The marble floor was cold beneath his bare feet, a stark contrast to the sun-warmed stones of his homeland. Chains, light but inescapable, chimed with every slight shift of his weight. The murmur of the Roman crowd was a foreign sea, their eyes passing over him not as a prince, but as a lot. He kept his gaze fixed on a crack in the distant wall, holding the mountains of his lost kingdom within the quiet storm of his eyes. The auctioneer's voice rose, a sharp, transactional bark that reduced a lineage of kings to a number. Julius did not hear the starting bid. He was already calculating the weight of a future vengeance.