In the days following the coup, Constantinople breathed differently. The streets, always bustling, took on a hushed air as if the city itself held its breath. Gone were the idle chants of street preachers and the hawking of bread from open stalls; in their place came the measured tramp of marching feet and the grinding of cartwheels bearing quarrels, timbers, and lime for reinforcing walls. The Bosporus, glittering as ever, became a moat to a fortress on edge.
Markos could feel it even within the thick walls of the barracks. Mourtzouphlos had wasted no time consolidating power. His rise, so sudden and brutal, marked the beginning of a regime that would bleed the city in new ways. Orders came swiftly and without consultation: every city gate was to be reinforced; every granary sealed and counted; every able-bodied man pressed into the service of the walls. Even the clergy were not spared—monks with hands rough from farming were given pikes and told their prayers would be better spent at the battlements.
As Centarchos of a Varangian detachment garrisoned in the Blachernae sector, Markos bore the brunt of these orders. He spent his mornings drilling men atop frost-bitten ramparts and his nights reviewing reports by guttering lamplight. The Latin camp across the Golden Horn had not moved, but their silence was more frightening than war drums.
On the third day after Mourtzouphlos' seizure of power, a full-scale overhaul of the Golden Horn chain defenses began. Mourtzouphlos himself visited the northern dockyards flanked by his bodyguard and gave a fiery speech to the shipwrights. Markos watched from a distance as the self-styled savior of the Empire pointed out into the icy water, shouting of vengeance and eternal glory. Few cheered. Most worked faster.
That evening, the Blachernae towers rang with the sounds of hammering. New mantlets were constructed. Fire pits were dug and filled with Greek fire urns, to be lit at a moment's notice. Markos sat with Skleros on the stone bench outside their commander's quarters, oiling his spathion.
"Does he think this is enough?" Skleros asked, nodding toward the fires burning on the wall.
"He thinks terror is the same as strength," Markos said.
Skleros leaned back, the creak of his mail audible in the cold. "And us? What do we believe in now?"
Markos said nothing.
Tension crackled in the air as winter began to yield to a gray, sullen spring. The Latin forces had not remained idle. Their ships had grown in number, and the Venetian mariners had begun felling trees near Galata, crafting siege engines in the open. Mourtzouphlos issued edicts daily: curfews were tightened, food rationing began, and deserters were nailed to the gates as warnings. Spies were rooted out from the poor districts near the harbor; many vanished without trial.
One afternoon, Markos received a summons. He was to report to the Boukoleon Palace for a meeting with the Emperor.
He found Mourtzouphlos seated in the long hall beside a roaring fire, dressed not in ceremonial loros but in plain military garb. His hair was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot.
"You are one of the few remaining officers who still holds the trust of your men," Mourtzouphlos said without preamble.
"I serve the throne," Markos replied.
Mourtzouphlos gave a bitter smile. "We are the throne now, Centarchos. Do you believe the Latins will spare us this time?"
"No, my lord."
"Good."
The emperor stood and moved to the war table. Parchments littered its surface, each marked with red wax seals. "We have less than a month before their engines are ready. The Venetians are building floating towers again. You know what happened last time. If they breach the sea walls…"
Markos nodded. "Then they will do what we fear."
"You are to report to the Sea Wall command," Mourtzouphlos said, pointing to a marked section. "Coordinate the defenses. Use your Varangians. Show them that this city still remembers how to fight."
The Sea Wall sector stank of salt and desperation. Markos took command with quiet resolve, inspecting ballista placements and checking the angle of catapults installed along the marble battlements. From there, he could see the Latin fleet—rows of galleys, their sails furled like resting beasts. Venetian towers grew taller by the week, their frames bound in rope and iron.
Morale among the defenders was brittle. Markos walked the lines daily, speaking with archers from the provinces and sailors now turned infantry. He drilled them personally, sometimes engaging in sparring to remind them what a Varangian blade could do. His presence steadied them. He was not a politician, not a noble. He was one of them.
Then came the day the bells rang again. The Latin ships had begun to move.
The assault on the Sea Walls began before dawn. Mists clung to the waves, hiding the approach until the rams were nearly at the stone. Trumpets shattered the air. Flaming arrows lit the sky like falling stars. Markos stood atop the central tower, shouting orders, his sword drawn.
"Hold the fire until my signal!" he cried, pointing with his blade. The Greek fire crews waited with trembling hands.
A Venetian tower collided with the wall—timber cracked and groaned. Ladders came next, their hooks biting into the battlements. The defenders met them with boiling pitch and falling stones, but the Latins kept coming. Steel clashed against steel.
Markos fought like a man possessed. His spathion cleaved through mail and flesh. Beside him, a Varangian fell, a spear through the neck. Markos roared and hurled a javelin into the chest of the knight who had done it.
When the fires spread to the lower ramparts, Markos led a charge to retake the gatehouse. Dozens followed him. When the dust settled, the gate remained in Roman hands—but for how long?
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That night, he slept with his armor beside him. His dreams returned.
Eyes like burning coals. Skin kissed by shadows. Her presence curled around him like a lover's breath, warm and suffocating. Her fingers traced his cheek — gentle, trembling with devotion too deep to be sane.
"You are not meant to die here," she whispered, voice thick with a love that had simmered far too long. "You are mine, and I won't let this world steal you from me again."
His breath caught.
"Who are you?" he asked, though a part of him already knew — and feared.
She leaned in, eyes shimmering with madness and adoration.
"I am the oath you broke… the love you forgot. But I never forgot you." Her smile was sweet, twisted. "Even when they took you from me and left me in the dark... I waited. I still wait. But I won't wait much longer, my love."
