The moment the blade sank into the emperor’s flesh, the city turned against you. Rome was a beast with a thousand eyes, and now all of them were staring in your direction. The Praetorian Guard would react in seconds, their swords drawn, their duty clear. You had no time for regret, no space for hesitation. The empire’s machinery was already grinding into motion, gears turning with the weight of vengeance, and you were at the center of it.
The bureaucracy that stretched from Britannia to Egypt would now exist for one purpose alone: to find you. Spies would whisper your name in the dark corners of the Forum, informants would trade your whereabouts for a purse of silver, and every road, every port, every alley would be a trap waiting to snap shut. Rome had roads that stretched farther than the reach of the gods, and they would carry the men who would kill you. There was no escaping them—not by land, not by sea.
Where Do You Run?
If you were lucky, if you were fast, you might make it to the docks before the city closed its gates. But where would you go? To Greece? To Egypt? No—too close. The tendrils of the empire would find you there within days. The Parthian Empire, perhaps? The eternal rival, the other half of the world. But the Parthians were not fools. You were a man without a future, and a man without a future was worth more as a bargaining chip than a guest.
There was one place Rome feared, one place that might take you in—not out of kindness, but because they hated the empire as much as you now did. Germania. The land beyond the Rhine, the dark forests where Rome’s banners did not fly. The place where men still worshipped gods of war and blood. If you could make it there, you might survive.
The Germanic Gamble
But Germania was not safety. It was a wound that never healed, a frontier Rome could never tame. The Cherusci, the Chatti, the Marcomanni—they had no love for Rome, but they had no love for you either. You would have to prove yourself, to kill for them, to earn their respect in a way no Roman had ever done before.
Rome would come for you, of course. Not with legions, not at first. They would send men in the night—assassins, envoys with gold to buy your betrayal. And if you had truly earned your place among the tribes, if you had fought and bled and howled at the moon with them, you would know that trust was thin as a blade. The wrong chieftain, the wrong moment, and you would wake to find a knife at your throat, your body already sold to Rome before you could even open your mouth.
But if you lived—if you were more than just another fugitive, more than a Roman trying to run from the empire that made him—you might carve out a life in the wild places of the world. You might become something else entirely.
Has It Been Done Before?
History tells us of men who turned their backs on Rome. Some led revolts. Some fled. Some tried to be kings of their own small worlds. Gaius Julius Civilis, a Batavian officer, led his people in rebellion and then vanished—some say into Germania, some say into the mist of history itself. Arminius, the Roman-trained warrior, shattered three legions in the Teutoburg Forest and fought for years before his own people killed him. Even men who sat on the imperial throne—Magnentius, Alaric—learned that Rome’s wrath never softened, never forgave. They either died in battle or at their own hands, knowing there was no escaping the empire’s reach.
No emperor-killer ever truly got away. If they did, history has forgotten them.
It Just Happened—Now What?
The emperor is dead, and your breath is still hot in your throat. The streets are closing around you. The gates will be sealed soon.
You need to move.
Do you throw off your tunic, grab the clothes of a beggar, melt into the crowds? Do you head for the docks, a pile of stolen coins in your fist, praying for a captain too greedy to ask questions? Do you run to the hills, the forests, knowing that the moment the sun rises, Rome’s hand will stretch toward you?
You have minutes, maybe hours, before your name is on the lips of every soldier in the empire. The Senate will anoint a new emperor by morning. The Praetorian Guard will cut through the city like wolves on the hunt. They will search the villas, the taverns, the brothels, every dark corner where a man might hide.
And even if you slip past them, even if you run farther than any man has ever run before, the real question remains:
Are you ready to live the rest of your life as a dead man?
