Easier to split the sky, than part a soldier from his blade. 386 AD. The Eastern Roman Empire faces a trident of threats. The Gothic truce grows unstable. The standoff with Persia escalates. And the ambitions of the usurper on the Western throne grow dangerously unchecked. Pavo, a broken veteran of the legions, cares for none of these things. His life is one of pastoral seclusion on his Thracian farm. A life of love, of peace. His wife and young son are his world. Still, every so often, things seen and done in his old life haunt him, like a cold and unwelcome breeze. But that is all they are, echoes of the past… …until the past rises, like a shade, to rip his world and the Roman Empire apart.