Cassian expected to find a wound beneath the Ape Titan’s broken restraint.
Instead, he found a name.
LIVIA.
For several seconds, he forgot about the arena.
Forgot about the forty thousand spectators.
Forgot about Governor Varro watching from the imperial balcony.
Forgot that the enormous creature standing less than ten feet away had nearly crushed him moments earlier.
Cassian stared at the letters carved into the bronze.
Not painted.
Not scratched recently.
Carved deeply enough that they must have been there for years.
“Livia!”
She looked down from the raised platform where two guards held her beside the railing.
“What?”
Cassian lifted the broken piece of bronze.
“Look at this.”
The Ape Titan growled.
Cassian stopped moving.
The creature’s black fur was matted with sand.
Broken chains hung from both wrists.
An old bronze restraint still circled one arm.
The second had cracked during the fight.
Cassian had expected blood or scar tissue underneath.
Instead, the inner surface carried the name of the woman Varro had brought to the arena as leverage against him.
Livia narrowed her eyes.
Then her face changed.
“No.”
Cassian looked up.
“You can read it?”
“That isn’t the important part.”
“What is?”
“The clasp.”
She pulled against the guards.
“Turn it over!”
Cassian rotated the bronze.
A small symbol appeared beside the hinge.
Three stars surrounding a crescent.
Livia stopped breathing.
“I know that chain.”
Varro stood.
“Enough!”
The crowd quieted.
Cassian ignored him.
“How?”
Livia’s voice trembled.
“It belonged to my father.”
Cassian stared.
“What?”
“My father wore a restraint just like that around his arm.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It wasn’t a restraint when he had it.”
Varro immediately raised one hand.
“Archers.”
Cassian looked up.
Bowmen along the arena wall began moving.
That answered one question.
Whatever Livia was saying, Varro wanted it stopped.
Cassian slid the bronze plate beneath his damaged shield.
“Why would your father have something like this?”
Livia looked toward Varro.
“He called it a field brace.”
“A field brace?”
“He worked for the imperial naturalists.”
Cassian frowned.
“You told me your father was a surveyor.”
“That’s what I was told.”
Varro shouted:
“Remove the woman!”
The guards grabbed Livia.
She struggled.
“No!”
Cassian stepped forward.
“Leave her!”
The Ape Titan roared.
Everyone stopped.
The creature was staring at Livia.
Not angrily.
Almost curiously.
Livia saw it too.
Her expression softened.
“Cassian.”
“What?”
“The Titan knows the chain.”
Cassian looked down at the bronze.
Then at the creature.
“You recognize this?”
The Titan struck its chest once.
Then touched the remaining restraint on its wrist.
The same symbol was engraved there.
Three stars.
A crescent.
Livia whispered:
“My father’s mark.”
Varro slammed his hand against the railing.
“DESTROY THAT METAL!”
The archers raised their bows.
Cassian ran.
Arrows struck the sand behind him.
The crowd erupted.
The Ape Titan moved beside him.
One arrow flew directly toward Cassian’s back.
The Titan intercepted it with its forearm.
Cassian looked up.
“You’re helping me now?”
The creature turned toward Varro and roared.
Livia shouted from the platform.
“My father disappeared twelve years ago!”
Cassian stopped behind a broken stone barrier.
“What happened?”
“He left for an expedition.”
“Where?”
“North.”
Varro shouted over her:
“She knows nothing!”
Livia ignored him.
“My mother said his entire team vanished.”
Cassian looked at the Titan again.
“How old were you?”
“Seven.”
“And your name was already on that chain.”
Livia froze.
She had not considered that.
Cassian pulled the broken bronze piece from beneath his shield.
The carving was weathered.
Old.
Far older than the arena fight.
“He carved your name before he disappeared.”
Livia’s eyes filled.
“Why?”
The answer seemed to matter to the Titan.
It lowered itself closer to Cassian.
Then pointed toward a narrow iron plate still attached to the restraint.
Cassian pried it loose.
Underneath were more markings.
Numbers.
Coordinates.
A Roman military date.
And one name.
DRUSUS VALERIAN.
Livia gasped.
“That’s him.”
Cassian looked up.
“Your father?”
She nodded.
Varro’s expression changed completely.
The governor turned toward one of his officers.
“Close the eastern tunnel.”
Cassian noticed.
“Why that tunnel?”
Varro ignored him.
Cassian looked at the Titan.
The creature was already staring toward the same passage.
“There’s something down there.”
Livia pulled against the guards again.
“My father was here.”
“No,” Varro snapped.
Her eyes turned toward him.
“You knew him.”
Varro smiled without warmth.
“I knew many imperial servants.”
“My father wasn’t a servant.”
“He became inconvenient.”
The crowd murmured.
Cassian felt the meaning immediately.
“What did you do to him?”
Varro said nothing.
Cassian tightened his grip on the bronze restraint.
“Open Livia’s chains.”
Varro laughed.
“You are in no position to make demands.”
The Ape Titan stood beside Cassian.
The laughter stopped.
Cassian looked up at the creature.
“Maybe I am.”
The Titan struck the sand with one fist.
The guards holding Livia stepped backward.
Cassian ran toward the eastern tunnel.
The Titan followed.
Varro shouted for soldiers to block them.
Four entered.
Cassian raised his sword.
The Titan roared once.
Three reconsidered immediately.
The fourth lunged.
