In first century Jerusalem, a Roman boy begins to question everything his empire taught him to believe.

Twelve-year-old Marcus Aurelius Cato is the son of a centurion stationed in one of the most volatile cities in the empire. Raised on Roman discipline, duty, and order, Marcus has always accepted his father's world as the only world that matters.

Then an empty tomb changes everything.

When whispers of a risen teacher begin spreading through Jerusalem's streets, Marcus finds himself drawn into a mystery that no Roman logic can explain. Soldiers who guarded the tomb are being silenced. The household cook, Miriam, is quietly transforming before his eyes. And the stories Marcus overhears of healings, of gatherings in hidden rooms, of people willing to risk everything for a man the empire executed refuse to stay in the shadows where Rome wants them.

Now Marcus must navigate a dangerous world where faith and empire collide, where the difference between loyalty and obedience could cost him everything, and where the biggest risk of all might be opening his mind to a truth his father's world cannot contain.

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