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And as the city began to murmur about the curse that had been placed on the lineage of Marcus Varius, I could not help but feel like a witness to something much greater. Divine wrath, political strife and the inevitable fate of Pompeii were intertwined in my mind with the same tension as the old legends that in my future time would be told about this city doomed by Vesuvius.

I knew that my place in all this was not accidental. As the reader may suspect, I was to be the narrator of these events, a simple observer who was nonetheless deeply involved. And as long as the duoviri, the magistrates responsible for overseeing and investigating serious crimes, did not begin to look into what had happened, as long as families shook their heads in fear and slaves spoke in whispers of the intervention of the gods, I entered the mystery with one certainty: this was not just a crime. It was an omen.

A harbinger of something far worse. Something that would change not only Pompeii, but the whole world.

And so, with a heavy heart, I waited for the outcome. An outcome that, though I did not yet know, I felt was already inevitable, like the eruption of a storm over the hearts of men.

To be continued

Header Image:

Image of Pompeii Source: Artificial Intelligence recreation of Pompeii (seepompeii.com)