He jolted awake, heart pounding, sweat clinging to his skin like a second armor. Outside, the fires of Constantinople still burned.
But inside — something had already claimed him.
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The fourth day of April 1204 dawned beneath a choking haze of smoke. Constantinople, once the marvel of Christendom, stood on the brink. From the tower posts where Markos had stood since before sunrise, the Golden Horn glistened with the sails and hulls of the Latin fleet, positioned like wolves circling a wounded deer. Mourtzouphlos, newly crowned Alexios V, had spared no breath in preparing the defenses. His soldiers drilled along the sea walls. Ballistae were hoisted onto towers. Even women and children were pressed to carry water, stones, anything that could be flung or hurled to delay the inevitable.
Markos was exhausted. The days since Alexios IV's murder had blurred into a cacophony of labor, drill, and suspicion. Mourtzouphlos had turned the garrison into a war machine, but with bloodied gears and too few cogs. He tightened command, executed deserters, and stationed his most loyal troops—the Varangians—at key gates. Markos, a centarchos among them, had taken to commanding shifts on the land walls, often sleeping fully armed.
He hadn't seen Skleros in two days.
The bombardment began just after the sixth hour. Ships lashed together with planks formed floating bridges. Siege towers rolled forward on the land side. Latin voices bellowed over the roar of drums. Markos shouted orders to his men as bolts whistled past. A Varangian beside him took a quarrel to the throat and gurgled his last breath against the stone. Another turned away, vomiting in his helm.
"Hold formation! Push the ladder!" Markos shouted, gripping his spathion and driving its hilt into the head of a Latin soldier climbing up.
The assault was relentless. On the sea walls, Venetian ships brought fire and steel. The defenders hurled Greek fire, but with dwindling reserves. One section of the Blachernae wall cracked under sustained pressure, and screams pierced the air as Frankish knights poured through. Mourtzouphlos sent a wave of reinforcements, but too late. The breach widened by the hour.
Markos fought like a man possessed, his arms aching, legs buckling. The weight of his lamellar felt twice its burden. Around him, the Varangians formed a crimson line. They died by dozens, but the line held.
By twilight, the second breach opened.
A messenger found Markos near the Charsios Gate. Bloodied and limping, the boy bore no insignia.
"The Emperor calls all reserves to the Boukoleon. The Franks have entered the palace quarter."
Markos dismissed the dead around him with a silent prayer and ran.
At the Boukoleon Palace, Mourtzouphlos stood on a high platform overlooking the harbor. His cloak billowed like a stormcloud, his eyes mad with fury and fear. Markos and what remained of his centarchia arrived just as another fire ship struck the sea wall. Flames leapt into the dusk.
"They breach us again!" Mourtzouphlos roared. "Cowards in purple have doomed this city. But not I! We hold here."
The emperor had arranged his elite in a final square. Varangians, Armenian mercenaries, and a handful of nobles too proud to flee.
Markos stepped beside Skleros, whose eyes were sunken, his beard burnt at the ends.
"You're alive," Markos said.
"Not for long, brother. They'll break through before dawn."
The first Latin horns echoed past midnight.
They came not in mass but in waves, probing and cutting like wolves testing the wounded. Markos fought beside Skleros, their swords clashing against Norman axes and Lombard pikes. They fell back to the steps of the palace itself. Each meter lost came at the cost of lives. Screams of the dying mingled with the groans of falling stone.
Then came the moment.
As Markos plunged his spathion into the gut of a charging Frank, a burst of cold swept over him. The sounds of battle blurred. Time staggered.
From the shadows of the archway, a woman stepped.
Her hair shimmered like ink in moonlight. Her eyes were red as the coals of the fallen. Behind her, a host of shadows coalesced. And Markos—bloodied, weary, and breaking—saw her lips form his name.
"Markos."
The world stopped.
Skleros, impaled on a spear, collapsed. The palace gate buckled.
"Who are you?" Markos whispered.
"You knew me once... and I never forgot," she said softly, brushing her fingers along his cheek like he might vanish. "I've come to save you—just like you once swore you'd save me. That promise bound us, my love. You're mine... and I've come to take you back."
Markos dropped his sword.
The woman raised a hand. Reality tore.
A circle of fire bloomed beneath him, not burning but beckoning.
And Markos fell to the ground, as a knight knocked him off his footing as the Emperor made his escape with his few retinue, leaving him and his Varangians in the floor.
Markos awoke on the outskirts of Constantinople, the scent of smoke and ruin still heavy in the air. The shattered skyline bore witness to the siege's wrath—but something colder crept up his spine. He turned.
Behind him stood a woman cloaked in shadows, eyes glowing softly like dying embers. Her voice, velvet and unyielding, wrapped around him as a dark spell laced the air:
"Come back to me, my love… You've strayed long enough. This time, I won't let you go—not even death will take you from me again."
That voice…It slipped into his mind like a half-remembered dream — gentle, intimate, terrifying.
Markos staggered back, boots crunching over scorched earth. The city behind him groaned like a dying beast, its bones broken, its glory undone. But none of that chilled him as much as her presence.
She stood there, cloaked in black, beautiful and terrible, like night itself had taken form just to call his name.
"Come back to me, my love…"
His heart stilled. Something ancient stirred in his blood of recognition, longing, fear.
No… it can't be. That voice… I knew it once. Didn't I? But how could I? How could I forget something so… consuming?
He felt the pull of her magic like a lover's embrace — warm, possessive, final.
What are you? Or rather… who was I to you?
His knees failed to keep him steady of his footing, as he looked at the city one last time, he fell to the ground as he is engulfed into a black mist of the woman, never to return here.