In Constantinople in 1272, an empire was fading into twilight. A soul from the future awoke in the body of Andronic II, the gravedigger of Rome. Distilled spirits, movable type printing, cannons, fleets… He wielded technology and reason as his sword, tearing a bloody path through the old world of theocracy and ignorance. From the first pot of gold in the royal workshops to the roar of the Anatolian industrial region; from the undercurrents of the Sicilian Vespers to the cannon fire of the battles on the Black Sea and the Mediterranean; from the iron hooves conquering the Turks to the white sails of the New World. —The old world was burning, and a new order was being born. This time, Byzantium was not the final chapter of history, but the beginning of civilization.