhythm of something heavier. Inevitable.

Still, Julius felt the shift.

The undercurrent.

The change.

Not collapse.

Opposition.

Saint Joan had retreated, yes.

Just as he'd calculated.

But he hadn't foreseen how quickly her ranks would swell again.

These weren't conscripts.

Not soldiers, even.

Volunteers.

Now, in every freshly-occupied village, the whispers had returned.

"She walks the peaks."

"She faced down death with empty hands."

"She never sleeps."

Nonsense.

But effective nonsense.

"They don't fear her anymore,"

Julius said, riding beside Sabellus.

"They adore her."

Sabellus nodded.

"Then we'll remind them why they should fear her again."

"No,"

Julius said after a beat.

"We'll make them doubt."

He wheeled his horse sharply.

"Send Gallius. Have him take the 9th and sweep north. No skirmishing—capture only. Anyone preaching her name, anyone claiming visions."

"Why not silence them outright?"

Julius's eyes were void.

"Because when the people see their 'prophets' broken—pleading, confessing—they'll stop listening."

~

Two Miles North of Aigrette — The Shrine

The scout legion moved like a phantom wind—five hundred handpicked men trained to go unseen and unheard.

What they stumbled upon was neither rebel camp nor supply cache.

It was older.

Stranger.

A stone structure, half-swallowed by the forest.

Not ruins.

A shrine.

No—a temple.

Older than Romanus.

Older than memory, possibly a relic of Rome itself.

Symbols marked the walls, fresh paint over ancient etchings.

Inside: no cross. no pentagrams.

Only a sun — cleft by a blade driven through its heart.

Their captain wrote his report with trembling fingers.

"We found it. The locals call it The Place Where She Heard the Voice. Twelve praying. Captured. They claim Joan received her visions here. Some of our men felt… watched."

He sealed the scroll with wax and superstition.

~

Nightfall — Julius's Tent

The falcon arrived at dusk.

Julius read the report once.

Then again.

Then a third time, slower.

He sat motionless, eyes reflecting the candlelight.

"So,"

he murmured.

"She has a Voice."

He didn't fear saints.

He didn't believe in gods.

But he feared ideas.

Shapes that moved in silence.

Seeds planted in desperate minds.

Joan had become one of those, or worse yet perhaps she had become an even greater opponent one who had access to a system similar to his own one who if not dealt with could possibly grow during this conflict until escape into the Visigoth Empire becomes their only option making a powerhouse even that much more dangerous.

He turned to the figure in the shadows — a Root operative, face unreadable.

"Bring me to that place."

The man tilted his head.

"You want to visit the shrine sir?"

"That's correct, if their Saint obtained something from that place, we'll see if the gods have anything to offer to an Emperor who comes for a visit himself."