Seconds earlier, the Ape Titan had been throwing Cassian across the arena like he weighed nothing.
Cassian still felt the impact in his ribs.
His bronze shoulder guard hung loose.
Half his shield was buried somewhere beneath the sand.
His sword was chipped almost to the center.
Across from him stood twenty feet of black fur, muscle and fury.
The Ape Titan struck both fists against the ground.
Dust exploded around it.
Forty thousand spectators screamed.
Governor Varro rose from his seat beneath the imperial awning.
“Finish him!”
The crowd answered with another roar.
Cassian pushed himself upright.
Every instinct told him the next charge would end the fight.
The Titan had already knocked him down three times.
On the last attack, Cassian had barely rolled beneath one enormous arm before it smashed into the stone barrier behind him.
He had no illusion that he could overpower the creature.
He only needed to survive long enough to reach Livia.
She remained chained to a raised platform above the eastern side of the arena.
That had been Varro’s promise.
Win, and she lived.
Lose, and neither of them left the amphitheater.
Cassian no longer believed a word of it.
The Titan charged.
Cassian raised what remained of his shield.
The creature slammed into him.
He flew backward.
The world became sand and sunlight.
Cassian landed hard.
His sword spun from his hand.
The crowd rose.
The Titan approached.
Cassian tried to stand.
His leg failed.
Varro smiled.
Then something changed.
Cassian heard the snap of bowstrings.
Not one.
Dozens.
He looked upward.
Archers lined the upper gallery.
Their arrows were not aimed at the Titan.
They were aimed at him.
Cassian froze.
Why?
Varro had spent the entire afternoon demanding the monster kill him.
Why use archers now?
Then the arrows flew.
Cassian covered his face.
But the impact never came.
A massive shadow moved over him.
The Ape Titan stepped directly between Cassian and the arrows.
Several shafts struck the bronze fragments across its shoulders.
Others buried themselves in the sand.
One snapped against the broken restraint hanging from its wrist.
The Titan roared toward the archers.
Cassian stared up at it.
“You’re protecting me?”
The creature turned its head.
For one strange moment, their eyes met.
Then it looked toward Varro.
The governor was no longer smiling.
“Fire again!”
The archers hesitated.
Varro slammed one hand against the marble railing.
“I SAID FIRE!”
Cassian rolled behind the Titan as another volley fell.
The creature lifted both arms, shielding him.
That was when Cassian noticed something hanging beneath the fur along its chest.
A broken bronze plate.
Part of a larger harness.
One edge had cracked during their fight.
Symbols were engraved across the metal.
Cassian had seen them before.
He just could not remember where.
“Hold still,” he muttered.
The Titan looked down.
Cassian almost laughed at himself.
He was speaking calmly to the creature that had nearly broken him in half thirty seconds earlier.
Another arrow struck the ground.
Cassian grabbed the bronze plate.
The Titan growled.
“Easy.”
He rubbed sand from the inscription.
Three Latin words appeared beneath an older line of unfamiliar writing.
SUBJECT VII.
NORTHERN CAMPAIGN.
Then one name.
CASSIAN.
His hand stopped.
“What?”
Above them, Varro saw the plate.
His entire expression changed.
“Take that from him!”
Cassian looked up.
There it was.
Fear.
Not annoyance.
Not anger.
Fear.
He tore the plate loose.
The Titan let him.
That frightened him more than resistance would have.
“Why is my name on this?”
Varro pointed toward the arena floor.
“Guards!”
The western gate opened.
Six soldiers entered.
Then six more.
Cassian backed toward the Titan.
The crowd had stopped cheering.
Nobody understood what they were watching anymore.
This was no longer gladiator against monster.
The monster was standing beside the gladiator.
Varro’s own soldiers were moving against both.
Livia shouted from the platform.
“Cassian!”
He looked toward her.
“What?”
“The bronze!”
“What about it?”
“Turn it over!”
Cassian flipped the plate.
More writing.
This side was cleaner.
Protected from years of weather and sand.
There were dates.
Transfer records.
A military insignia.
Then a sentence.
PRIMARY FIELD HANDLER: CASSIAN OF THRACE.
Cassian stared.
“That’s impossible.”
The Titan made a low sound beside him.
A memory flickered.
Rain.
A wooden transport cage.
Young soldiers loading animals beneath torchlight.
A smaller black-furred creature reaching through iron bars.
Cassian holding out a piece of fruit.
Then darkness.
He stumbled.
“No.”
Livia shouted:
“What is it?”
“I’ve seen it before.”
The first soldiers reached them.
Cassian lifted his broken shield.
The Titan moved faster.
It swept one arm across the sand.
Three soldiers scattered.
The others stopped.
Cassian pointed toward Varro.
“You knew me before this arena.”
Varro said nothing.
“You knew I had seen this creature.”
Nothing.
Cassian held up the bronze plate.
“What happened during the Northern Campaign?”
Varro finally answered.
“You were a soldier.”
“I know what I was.”
“Then act like one.”
The crowd murmured.
Cassian stepped forward.
“My name was erased from the campaign record.”
Varro’s expression tightened.
“How would you know?”
“Because I looked.”
That part was true.
Cassian had spent years trying to understand why almost six months of his military service had vanished from official records.
