It was Alexi who first noticed the rot. He saw how distant and hollow I had become. He was truly my brother in blood and spirit. Had it not been for his intervention, I would still be wandering the marble streets lacking any true purpose or joy. Alexi became my purpose. His ambitions, his brilliant mind, and his grand vision were causes genuinely worth pursuing. He should have been the Senator, not I, but he continually declined to claim the laurel for himself.
Despite his strict reluctance to stand for election, there was no doubt that he was the true voice of our people. The Sarnori were the founding bedrock of the Imperium, and even today, we form nearly half of its vast citizenry. Yet, a mere fourteen Senators represent Sarnori blood within the Senate. Of the eighty-five high magistrates, only two-and-twenty are of our kin. We have never held the Consulship, and we lay claim to only a single provincial Governorship. Every political metric points to our people being systematically sidelined.
Yet, the vast majority of our people remained entirely unconcerned by this creeping disenfranchisement. To the common folk, Deus had granted them salvation from the Dothraki hordes, freedom from starvation, and a permanent shield against disaster. To them, that was far more than they could ever dare to ask for. But not to us. My brother and I discovered that many within our younger generation were quietly seething with discontent at the current hierarchy. We hungered for more, and as the founding blood of Rome, we had every inherent right to demand it.
Soon, however, we discovered a bitter truth: even if we demanded more, we were structurally barred from taking it. The Imperium was geographically organised in such a way that our own people had severely limited their political leverage by refusing to expand across its sprawling borders. Nearly nine-tenths of the Sarnori population remained clustered entirely within the Sarne Delta. The vast majority were stubbornly situated within the five core cities of Ctesiphon, Mediolanum, Antioch, Graecia, and Meridiem. This geographic stagnation drastically reduced the territory we could legally control and the broader populations we could politically influence. The Sarne Delta constitutes a mere tenth of the total realm.
Compound that demographic failure with the tragic reality that our people had been violently reduced from a once-thriving, continent-spanning kingdom into a fractured culture of humble fishermen. We had entirely forgotten our ancient crafts, our martial skills, and our proud history. The militant discontent within our faction was steadily boiling over; we desperately wished to restore the Sarnori to their ancestral glory.
Alexi possessed a masterful vision for this restoration. He knew perfectly well that we could never openly move against Deus, for the Emperor was the divine architect who provided the very foundation upon which we survived. But something deep inside my brother fractured when the Senate repeatedly denied his seemingly minor petitions to research and re-establish our lost Sarnori heritage.
We possessed all the civic freedom within the Imperium to live with dignity and fairness, but we were subtly, systemically denied the freedom to recultivate our own culture—to study it, to relearn it, to take pride in it. It was only after Alexi was repeatedly stonewalled by the bureaucracy that he ruthlessly orchestrated the political incident that secured my election to the Senate.
Initially, I too was blissfully oblivious to our cultural strangulation. I had just been elevated far beyond my humble means, too utterly engrossed in gorging myself on the newfound joys of high society. My blind complacency caused a bitter, gaping rift between my brother and me.
It was only when we finally reconciled, and he accurately diagnosed the rotting hollowness of my decadent state, that I truly realised how meaningless existence becomes when a man lacks a driving purpose. While I still do not fully comprehend the extent of Alexi's grand designs for Sarnor, I believe absolutely in his vision. And so, his crusade became my own: to see our people elevated to their rightful supremacy, no matter the cost.
Yet, no matter our drive, no matter our conviction, no matter our perseverance, it would all crack like an eggshell against the impenetrable wall that was Aeternus.
Time and time again, we were forcefully reminded of how utterly powerless we were in the face of the Lord of Rome. No weapon, no conspiracy, no shadow could even presume to strike him. He was, in every sense of the word, a living God walking among us. The Founding War and the Silver Lakes War had been taught to us as children, and we used to arrogantly think they were exaggerated accounts of the truth. Yet, as we grew, we discovered just how utterly misguided that assumption was.
Every newly elected Senate is graced with his terrifying presence—invited into the Throne Hall to gaze upon the foundation of the Imperium, to be viscerally reminded that it is held together by a single being. Almighty, All-Knowing, and All-Powerful.
The first time I stood in his presence, I imagined him to be akin to the warlocks of Qarth or the shadowbinders of Asshai. I was wrong. So very wrong.
When you stand before the Imperator, you stand before no mere man. The very air answers to his whims, and you are but an insect trying to fly through a hurricane. Should he deem it so, he could crush you into the earth with barely the lifting of a finger. I had never felt such profound dread and absolute reverence directed toward the same being in all my life.
I told Alexi as much, and he wholly agreed that we could never openly move against Deus. So, we waited. We spent years observing him, meticulously learning how he acts, when he acts, and why he acts.
We found that he rarely intervened in the mundane administration of the Imperium, if at all. To him, the relentless expansion of the borders mattered above all else. That is why we never opposed the Senate's declaration of war against Qohor; we would not have objected even if our own people had not been martyred at the gates. What we did do was attempt to make it easier for Deus to achieve what he desired, though it would seem he did not entirely appreciate our methods.
Alexi noticed that the Princeps became far more active during certain periods, while remaining diplomatically dormant in others. Through careful study of this pattern, we ascertained that the Princeps only truly took absolute charge when Deus left the capital. We never knew why he departed, only that there were distinct periods where the Imperator would vanish—sometimes for days or weeks, and occasionally for months at a time. We realised that these absences provided the perfect window for us to enact policies and manoeuvres we would ordinarily be entirely unable to risk under the Emperor's suffocating gaze.
This time, the Princeps had been officially elevated to Grand Regent—a monumental shift in power that Alexi had accurately predicted would eventually occur. It meant that Deus had departed and intended to be gone for quite some time.
It was finally the right time to execute our grander designs.
As the blistering heat of the newly forged sword slowly died down, and the thousands of citizens opened their eyes to gaze upon the Emerald Throne in absolute reverence, I glanced over my shoulder. I found my brother already gazing back at me, a sharp, knowing smile playing upon his lips.
It was time.