The midday sun, now high in the cloudless sky, transformed the meticulously planned garden into a greenhouse of intense aromas. The scent of rosemary, myrtle, and heated roses mingled in an almost intoxicating way. Lucius walked a step behind Titus Valerius, the white gravel crunching rhythmically under his sandals. The silence between them wasn't uncomfortable, but laden with unspoken thoughts.

  Lucius, however, couldn't contain the question hammering in his mind. The noble's generosity, though welcome, seemed disproportionate for just the invention of a wheelbarrow and a clothes wringer. There were patrons in Rome who barely gave a stale loaf of bread for greater services.

  "Sir Valerius," Lucius began, breaking the silence cautiously. "If I may be so bold as to ask... Why me? Why choose an unknown plebeian to be your personal assistant and pupil? The inventions are useful, I acknowledge, but they shouldn't be the only reason for such investment and trust."

  The noble stopped in front of a perfectly pruned laurel bush. He plucked a leaf, crushing it between his thick fingers and bringing it to his nose to smell the aroma, a melancholy smile curving his thin lips as they resumed walking.

  "You have sharp eyes, Lucius. That is good. A man who does not question his own luck is usually a fool who soon loses it," Valerius replied, his voice losing a bit of that habitual aristocratic hardness. "I see potential in you. Not just the ability to draw or build, but the way your mind attacks a problem."

  Valerius sighed, a heavy sound that seemed to come from deep within his broad chest.

  "Five years ago, I lost my younger brother. The plague took him in a matter of days." The noble looked at the horizon, where cypresses swayed slightly. "He was like you. A restless spirit, always covered in ink and sawdust, always drawing impossible machines and improving the tools on our farm in Tuscany. He had no interest in politics or the Senate's intrigues. He just wanted to understand how the world worked."

  Lucius felt a tightness in his chest. "I am sorry for your loss, sir. The death of such an important family member is a wound that takes time to heal."

  In his mind, however, gears turned in another direction. The plague. The invisible terror of antiquity. Lucius tried to recall his history lessons. If they were under Marcus Aurelius, that must be the Antonine Plague. Smallpox? Measles? He wasn't sure, but he knew it was devastating, decimating armies and cities. The danger was real and lurking, invisible in the air they breathed. He would need to be extremely careful with his family's hygiene.

  "He had the gift," Valerius continued, dropping the laurel leaf to the ground. "And so do you. This kind of intellect is rare, a divine spark. It is a waste to let such a gift rot in obscurity just because you had the misfortune of being born in the plebs, and not in a patrician family."

  Lucius chuckled lightly, a spontaneous sound he tried to stifle quickly, but which didn't go unnoticed.

  "The misfortune of birth..." Lucius murmured, forgetting for a moment who he was speaking to. "With all due respect, sir, but human potential does not choose a cradle. It is like an oak seed. If it falls on rocky soil, it grows twisted and small. If it falls on fertile soil, it becomes a giant. But the seed... the essence of what it can be... is the same. How many gifts die in mines or fields, never having held a stylus, simply because the soil where they fell was poor? If people had means, if survival were not the sole objective of their days, Rome would have not just a handful of engineers, but legions of them."

  Lucius fell silent abruptly. The garden's silence seemed to amplify. He realized what he had done: he had just given an egalitarian moral lecture to a slave-owning Roman aristocrat. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

  "Forgive me, sir," he said quickly, lowering his head. "I spoke too much. Passion for the craft sometimes loosens my tongue beyond what is permitted."

  Titus Valerius stopped and turned to him. The noble wasn't furious. On the contrary, he stared at him with an intrigued and genuine smile.

  "I like you, Lucius," Valerius said, nodding. "You are honest. Most men in your position would have agreed with my wisdom to gain favors. You dare to disagree."

  The noble resumed walking, hands clasped behind his back.

  "You might even be right in your philosophy about seeds and soil. But understand: this is how the gods want it. It is the natural order of things, the Mos Maiorum. There will always be those born to rule and think, and those born to work and serve. The pyramid only stands because the base is wide. However..." He glanced sideways at Lucius. "...some people are outliers. Blessed anomalies, like you. And it is the duty of those at the top to identify these anomalies and bring them into the light."

