Five hundred thousand soldiers.
Commander Straze had assembled them in thirty-six hours — a logistical feat that would have taken any other man three weeks. Supply lines from seven provinces. Fourteen Rank 4 officers pulled from active campaigns. Three Rank 5 Exalted commanders, the kind of power that could level fortresses, recalled from the empire's borders on emergency mandate.
He stood on the ridge overlooking Rūme and looked at what was left of it.
---
The city wasn't rubble. That was the first thing that was wrong.
Rubble implied destruction — collapsed buildings, scattered stone, the recognizable wreckage of something that had existed. Rūme's southern districts were simply absent. The structures hadn't fallen. They had been erased, cleanly, the way a candle flame disappears when pinched. The streets remained. The foundations remained. The geometry of the city was intact.
Everything built upon it was gone.
"Scope of destruction?" Straze said, without turning from the ridge.
His aide — young, pale, holding a relay-crystal with both hands — read from the morning's assessment. "Southern and central districts. Approximately forty percent of the city's structure. The northern residential areas appear untouched." A pause. "Survivors estimate the fire moved — selectively, sir. It didn't spread. It went where it chose."
Where it chose.
Straze had been a soldier for thirty years. He had seen fire used as a weapon, channeled by Rank 4 and Rank 5 mages into tools of war. Fire moved how physics and power directed it. It did not choose.
"Casualty estimate?"
"Current count is—" The aide stopped. Swallowed. "Eleven thousand confirmed. An additional sixty thousand unaccounted for. We believe many evacuated north before—"
"Before it was done with them," Straze said.
The aide said nothing.
---
Straze descended the ridge toward the army's forward position. Five hundred thousand men, the finest fighting force in DEVAS, arranged in a siege formation around a city that — based on every report from every surviving soldier — contained a single individual. One man. Unmeasured rank. White hair. Black coat.
We have surrounded the fire.
The thought came uninvited, and he crushed it immediately.
"Signal the advance. All units into the city on my mark. Rank 4 officers take the central avenue. Rank 5 commanders establish suppression perimeter at these coordinates—" He indicated three points on the tactical map. "I want him contained, not destroyed. Contained. Information first."
His officers relayed the order. Horns sounded across the ridge. The army began to move.
Straze watched them go, and made himself say what he had been refusing to say since the first report arrived: a single man had destroyed forty percent of a city of eight hundred thousand people, and not one surviving witness could agree on whether he had even tried.
---
They reached the central avenue in twenty minutes.
It was empty.
Not empty in the way of a cleared battlefield. Empty in the way of an abandoned house — the sudden wrongness of a space that should contain something and doesn't. The black-white scorch marks on the stone avenue were there. The circular erasure where the south gate had been was there.
No body. No wounded. No prisoner.
No white-haired man.
Straze stood in the center of the avenue and looked at the scorch marks and understood — with the cold, complete clarity of a man who had survived thirty years of war by being honest with himself about bad situations — that he had made an error.
He had assumed the target would stay where the destruction was.
He had assumed the target thought like a military man — defend a position, consolidate gains, prepare for the counteroffensive.
He had assumed.
"General." His second-in-command, a Rank 4 officer named Kane, appeared at his shoulder. Kane's face was the color of old chalk. "Relay crystal just activated. Priority signal from Byzantium."
Straze took the crystal.
The voice that came through was a palace communications officer — trained to remain calm, stripped of emotional tone in emergency situations, an automation in human form.
She was not calm.
"—confirmed visual at the Eastern Gate of Byzantium. Single individual, matching description from Rūme reports. White hair, black coat, no visible weapons. Eastern Gate is — Eastern Gate is—"
Static.
"Eastern Gate is gone, Commander. He's inside the capital."
The crystal went silent.
Straze looked at the empty avenue. Looked at the scorch marks. Looked at the five hundred thousand soldiers he had assembled, perfectly positioned, facing the wrong direction.
He was already in Byzantium.
Three hundred kilometers away. In under thirty-six hours.
"Sound the recall," Straze said quietly. "All units. Emergency march to Byzantium. Immediately."
Kane opened his mouth, closed it, and ran.
---
The palace throne room of Byzantium was the largest interior space in DEVAS — a cathedral built to make emperors look eternal and visitors feel small. Columns of white stone thirty meters high. Floors of polished black marble that reflected the chandeliers above like a second sky. At the far end, raised on seven steps of imperial granite, the LATIUM THRONE — occupied for forty years by Emperor Krau I.
Krau had dismissed his court.
Not out of fear — he told himself that, and it was almost true. He had dismissed them because what was coming did not require witnesses and he had no interest in watching his nobles measure the distance to the nearest exit.
He sat on his throne, armor on, both hands resting on his knees, and he waited.
The doors of the throne room opened without being touched.
The man who walked in was exactly as the reports described. White hair. Black coat. The lazy curl of black-and-white flame that orbited him like a habit rather than a threat. He walked the length of the throne room without rushing — each footstep on the polished marble crisp and unhurried — and stopped at the base of the seven steps.
He looked up at Emperor Krau.
Krau looked down at him.