Cassian knocked the spear aside and pushed through the gate.
Behind him, metal snapped.
Livia appeared seconds later carrying part of her broken chain.
“How did you get free?”
“The guard decided the Titan was more persuasive than Varro.”
Cassian almost smiled.
They moved through the tunnel.
The Ape Titan had to crouch beneath the stone ceiling.
Again, it seemed to know exactly where it was going.
Livia noticed.
“It’s been down here.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“That’s what worries me.”
The tunnel descended.
They passed old holding cells.
Animal cages.
Storage rooms.
Then the Titan stopped before a wooden door.
The same three-star symbol was burned into the surface.
Livia touched it.
“My father used to draw this.”
“When?”
“When I was little.”
“What did he say it meant?”
“Safe passage.”
Cassian looked at the door.
“Safe passage into what?”
The Titan broke the lock.
Inside was a forgotten archive.
Dust covered tables.
Leather journals filled shelves.
Several rusted pieces of equipment lay against the wall.
Livia rushed toward the nearest desk.
A journal sat beneath a stone weight.
She opened it.
The handwriting made her hands shake.
“My father.”
Cassian moved beside her.
“What does it say?”
She read.
“Day forty-three. Subject Seven continues to respond to voice conditioning. It refuses food from Varro’s men.”
Cassian looked at the Titan.
“Subject Seven.”
Livia continued.
“I have begun feeding him personally.”
Her voice cracked.
The Ape Titan made a soft sound.
It remembered.
Livia turned another page.
“Day fifty-eight. He understands more than they believe.”
Then another.
“Day seventy-one. Varro wants the creatures trained for warfare.”
Cassian’s face hardened.
“So your father worked with the Titan.”
“He was trying to keep it alive.”
Livia turned pages faster.
Then stopped.
There was a sketch.
Her father standing beside a much younger Ape Titan.
Around Drusus’s arm was the bronze brace.
The same one now hanging from the creature.
Beneath the drawing were the words:
IF I DO NOT RETURN, LIVIA MUST KNOW HE IS NOT THE ENEMY.
Livia covered her mouth.
Cassian read it again.
“Your father left the restraint with the Titan.”
“And carved my name into it.”
“Why?”
They turned the page.
Half had been torn away.
Only several lines remained.
VARRO HAS DISCOVERED THE SECOND SITE.
I CANNOT LET HIM REACH IT.
THE KEY WILL REMAIN WITH SUBJECT SEVEN.
LIVIA WILL UNDERSTAND WHEN SHE SEES—
The sentence ended.
Cassian looked at the bronze restraint.
“A key.”
Livia turned it over.
“What could this open?”
The Titan suddenly reached toward her.
Cassian tensed.
But the creature only touched the bronze.
Then it pointed toward the far wall.
Behind a collapsed shelf stood a small iron door.
No handle.
Only a circular indentation.
The exact shape of the restraint clasp.
Livia stared.
“My father hid something here.”
A voice came from the tunnel.
“No.”
Varro.
He stood in the doorway with armed guards behind him.
His calm was gone.
“Give me the brace.”
Cassian stepped in front of Livia.
“You’ve been trying to destroy it because it opens that door.”
Varro drew his sword.
“You have no idea what Drusus hid.”
Livia looked at him.
“What happened to my father?”
Varro’s eyes shifted toward her.
“He made a choice.”
“What choice?”
“To protect an animal instead of Rome.”
The Titan roared.
Varro’s guards raised spears.
Cassian held up one hand.
“Wait.”
Livia’s voice shook.
“Did you kill him?”
Varro said nothing.
That silence was enough.
Livia pressed the bronze clasp into the iron door.
Click.
Varro shouted:
“STOP HER!”
Cassian blocked the first soldier.
The Titan slammed one hand against the stone floor.
The others scattered.
Livia turned the brace.
The door opened.
Inside was not treasure.
Not weapons.
Not gold.
A narrow chamber held maps, sealed letters and one small wooden box.
Livia reached for it.
Varro looked genuinely terrified.
“Do not open that.”
She turned.
“Why?”
His answer came too late.
Cassian had already picked up one of the maps.
A location was marked beyond Rome’s northern frontier.
Beside it was Drusus’s handwriting.
SANCTUARY — SURVIVORS MOVED HERE.
Cassian looked at the Ape Titan.
“Survivors?”
Livia opened the wooden box.
Inside was a second bronze clasp.
Smaller.
Designed for a child’s wrist.
Her name was engraved on it.
Below the name were four words:
DAUGHTER OF THE KEEPER.
Livia stared at Varro.
“What did my father hide?”
Varro slowly stepped backward.
Cassian saw the fear in his face.
The Ape Titan had not carried Livia’s name by accident.
Drusus had placed it there deliberately.
He had turned the creature into a living messenger.
A guardian carrying the only clue that could lead his daughter to the hidden sanctuary.
And whatever waited at that sanctuary was important enough for Varro to spend twelve years making sure Livia never discovered it.
Cassian looked at the map.
Then at the Titan.
“Your father didn’t disappear without leaving a trail.”
Livia closed her hand around the child-sized clasp.
“No.”
Her eyes stayed on Varro.
“He left the trail with someone Varro could never control.”
The Ape Titan roared.
And for the first time, Varro began backing toward the tunnel.
Tap the link below the comment to uncover what Livia’s father hid—and why her name had been carried on the Ape Titan’s restraint for twelve years.
