The order arrived with the first light.
A messenger, panting and covered in dust, entered the camp with determined steps. He was looking for Scaeva. He found him sharpening his gladius beside a small fire, surrounded by Sextus, Titus, and Atticus.
"Centurion Scaeva," said the young man, handing over a sealed tablet. "From headquarters."
Scaeva read it in silence. He didn't need to speak for the others to sense something important was written there. After a moment, he lifted his eyes.
"We've been assigned the center," he announced. "Caesar has placed us where the fighting will be fiercest. Where the enemy will strike with all their fury."
Titus' eyes widened in disbelief.
"The center? Us? Has he gone mad?"
Atticus, on the other hand, smiled with a strange glint in his eyes.
"No. He knows exactly what he's doing."
A heavy silence fell over them. Some nearby legionaries overheard and began to murmur. Some looked down. Others stood up straighter.
Scaeva continued:
"He says he trusts us. That we are the new lions of Rome. That if anyone can break the Germans, it's us."
Titus snorted and kicked the dirt.
"I always thought I'd die drunk and old in a Massalia tavern."
"You still can," Atticus replied with a half-smile. "You just have to survive tomorrow."
Sextus said nothing.
He sat on a stone, looking at his hands. He opened and closed them slowly, as if weighing the invisible burden of the battle ahead. He didn't seem afraid, nor proud. Just... focused. As if he were already there. As if he could already hear the clash of blades and the screams of the dying.
Scaeva watched him for a moment.
"Sextus... anything to say?"
The young man looked up, calm and steady.
"Only that if that's the hardest place, then it's the right place for us."
And no one said another word.
Because deep down, they all knew it was true.