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Krau was studying him the way he studied everything — calculating power differential, potential responses, available options. Thirty years of ruling had made him precise in his assessments.
The assessment he arrived at was not encouraging.
---
"You burned Rūme," the Emperor said.
"Part of it," the man said. "I left the northern residential districts. Unnecessarily cruel to start with the homes."
Krau noted the word start. "And you've come to Byzantium."
"I came to your palace. Byzantium seemed cooperative once the gate was gone." The man tilted his head slightly, the same small gesture from the Rūme reports. "You're the Emperor."
"I am."
"You have a Rank 4 soul-brand. You've ruled for forty years. Your administration is sophisticated — better than most." A pause. "You gave the order for the Prussonian Purge."
The air in the throne room changed.
Krau's hands tightened on his knees. The Prussonian Purge. Twenty years ago. A border campaign, a political calculation, a decision made with clean hands behind a clean desk. He had signed the order between breakfast and a trade negotiation.
"I did," the Emperor said carefully.
"There was a family," the man said. His voice didn't change — still conversational, still unhurried. "In a border town. A Rank 3 mage and a field medic. They had a son."
Krau did not allow himself to react. Forty years on the throne had made him very good at not reacting. "The purge involved several thousand families."
"Yes," the man said. "It did."
He climbed the first step.
---
Krau's Soul-Brand ignited instantly — crimson-gold light blazing from both arms, condensing into the full combat form of a Rank 4 Sovereign. Forty years of refinement made his power output the highest in the empire. He brought both hands together, and the compressed force that built between them was enough to crack a fortress wall.
"That's close enough," Krau said.
The man took the second step.
The compressed force hit him in the chest.
Krau watched it land — watched the impact that should have launched a man backwards thirty meters through solid stone — and watched the black-white flame dissolve it at contact. The fire didn't eat it dramatically. Didn't explode. Just quietly consumed it, the way water absorbs ink, until the attack was simply gone.
The man was on the third step.
Krau attacked again. And again. He was not panicking — he was testing, rapidly, every variation of force application he had spent forty years mastering. Compressed impact. Diffuse shockwave. Focused directional push at the body's structural weak points. He had trained against Rank 5 opponents. He knew how to disrupt even heavily shielded targets.
The fire ate everything.
The man climbed the fourth step and stopped.
They were close now — five meters. Krau could see his eyes clearly. Golden-green. And in them, not hatred. Not satisfaction. The look of a craftsman who had arrived at a task he had been planning for a long time.
"You don't know my name," the man said.
Krau held his battle-form steady. His mind was running through every remaining option. One Rank 5 Exalted is still in the capital. If I stall—
"I don't," the Emperor admitted.
"Yogiri," the man said. "Yogiri Augustus. My father was Denn Augustus. My mother was Frida Augustus." He paused. "They lived in Prussonia."
---
The name landed in the silence of the throne room.
Prussonia. The border. The purge. The order signed between breakfast and a trade negotiation, twenty years ago.
Krau was, for the first time in forty years, afraid.
Not of dying — he had made peace with that possibility decades ago, as all emperors must. Afraid of what this was. Not an invasion. Not a coup. Not a political maneuver or a power grab dressed in military language.
The man standing four steps below his throne had walked three hundred kilometers in thirty-six hours and burned forty percent of his greatest city.
Not for strategy.
For a name. For two names. Denn and Frida Augustus, of Prussonia, who had died twenty years ago in an order he had signed between breakfast and a trade negotiation.
"How long have you been planning this?" Krau asked.
Yogiri considered the question. The first time he seemed to genuinely think about what he was going to say.
"Since I was twenty-three," he said. "But I stopped planning three years ago."
"Why?"
"Because I realized I didn't need a plan." He raised one hand. The black-and-white flame curled from his palm, moving with that same patient, inevitable slowness. "I just needed to be strong enough. And then walk."
---
The Rank 5 Exalted burst through the throne room's western entrance — three minutes late, battle-form already active, power output that shook the chandeliers overhead.
Yogiri didn't look at him.
Krau had time to think: this boy burned forty percent of Rūme and he won't even look at a Rank 5.
He had time to think: I should have learned his parents' names before I signed that order.
He had time for both thoughts, clearly and completely.
Then the fire reached him, and he had time for nothing at all.
---
In the corridor outside the throne room, a palace aide pressed himself against the wall and listened to the silence that followed.
Eleven seconds.
That was how long the sounds lasted — the impact of a Rank 5 Exalted's full combat output, the crash of stone, a single sharp sound that might have been a word or might have been something else.
Eleven seconds, and then nothing.
The doors opened.
The white-haired man walked out, coat undisturbed, the orbit of black-and-white flame around him unchanged. He passed the aide without looking at him. His footsteps on the marble were crisp and unhurried.
At the end of the corridor, he stopped.
Without turning, he said: "Send word to your nobles. Tell them the empire has new management." A pause. "Tell them I'll be reviewing who stays on in their positions over the next week. Those who come to me will be considered. Those who run—" He resumed walking. "—will make my morning productive."
The aide did not move for a long time.
When he finally looked into the throne room, the LATIUM throne — the seat of four hundred years of Imperial power — was intact.
The Emperor was not.