Scarlet Vengeance: The Broken Amulet

The Ostrogoth sentry rubbed his sleep-deprived eyes, leaning his spear heavily against the stone wall. Dawn had barely pierced through the mist when the first silhouettes emerged from the fog. His heart lurched as he recognized the mayor - not the peaceful Marco Hernico he knew, but a warrior version ripped from old legends.

The man advanced clad in leather armor reinforced with iron plates, a woodsman's axe in his right hand honed to a deadly gleam. Beside him marched the young foreigner who days earlier had traded in the village, now wrapped in a gray cloak from which protruded the hilt of a sword emitting an unsettling green glow.

But what froze the guard's blood was what followed. A mass of villagers armed with tools turned weapons: scythes, hammers, butcher knives. And towering above them all, Antonio of Vicus Passicus.

The young shepherd - though "young" no longer seemed fitting - stood a colossus nearing six feet, his broad shoulders taut beneath a patched tunic. The simple skinning knife in his calloused hands looked like a toy compared to those arms that could pin a struggling ram with ease. His normally kind face was now contorted in fierce determination, brown eyes burning with a fire the sentry had never seen in a mere peasant.

The Ostrogoth guard swallowed hard as he watched Antonio's muscles ripple beneath sun-bronzed skin, hardened through generations of shepherds surviving cruel winters. This boy, who just two moons past had helped birth lambs in the stables, now advanced like a Germanic giant from his grandfather's tales.

The sentry raised his spear with trembling hands, but his voice died when Marco Hernico's gaze met his. No speeches came. No rallying cries. Just the heavy silence of men with nothing left to lose.

Antonio tightened his grip on the knife, his work-worn hands flexing, and the guard understood no military training could prepare him for this. These weren't soldiers. Not mercenaries. This was an armed people led by a shepherd turned warrior and a mayor transformed into a general.

The revolt advanced silently, and the guard realized true terror came not from their weapons, but from those brown eyes filled with innocence forever lost.

Septimius Alcarinus Felicior advanced like a nightmare given flesh. His black cuirass, polished to an obsidian sheen in the dawn light, fit his torso with imperial perfection. Each movement made the metal flash as if he carried fragments of night itself. His high boots, studded with iron cleats, clicked methodically against stone - a more effective announcement than any war trumpet.

Black bracers engraved with faint runes wrapped his forearms. And above all, the cloak.

Scarlet.

A red so deep it seemed to bleed against the gray dawn, the same hue consuls wore in ancient Roman mosaics. The raised hood shadowed his face save for those eyes.

Gods, those eyes.

Green as moonlit moss, luminescent in gloom, scanning the village with cold tactical precision. He didn't see guards - he measured them. Calculated distances, angles, weak points.

As he advanced, his hunters moved. In alley shadows, narrow passages, low rooftops. Gray-clad figures barely perceptible, yet ever-present. Double-curved bows already drawn, dark-fletched arrows trained on every Ostrogoth in the village. None knew it yet. But all were in killing range.

Behind him came Sigismund as sacred counterpoint. The noble monk wore no armor, just his order's simple robes now mud-stained and resolute. Other priests and deacons flanked him - men of faith who'd seen too much. Their faces were closed, hands trembling yet firm. They bore no weapons, only crucifixes and ancient gospels. Yet something in their silent advance, how they slipped through crowds like knives between ribs, proved equally dangerous as the hidden archers.

Villagers parted before them. Some crossed themselves. Others, the elders, muttered names of gods older than Christ.

Septimius raised a gloved hand.

In that instant, every Ostrogoth in the square felt an imaginary arrow's kiss at their nape.

The mob moved as one creature, that wordless intelligence of herds sensing storm. The strongest men - those whose arms had tamed bulls and raised crops under cruel sun - filtered forward. No signals were needed; Marco Hernico Caese's gaze sweeping the square with a judge's finality was enough.

Women pushed children behind their skirts, fingers tightening on stones and sticks - anything that could become a weapon. Elders watched from doorways with milky eyes, recognizing in this moment the same stench of injustice that preceded revolts of their youth.

Darius still smiled from the church atrium.

His Ostrogoth guards did not.

Their once-proud mail now weighed like iron shrouds. Gleaming shields dipped slightly as if bowed by the collective gaze. Even their horses grew skittish, nostrils flaring at their riders' fear.

Then Marco saw the remains.