  Lucius walked in silence, digesting the words. Is that it? he thought. Is that what the gods, or the universe, or the quantum chance that threw me into this time, want? Does it have to be like this forever in Rome? The idea of fate bothered him. He preferred to believe in causality, in action and reaction. But in that ancient world, where every lightning bolt was a sign from Jupiter, it was hard not to feel like a piece on a cosmic board.

  "In any case," Lucius said, deciding to steer the conversation to something more practical. "I am eager for the lessons and training. I want to prove that you made a good bet."

  "They will be productive, have no doubt," Valerius assured him. "But be prepared. What we will do in the coming weeks will demand much of you. Body and mind will be forged."

  They reached the end of the gravel path, where another servant waited with a pitcher of fresh water.

  "Now, you may rest," the noble dismissed him. "Enjoy the rest of the day. Soon the work begins for real. That servant there," he pointed to a young boy near the columns, "will take you to meet your wife and daughter."

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  As he followed the servant through the villa's labyrinthine corridors, Lucius's mind returned to Selena and Lucia. The girl was only four years old, an age of discovery and fragility. And Selena... the woman fate had imposed upon him.

  He wondered, with brutal honesty to himself, if it was right to continue acting as her husband. He wasn't the man she had married. That man had died, or been replaced, or perhaps still existed in some subconscious corner. Lucius felt a growing affection for them, yes. A fierce protective instinct. But it wasn't passion. It wasn't the love of a man who chose his partner.

  Maybe that can change, he thought. Love can be built, brick by brick, like a Roman road.

  But that would take time. And time was something he didn't know if he had. If he died in the North, their fate would be cruel. Widows and orphans without protection in Rome were easy prey. Slavery, prostitution, hunger... the abyss was always a step away. It would be worse than the disease that killed me, he concluded. At least the cancer was mine. Their suffering would be my fault.

  Two days passed at the mansion, a period of unreal calm where Lucius could eat well and watch his bruises begin to yellow and fade. The morning of the third day, however, brought the reality of war into the marble atrium.

  Lucius was in the main hall, beside Selena and with Lucia clinging to his leg. Titus Valerius was present, speaking in a low voice with a newcomer.

  When they approached, the noble made the introductions.

  "Lucius, this is Centurion Marcus Vibius, of the Legio XII," Valerius said. "As I explained, you are my new pupil and Immunes. Vibius will be in charge of ensuring you don't die on the first march."

  The centurion turned slowly. He was a man who seemed to have been carved from the same stone as the mountains. He appeared to be about forty, the age where experience surpassed youthful vigor. His skin was tanned by the sun of many campaigns, resembling old leather. He wore chainmail, the lorica hamata, over a faded red tunic, and the metal greaves on his shins were scratched from use. What drew the most attention, however, weren't visible scars, for his face was curiously clean of them, but his eyes: gray, calm, and absolutely lethal. A thick, well-groomed beard, in the Emperor's style, covered his jaw.

  Lucius let go of his daughter's hand and bowed respectfully.

  "It is a pleasure to meet you, Centurion," Lucius said firmly.

  Marcus Vibius didn't smile, nor did he frown. He merely nodded, an economical movement of the head, assessing Lucius as one assesses a horse or a new weapon. The silence stretched for a second longer than comfortable.

  "Grab your bundle," the centurion said, his voice deep as rolling stones. "The day waits for no one."

  The time had come. Lucius turned to Selena. There wasn't much to say that hadn't already been said in the last few days. He touched her face, feeling the soft skin under his calloused fingers.

  "I will return," he promised.

  He bent down and kissed the top of Lucia's head.

  "Be good."

  He picked up the leather bag containing his few belongings and walked to the centurion, without looking back, knowing that if he looked, he might not be able to leave. Selena and Lucia stood at the door, watching the two figures move away down the cypress path.