His commanders said an archive fire destroyed the documents.
He had believed them.
Until now.
The Titan struck its chest once.
Then touched the bronze plate.
Cassian looked at the creature.
Another memory surfaced.
A mountain valley.
Smoke.
Soldiers surrounding a group of enormous black-furred apes.
Varro younger, wearing military armor.
“Capture the youngest alive.”
Cassian heard his own voice in the memory.
“This isn’t an enemy force.”
Varro answered:
“It doesn’t need to be.”
Cassian staggered backward.
The arena disappeared for a second.
He remembered chains.
Cages.
A young Titan refusing food.
He remembered being assigned to keep it alive during transport because it attacked everyone else.
He remembered sitting beside the cage for nights.
Talking to it.
Feeding it.
Teaching it not to fear his voice.
Then he remembered something else.
Varro ordering all witnesses separated.
A cup of wine.
A military physician.
Then waking days later with no memory of the final mission.
Cassian stared at Varro.
“You drugged us.”
Livia stopped struggling against her chains.
“What?”
Cassian looked at the bronze plate.
“You erased my memory.”
Varro laughed.
“You’re building a fantasy from damaged metal.”
The Titan suddenly roared.
Varro flinched.
Cassian saw it.
“You did something to this creature.”
Varro’s face hardened.
“I turned it into something useful.”
Cassian stepped forward.
“It remembers me.”
“That proves nothing.”
“It protected me.”
For the first time, Varro lost control.
“Because you conditioned it!”
The arena went silent.
Even Varro seemed to realize what he had admitted.
Cassian looked slowly toward the Titan.
“Conditioned?”
Varro tried to recover.
“During transport.”
Cassian understood.
The Titan had not stepped between him and the arrows because it suddenly decided he was harmless.
It remembered.
Somewhere beneath years of captivity, pain and forced combat, it remembered the soldier who had once fed it through iron bars.
The soldier who had been ordered to help transport it.
The soldier whose own memory had later been erased.
Cassian tightened his fist around the bronze plate.
“What was the Northern Campaign really about?”
Varro shook his head.
“You don’t want that answer.”
“I do.”
“No.”
Varro looked toward Livia.
“You want her alive.”
Cassian followed his gaze.
The threat was obvious.
“Release her.”
“Give me the plate.”
“Why?”
“It belongs to Rome.”
“No.”
“It belongs to a classified military archive.”
Cassian almost smiled.
“Then why was it hanging from an animal in an arena?”
Varro’s expression went cold.
“Give it to me.”
Cassian looked at the inscription again.
There was one final line beneath his own name.
STATUS AFTER TRANSFER:
HANDLER REFUSED TERMINATION ORDER.
Cassian stopped breathing.
He turned the plate closer to the light.
Below that:
SUBJECT VII PRESERVED.
HANDLER CASSIAN — MEMORY PROCEDURE AUTHORIZED.
Everything came back at once.
The mountain camp.
Varro ordering the young creature killed after the transport experiments ended.
Cassian refusing.
Cassian opening the cage.
The young Titan escaping into the trees.
Soldiers dragging Cassian away.
Varro standing over him.
“You will forget this.”
Then darkness.
Cassian looked toward the Ape Titan.
“You survived.”
The creature lowered its head.
Cassian touched its scarred hand.
The crowd erupted.
Not with excitement.
With disbelief.
Varro shouted:
“ARCHERS!”
Nobody fired.
The archers had heard enough.
Varro turned toward them.
“That is an order!”
Still nothing.
Livia shouted down:
“Cassian! There’s more!”
He looked up.
“What?”
She pointed toward the plate.
“The symbols above the Latin!”
Cassian looked at them.
He could not read the language.
But the Titan reacted the moment he raised the plate.
It struck its chest.
Once.
Twice.
Then pointed toward a tunnel beneath Varro’s balcony.
Cassian narrowed his eyes.
“What’s down there?”
Varro immediately stepped backward.
That was the answer.
Cassian looked toward Livia.
“There’s something beneath the arena.”
Varro shouted to his guards.
“Close the lower gate!”
Cassian ran.
The Titan followed.
Soldiers moved to block them.
The creature slammed both fists against the ground and sent sand flying.
Cassian reached the tunnel entrance.
Livia shouted from above.
“Find out what he hid!”
Cassian looked back at Varro.
The governor’s confidence was gone.
The broken bronze plate had already revealed that Cassian and the Titan shared a history Varro had erased.
But apparently the inscription was only part of the truth.
Because when Cassian reached the tunnel, he found the same symbol carved into the stone.
Beneath it were seven numbered marks.
Six had been crossed out.
Only one remained.
VII.
The Titan’s number.
Cassian stared into the darkness.
Somewhere beneath the arena waited the rest of the Northern Campaign records.
The files that explained why Varro had captured the creatures.
Why Cassian’s memories had been taken.
And why Subject VII—the Ape Titan standing beside him—was apparently the only one Varro had failed to destroy.
Cassian tightened his grip on the bronze plate.
Seconds earlier, the Titan had been ordered to kill him.
Now it was leading him toward the secret Varro had spent years burying.
Tap the link below the comment to discover what the inscription revealed—and why Varro was terrified Cassian would remember what happened during the Northern Campaign.
