Rome settled into a wary hush once the clang of axes on Praetorian marble faded. Smoke from the razed castra drifted above the city like incense from a burnt offering, a daily reminder that the old order lay in rubble. From dawn to dusk clerks scurried across the Palatine with tablets of fresh directives: treasury audits, grain-dole reforms, the reassignment of municipal cohorts to frontier duty. Constantine watched the machinery grind forward with the same critical eye he had once turned on collapsing governments through a holoscreen. This empire, too, would obey his equations—or be replaced.
The Senate, sensing the chill of his resolve, hurried to confirm him Senior Augustus. Their decree arrived on a silver plate, parchment edged in purple, borne by a delegation that bowed so low the tassels of their shoes brushed the floor. Constantine's acceptance was brief. Titles were useful levers, nothing more.
His next lever was religion.
