The year 308 dawned beneath the ringing of hammers. Constantine's provinces—Britannia, Gaul, and Hispania—had become a single construction site, their roads resurfaced, their bridges buttressed, their city walls rebuilt stone upon stone. In Augusta Treverorum the clatter never ceased: masons cut blocks for a vast basilica meant to humble every temple in the north; kiln-smoke drifted above new baths whose domes would gleam like bronze shields; the forum expanded so wide that merchants joked a man could grow thirsty walking from one colonnade to the next. Pay chests opened, grain stores flowed, and idle hands found wages. Order settled over the West like a mailed fist—heavy, undeniable, strangely welcome.
Constantine was bent over the basilica's elevation sketches when Valerius entered, rain still glittering on his cloak.
"It is finished," the prefect said. "Carnuntum has spoken."
Constantine kept his stylus poised above the parchment. "Recite."
"Maximian was compelled to abdicate again; he returns to private life. Maxentius is branded hostis publicus. Your own rank has been adjusted—" Valerius's mouth twisted on the phrase. "—to Filius Augustorum, Caesar of the West."
Constantine set the stylus down with delicate precision. "They fashion a lesser crown and expect me to kneel beneath it."
"There is more. The vacant purple of the West is given to Licinius—veteran of the Danube, Galerius's creature."
The emperor's lone eye hardened, but his voice remained almost gentle. "An old man's charter drawn on cold Danube parchment. Let Licinius frame it and hang it on his walls; I will keep the legions."
Fausta received the news seated before a brazier, the orange glow dancing across her measured features. When Constantine spoke of her father's enforced abdication, she listened without so much as a tremor.
"My father will seek vengeance, not retirement," she said at last. "But vengeance is backward-looking. I prefer to face forward."
"And forward leads where?" he asked.
"To the throne you already occupy," she answered, pronouncing Augustus with deliberate clarity. "Carnuntum is a funeral for a system that no longer commands an army. I will follow the living, not the dead."
In the weeks that followed, Trier's mint struck solidi inscribed IMP CONSTANTINVS AVG; legionary standards kept their twin pearls of imperial rank; official edicts bore the purple seal unchanged. A polite, sword-thin letter traveled east to Licinius, acknowledging his elevation the way one acknowledges weather—without submission, without hostility, without consequence.
Late autumn brought the true echo of Carnuntum.
A muddy column of riders clattered through Trier's gates beneath slate skies. At its head rode Maximian Herculius, wrapped in a travel-stained cloak, purple nowhere in sight yet pride blazing undimmed. Dust and humiliation caked his boots; resentment smoldered behind his eyes.
Constantine waited on the palace steps in corselet and cloak, Fausta beside him, guards arrayed like iron statues. The old emperor dismounted, met his son-in-law's gaze, and forced a rough salute none could mistake for deference.
"I come as a suppliant to your hearth," Maximian announced, voice rasping with fatigue and fury. "Galerius would see me dead; my own son calls me obstacle. Grant me shelter, Constantine, and I will repay it in counsel and arms."
Fausta's breath clouded in the cold as she murmured, "The ghost returns to the house he built."
But Constantine saw no phantom. He saw a seasoned predator stripped of territory yet still armed with cunning, one who might poison the nest as easily as guard it. He extended a gloved hand all the same—a gesture witnessed by soldiers, courtiers, and spies alike.
"Augusta Treverorum offers hospitality to a former master of Rome," he said, voice carrying across the courtyard. "Rest here, and we shall speak of the future."
Maximian clasped the offered wrist; the two emperors—one reigning, one fallen—stood in locked measure before turning toward the palace doors.
Behind them the city walls rose massive and new, glistening from recent rain, symbols of a power Carnuntum's decrees could not erode. Within those walls, Constantine now housed a serpent deprived of its skin yet not its fangs. Roads and basilicas could be planned to the cubit; the calculations of ambition were measured in subtler units—loyalty, pride, fear. As winter closed over the Rhine frontier, the emperor counted each variable with the same cold precision he devoted to stone and mortar, knowing the season ahead would test every joint in the edifice he was building—an edifice meant to outlast ghosts, conferences, and the failing memories of men.