  As they walked toward the property exit, where two horses waited, the centurion broke the silence, his voice surprisingly less harsh.

  "You have a beautiful family."

  Lucius looked at him, surprised by the personal comment coming from such a stoic figure.

  "Thank you, sir."

  "My wife is like yours," Vibius commented, looking ahead as he mounted his horse with impressive agility. "Her gaze carries the same silent worry. It is the burden of Rome's women: waiting."

  Lucius mounted the other horse where another soldier was already waiting.

  "Where are we going now, sir?"

  "To the Campus Martius, on the southern outskirts," Vibius explained, pulling the reins. "It is where we turn boys and plebeians into something the Empire can use. Where recruits learn that pain is just weakness leaving the body."

  The training that followed in the coming weeks was a systematic deconstruction of who Lucius thought he was, followed by a brutal reconstruction. The Campus Martius wasn't a place of academic learning; it was a factory of controlled suffering.

  From the moment they arrived and Lucius swapped his civilian tunic for the short wool tunic and caligae, the military sandals with hobnailed soles, he realized his previous experience wouldn't be enough, but it would be a foundation. In his past life, in the 21st century, he had served for a year in his country's mandatory military service. He remembered the wake-up calls, the push-ups, the drill orders, and handling rifles. But this... this was different. Modern war was impersonal; Roman war was visceral.

  Days began before the sun rose. The first lesson wasn't with the sword, but with the feet. The "military step." Vibius accepted nothing less than perfection. They marched. Not a light walk, but a rhythmic and relentless march, carrying packs, the sarcinae, weighing over thirty kilos. Lucius felt the leather straps cut into his shoulders, the weight of the training shield (scutum) on his left arm, and the wooden stake for the palisade on his back. They marched twenty Roman miles in five hours. At first, his feet bled. Blisters burst and formed calluses over calluses, until the skin of his soles became as hard as the sandal leather.

  Vibius was a relentless instructor. He didn't yell like the sergeants in movies; he spoke quietly, with a disappointment that hurt more than a shout. When Lucius faltered, the centurion was there, not to help carry the weight, but to remind him that the barbarians would have no pity for his fatigue.

  After the march came weapons training. Lucius received a wooden sword (rudis) and a wicker shield, both twice the weight of real weapons. The logic was simple: if you can fight with double the weight, the real sword will feel like a feather in your hand. Lucius spent hours in front of a wooden post buried in the ground, the palus. He attacked the post. Thrust, defense, shield bash. Thrust, defense, shield bash. A thousand times. Ten thousand times. Until his arms didn't feel like his own, until the movement ceased to be a thought and became a spinal reflex.

  "Don't slash! Thrust!" Vibius corrected, hitting Lucius's legs with a vine staff when he attempted a wide swing. "Slashing wounds, thrusting kills. Two inches of penetration in the abdomen are fatal. Save energy. Kill and move to the next."

  But it wasn't just violence. There was the engineering of survival. Lucius, with his builder's mind, found a strange pleasure in constructing the fortified camp. Every day, at the end of the march, they had to dig the ditch (fossa) and erect the palisade (vallum) before they could rest or eat. Lucius saw the geometry in it, the brutal efficiency of the legion carrying its own city on its back. He learned to set up the leather tents in minutes, to arrange sentries, to cook the hard grain that was their daily ration until it became edible.

  His modern army experience gave him the mental discipline not to quit, to understand hierarchy and the importance of uniformity. But it was there, sweating dust and blood under the Roman sun, surrounded by other recruits smelling of garlic and effort, that Lucius felt the change. He was no longer just a time observer, a tourist trapped in the past.

  Shared pain creates bonds that peace knows not. While helping a comrade lift his shield when he had no strength left, while sharing a canteen of warm water tasting of vinegar, Lucius realized that, for the first time since waking up in that historical nightmare, he wasn't alone far from his friend Flavio and his new family. He was part of a machine now too. He was part of the Legion. And, surprisingly, despite the exhaustion consuming every fiber of his being, he didn't feel bad. He felt alive, strong, and dangerously capable.