Chapter Two – Awakening in Rome

I opened my eyes to light that burned like fire and gold. The air was thick with incense and smoke, mingling with the faint, sharp tang of iron and stone. My body felt… different. Stronger, yet unfamiliar. My hands flexed automatically, tracing the bracelets and rings that adorned my wrists and fingers. They were no longer mine — or at least, not as I knew them.

I was lying on a mat in a room of stone. Torches lined the walls, casting dancing shadows across carvings and murals of gods and spirits I had only read about in dusty tomes. The chanting — low, rhythmic, insistent — thrummed through my chest, vibrating in tandem with my heartbeat. I rose slowly, every muscle tense, every sense alert.

A mirror — polished bronze, framed with serpentine symbols — hung on the wall. I stared, expecting to see my modern reflection. Instead, a young woman with olive-toned skin, dark hair braided and pinned with silver, and eyes that seemed to hold both fire and water stared back at me. Her gaze was steady, fearless, knowing.

I stumbled backward. The words from the book echoed in my mind: “Rome, 4th Century.”

The reality of it pressed on me: I had crossed centuries. I had left my ritual space, my modern life, behind. And yet… I felt an almost instinctive belonging here, as though I had always belonged.

A voice, soft and commanding, called from the doorway. “You awaken, as we have awaited.”

I turned to see women clad in flowing robes, their hair adorned with beads and charms. They moved with a fluid grace, carrying trays of herbs, water, and small burning fires. My body reacted before my mind could fully comprehend — I raised my hands, echoing a gesture I had never consciously learned, and they nodded, approving.

They spoke quickly in Latin, words I could understand though I had never formally studied the language. “She has come. The ritual succeeded. She carries the gift.”

Gift. The word rang through me like a bell. My heart raced. My mind struggled to reconcile the woman in the mirror with who I had been — the witch in my modern study. And yet, every instinct, every memory of craft, every lesson, every ritual I had ever performed surged within me as if translated directly into this new body.

I stepped forward, tentative but drawn by invisible threads of destiny. The room smelled of incense, herbs, and earth — grounding me, anchoring me, confirming that this world was not a dream.

A scroll was placed before me. I knelt instinctively, reverently, as if my body remembered this exact posture. The script on the parchment shifted before my eyes, letters forming words I could read despite never having seen them before. Stories of rites, offerings, and rituals danced across the page — knowledge I had longed to uncover, centuries waiting for me to receive it.

And I realized, with both awe and fear, that I was no longer an observer. I was a participant. I had stepped through time, drawn by my desire to learn, to see, to experience — and now the world of ancient Rome and its forgotten mysteries had claimed me as its own.

The priestesses guided me into a larger chamber, their movements as fluid as water, robes whispering against the marble floor. The air here was heavier, humming with presence. Torches and oil lamps cast amber light upon towering statues — Jupiter, Venus, Minerva — their marble faces carved with impossible precision. Offerings of grain, wine, and coins clustered at their feet, shimmering like prayers turned solid.

I struggled to breathe evenly. My mind screamed that none of this was possible, that I should not understand the words spilling from their lips, nor feel the weight of the gods pressing upon me like sunlight turned molten. And yet, beneath the panic, a strange familiarity steadied me. My soul seemed to know where my body had landed.

One of the priestesses, older than the others, stepped closer. Her hair was braided with gold thread, and her eyes gleamed with sharp intelligence. She spoke in a voice like polished stone.

“You are not the same as when you lay upon the mat. The gods marked you before your arrival. We saw it in the flames.”

I swallowed hard. The flames? My ritual?

Another priestess, younger but no less assured, brought forward a clay bowl filled with water, floating petals drifting across its surface. She held it beneath my chin. “Look,” she instructed.

I bent forward, expecting only my reflection — the stranger’s face I had already seen in the bronze mirror. But the water rippled, and visions spiraled across its surface. I saw my modern room — the circle, the candles, the shelves of crystals. My body still there, slumped, breath shallow, eyes closed as though asleep.

