MPJ

As usual, at the very end and above all, I truly hope you enjoyed Hero and Lucia's adventure as well as the background story itself, which was perhaps a bit different from the stereotype that we first think of, when it comes to the history of the Roman Empire. The idea for this novel did not come in an instant, so to speak. Instead, the story unfolded along the way, and in the end it turned out to be one of those books where the research and writing were not separate, but intertwined with each other over the course of months of writing. To say that I enjoyed creating the story from the start would be an understatement. In fact, the basic idea that was in front of my eyes from the very beginning was to combine fields and sciences that have always fascinated me such as astronomy, archeology, anthropology and ancient history we know little about, all wrapped in a classic adventure with a hint of romance and unavoidable violence. I am obliged to say that this is entirely a work of fic

The large water wheel that Titus had built under the waterfall, just a few dozen feet from the west wall of their mansion, rotated quite rapidly, considering that a lot of water was falling from the cliff in the latter part of November. A system of wooden gears and shafts transmitted the rotational energy to the millstone, which had a hole in the middle through which the wheat was fed. As the upper stone rotated, it crushed the grains against the stationary stone below, grinding them into flour. Water milling wheat has been a fairly simple process for centuries, but these particular millstones were not intended for grinding wheat. The gap between these stones and the patterns carved were specially designed to be wide enough and instead of wheat, Pia kept adding frozen grapes to the basket, which were inserted into the hole through a wooden channel.

Parting with Valerius' family was difficult and emotional for Lucia. Developing a warm friendship with all of them, in such a short time, neither she nor Hero could have imagined. Yes, the hostage situation with the Goths sped everything up, but somehow everything was more than that. She couldn't put her finger on exactly what it was, and she knew it could just be a fascination with the life she didn't have in Rome with her own family, but tomorrow morning when they set off on their horses towards the road and Vitus waiting there, she wasn't sure that, when everything was over, returning to Rome was her only option. Leaving Alexandria was difficult, but for the first time she felt unsure of where the road would take her next.

Lucia was worried sick all night after they heard a shrieking sound in the middle of the night, followed by another that seemed to come from a greater distance away. Both sounded distant and muffled, but she understood what Pia meant when she said it wasn't a bird. There's no bird that sounds like that, and even falcons and night owls weren't that creepy. She had a bad feeling about all of this. Livia tried to calm her down, telling her that Titus was a military veteran of over five years and would still be in service if he hadn't been wounded in the battle against the Quadi tribe in the Marcomanni Wars and if anyone could do this, it was him. Alerting the legionaries at the station was not an option. If they had gone to Timacum Maius first, it might have been too late and the kidnappers would probably have disappeared.

Geographically lying in the heart of Balkan peninsula, a small town of Svrljig is acting as a capital of a relatively small Serbian land surrounded by exactly 38 villages that are, demographically speaking, living their lives on the edge of extinction. In just half a century human population of the area is more than halved with more and more 'haunted-like' villages containing more empty houses than those with smoked winter chimneys in which more people die than are born. The past of the area went through numerous changes over time and was pretty colorful to say the least. Like everywhere else, ever since the written literacy spread its wings only millennium ago, history of Svrljig is pretty well documented ever since the grate Schism of 11th century and we pretty much know what was like living here down to that time. But history goes even further in the past - to those times we know little about and all we have is a ruin here and there we can try to understand and build a