Laelia's Journal
Tenebris bled three hours ago. A deep cut scored his left forearm—I saw the blood when he first slipped out of the tunnel, his dark cloak torn and one bronze bracer cracked like an old helm. But now… nothing. Not a scar, not a scab. Gods help me, he is not a man. Not entirely. I press my stylus harder than I should, hands trembling. I shouldn't be writing this. Not here, not now. The commander—Megellus—would not approve. Not because I'm recording secrets, but because he cannot tell the difference between truth and superstition. He'd sooner ignore what he doesn't understand. And I barely understand Tenebris either. I only know what I saw, and what I feel when I look at him: a mixture of awe and unease. Something impossible hides behind those obsidian eyes.
The sun rises now like a wound over Agrigentum's hills, raw and red. From this ridge outside the walls, I see Roman siege towers and ladders lined up by the distant olive groves. Our legionaries form ranks below, dark ants mustering to storm Carthage's proud city. Thin plumes of smoke curl from dozens of campfires in the dawn light—too many to count. They burn not for warmth but ritual, each pyre an omen fed to the sky. The men sense it; they mutter of strange signs and unsettled gods. Some whisper that shadows move beneath the earth. Others swear they've seen symbols scorched onto stones in the night: a ringed sun, black as eclipse, edges smeared in soot. His symbol. The standard of Tenebris. I have never seen him paint it, and yet it appears again and again, burned into ruined doorways and shattered siegeworks. Not drawn—burned. The rumors are spreading like wildfire through dry reeds. Even the most hardened centurions cross themselves when they speak of the Umbra Cohors. They call it a ghost unit led by a man who does not die. I know better than most that Tenebris bleeds like any of us… but something in me wonders, as I watch that red sun climb, if perhaps the whispers are right.
Marcus Atilius Ruso summoned Tenebris at first light. I accompanied him, carrying water jugs and fresh parchment—an errand girl's guise, meant to look like kindness but feeling more like chains. I kept my eyes down and my ears open. The general spoke in low, urgent tones over the campaign map. Feints, siege timings, targets… I heard enough. "Strike from below," Ruso ordered, finger stabbing a point beneath the little clay model of Agrigentum's walls. "While the legions feint at the southern gatehouse. Kill their generals. Cripple their command. Let the city tear itself apart from within." Tenebris only nodded once in agreement. He didn't ask how many men the enemy had, nor how far the tunnels ran, nor who would witness what he was about to do. He simply replied in that gravelled voice, "We'll leave them with nothing but questions." Then he turned on his heel to leave—and for an instant the lamplight in the tent seemed to dim, as if some great shadow moved through it. I felt a pressure in the air, the weight of something vast stirring inside the skin of that man. Every time I see Tenebris in such moments, I wonder if I'm glimpsing the truth beneath the facade… or merely scaring myself with phantoms.
I returned to the supply carts alone after that war council. The legion guards stepped aside to let me pass; none meet my gaze now when I walk near Tenebris's encampment. Not since I was assigned to assist the Umbra Cohors with provisions. Kesseph—Tenebris's second-in-command—warned me in his gentle, accented voice about the last woman who wandered too freely among the Umbra's tents. She was found dead two nights later, her lips frozen in an uncanny smile and her throat opened ear to ear. Poison, the officers whispered. But whose? No one knew. Since then, no quartermaster or camp follower dares bring the Umbra men so much as a cup of wine. They keep to themselves in a tight circle of tents at the edge of camp, a ring of revenants around their silent commander. Even the wind feels still in their corner of the siege lines. No laughter. No lighthearted dice games or songs before battle. They prepare as an army of ghosts might—quiet, relentless, inexorable.
I will end this entry here. There is drumming beyond the walls now, a low thunder of hide drums and iron-shod mallets. Roman banners are rising in formation, scarlet and gold flickering against the morning haze. The siege begins today. Scribes will record the clash of swords under the open sky. But I believe the true battle will not be fought in sunlight. It waits in the deep, in damp tunnels and black pits beneath ancient stone—down where he walks. Down where our enemies have no idea that they have already lost.