A formless mound of ash and charred bone still chained to the stake, chains half-melted. Marcella - his daughter's friend, the woman who'd brought his wife fever herbs - reduced to blackened wreckage the morning wind scattered.

Marco didn't shout. Didn't curse. He approached with measured steps, stopping a hand's breadth from what had been human.

"Where is my daughter?" he asked, his calm voice more terrifying than any scream.

The silence that followed was so thick a torch's crackle sounded like thunder.

On roofs, in alleys, among the crowd, dozens of hands tightened on makeshift weapons. Septimius stood motionless in his scarlet cloak, eyes shining like coins in sun. Sigismund and dissident priests had melted into the mob, their words of faith now seeds of rebellion.

And Darius finally understood.

He wasn't facing a mayor.

He faced an entire people who'd ceased to fear.

Darius, drunk on power and delusion, believed one command from God's chosen would break the mob's will. "God's might surpasses earthly lords," he muttered, bloodshot eyes scanning the revolt with disdain.

With an arrogant gesture, he pointed at Lucia bound to the punishment post. Her once-beautiful face was now swollen beyond recognition - split lips, one eye sealed shut by bruises, broken ribs visible through torn fabric. Her ankles, crushed beneath mallets, would never bear weight again. All knew even if freed now, Lucia would die.

Then in a broken but firm voice, she spoke: "My virtue remains intact."

Those words, more than any defiance, ignited Darius' rage. For years he'd broken villages, tortured beautiful maidens until even through unbearable pain they consented in his twisted mind. That was his ritual, his perversion - he needed them to accept his touch, if only through agony's coercion.

But Lucia hadn't.

Not with broken bones. Not with bruised flesh. Not when promised her father's pardon for mere words of submission.

"Witch!" Darius foamed at the mouth. "The Devil hardened your heart! I only sought to purify you with love!"

The crowd held its breath.

For in that moment, as Ostrogoth guards lowered spears to block Marco's advance, all saw the truth.

Darius was no priest.

He was a monster hiding behind the cross.

And Lucia, still dying, smiled through bloody lips: "You never touched me."

That was when Marco ceased being a man.

He became justice.

Darius, eyes bulging with rage, raised Ceres' amulet with shaking fingers. The carved wooden pendant swung like a cursed pendulum, its pagan symbol defiant in dawn's light.

"See this!" he shrieked hatefully. "You still deny your heresy? This symbol of your barren goddess hangs like a serpent coiled around your soul! Confess! Admit you worshipped earth demons while feigning Christian piety!"

His voice broke not from pain, but furious frustration. For there before all, Lucia - bleeding, broken, condemned - wouldn't recant.

Her swollen lips parted in a red smile: "It's my grandmother's symbol...and hers before that...Do you think breaking it destroys what it represents?"

Darius squeezed until the wood cracked.

"I offered salvation! I offered love! Yet you choose death for wood!"

Lucia closed her one working eye, not from pain, but as if remembering something beautiful: "I don't die for wood...I die for the woman who carved this...for those who'll come after...for those who'll never kneel to you."

Then before horrified priests and stunned guards, the amulet shattered in Darius' grip.

Not from his strength.

Because Lucia had spoken her final truth.

And in the following silence, only one sound remained:

Marco Hernico Caese drawing his sword.

The Ostrogoth captain - a scarred, cold-eyed brute - saw his chance. In one motion, he raised his sword and charged Marco from behind, aiming for the mayor's spine.

Before steel could strike, green lightning flashed.

Almost too fast to see. Just a brilliance like sky-splitting thunder.

Then the captain's head rolled.

His body took two stumbling steps before collapsing, scarlet fountaining from his severed neck.

Septimius Alcarinus Felicior appeared as if from nowhere, his now-bloodied sword already at rest. With a calm gesture, he flicked gore from the blade while the captain's dead eyes stared skyward in disbelief.

Two more guards opened their mouths to shout warnings.

No sounds came.

From shadowed roofs and alleys, lethal whistles cut air. Darts buried themselves in throats up to the shafts. Men clutched their necks, choking on blood-flecked foam.

Gurgles.

Silence.

The remaining Ostrogoths stood paralyzed. Some threw spears in desperate arcs. Others dropped shields, hands shaking.

The mob didn't move.

Didn't cheer. Didn't flee.

Just watched in silence thick as pre-storm air.

For all understood in that moment: the balance had shifted.

Power's scales had shattered.

And Darius, now pale with bulging eyes, realized too late:

He didn't control fear.

Fear controlled him.