A shiver ran through me. I wasn’t gone entirely. I was in two places at once.

The elder priestess dipped her hand into the water and stirred the image away. “The door is open. You walked through. You cannot linger between forever. You must choose where your spirit belongs.”

Her words pierced me like a blade. Choose? My heart thundered. I wanted to cry out that I hadn’t chosen this — that I only wanted to learn, to protect, to understand. But another part of me whispered: wasn’t this what I had asked for? To know the truth, to feel the ancient ways as they truly were?

The priestesses circled me, chanting low, their voices weaving into one. I could feel it vibrating against my skin, drawing something out of me, shaping me to fit this world.

Then the elder spoke again, her gaze unyielding. “The empire changes. Already, they seek to strip us of the old ways, to silence the gods, to turn offerings into sins. If you remain, you will be tested — by faith, by fire, by the shifting power of men who name themselves holy.”

The room trembled with her words. I knew, with bone-deep certainty, that she was speaking of the rise of Christianity, of the slow erasure of Pagan traditions I had read about in history books. But here, standing before her, it was no longer history. It was the present.

And somehow, impossibly, I was a part of it.

The elder’s warning lingered in my mind as I stepped out into the streets beyond the temple. Rome was alive in a way that my modern senses could barely comprehend. Marble columns gleamed in the sun, and merchants’ cries jostled with the clatter of hooves on cobblestones. Perfumed smoke drifted from bakeries, mingling with the iron tang of the Tiber and the acrid scent of wood fires.

And yet, beneath the vibrancy, there was a subtle, almost imperceptible tension. Groups of men moved with banners bearing a single symbol — a cross. Their presence was quiet but pervasive, eyes sharp, words whispered in the marketplace. I saw fear flicker across the faces of some women, the same fear mirrored in the hurried gestures of priests and temple servants. Pagan rituals, once open and celebrated, were now shadowed by threat.

I shivered. Even here, centuries from my world, the patterns of power and oppression were clear. The old ways were not safe. And yet, in the push and pull of history, I felt alive in a way I never had before — a witness, a participant, a thread woven into the tapestry of this moment.

By the time I returned to the temple, my resolve had hardened. I would not remain a mere observer. I wanted to learn, to belong, to be bound to this world as fully as it had claimed me.

The priestesses guided me to the innermost chamber, a space sacred and veiled, where the air was thick with incense, the walls lined with offerings and ancient symbols etched deep into the stone. I knelt before a low altar, feeling the pulse of the earth beneath me, the whisper of ancestors brushing against my skin.

The elder priestess approached, carrying a small ceremonial dagger and a vial of crimson liquid — perhaps wine, perhaps blood; it did not matter. She met my gaze with unwavering eyes. “This is your initiation,” she said. “It will bind you to Rome, to the gods, and to the knowledge you have sought. Once complete, you cannot turn back. Once complete, you belong.”

My pulse quickened. I felt the weight of centuries pressing on me, the presence of gods both forgotten and remembered, all converging in this room. I inhaled deeply, the incense filling my lungs, grounding me in the moment.

The ritual began with words in a tongue that felt older than memory itself, vibrating through the stone chamber, weaving into my bones and soul. I followed each motion instinctively — a bow here, a touch there — feeling the power flow through me like liquid fire. The dagger traced symbols in the air, connecting my spirit to the temple, to the city, to the gods themselves.

When the final words were spoken, a warmth surged from my chest, spreading outward until I felt as though I had merged with the room, the temple, even the city beyond. The old ways, the hidden knowledge, the whispers of ancestors — they were no longer distant. They were mine, bound to me, and through me, they would persist.

Yet as I opened my eyes, the distant echoes of the Christian banners and the cautious glances of Rome’s citizens reminded me that my journey would not be without challenge. The gods were patient, but the world was changing. And I would need all the strength, knowledge, and cunning I possessed to navigate the centuries to come.

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Discussion Question:
How do you personally blend old traditions with your modern spiritual practice? Do you find yourself drawn more to ancient wisdom, or do you prefer adapting the craft to fit today’s world?

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