EMPIRE REWRITTEN [Isekai ? Alt-History ? Strategy]

Outskirts of Domokos, Early September 1433

Sultan Murad II reined in his horse at the crest of a low ridge, gazing across at the town of Domokos, nestled atop a gentle hill. Dawn light filtered through the lifting morning mist, revealing a desolation that tightened the Sultan's chest with a mix of relief and rage. What had once been a proud Ottoman garrison town was now deathly silent. Half-burned cottages and blackened timbers lined the dirt streets. The fortress on the rise beyond the town, Domokos's stalwart castle, lay breached and partly collapsed, its stones heaped where Byzantine cannon shot had torn through. Curls of smoke still rose from a few smoldering embers amid the ruins, as if the land itself still remembered the fury of its fall. Murad had ridden hard with 45,000 men to reclaim this keystone of South Thessaly, expecting at least the clash of steel to mark its return to Ottoman hands. Instead, he was greeted by emptiness and the bitter odor of soot.

Murad rode on. His face was hard. The stallion moved steady beneath him as he went down toward the abandoned town.

Behind him stretched the vast host of the Ottoman army – ranks of weary sipahi cavalry and footmen fanning out into the plain. They had marched from Thessaloniki through Larissa with grim purpose, joined by Turahan Bey's returning forces, all converging here to punish the audacity of the Byzantines. Yet Domokos offered no living soul to punish. A hot wind carried only silence and the distant clank of Ottoman banners and armor. No volley of Greek muskets, no last stand from a desperate garrison – just a void where Murad's vengeance had no immediate target.

Turahan Bey rode up beside the Sultan, his face ashen as he beheld the wreckage of the castle he'd once overseen. The seasoned commander had rarely looked so drawn. "They emptied it, Sultan," Turahan said quietly, bitterness sharpening his tone. "Every last man and villager is gone. Constantine took them and... destroyed what he could not carry." He pointed to the fort's shattered gatehouse, its doors missing – pried off their hinges and hauled away. Even some of the stone battlements had been dismantled in places, leaving gaps like missing teeth. It was evident Constantine's army had salvaged stone, timber, and iron from the fortress before departing, denying the Ottomans any shelter or spoils. Even the wells had been poisoned. The realization fueled Murad's anger: the false Emperor had anticipated his arrival and made certain Domokos would be useless to him.

Murad dismounted amid the ruins of the town square, boots crunching on broken roof tiles. A handful of Janissaries fanned out ahead as an honor guard, alert for any lurking threat. But only crows greeted them, flapping off from a gutted granary where grain stores had been put to the torch. The Sultan's lips curled in disgust as he strode past the charred remains of what had been the mosque, its minaret toppled, the prayer hall burned out. Once, it had been a church before being converted. A deliberate act of desecration, or simply collateral damage?

Either answer stoked his ire. His gloved hand brushed against a sooty wall, and he pulled it away to find his fingers blackened.

"Cowards," Murad muttered under his breath, voice low and cutting. "They dare not even face us here." He tried to convince himself that the emptiness of Domokos was proof of the enemy's fear – that Constantine fled rather than defend his ill-gotten prize. Yet in his gut, Murad felt no triumph, only the sting of humiliation. The Greeks had seized Domokos in his absence, and now they had slipped from his grasp before he could strike them down. They deny me even the satisfaction of retribution, he thought darkly.

As he moved through the abandoned marketplace, something unusual snagged his attention. Smeared across a large stone wall was a swath of deep red ochre paint. At first Murad took it for dried blood, but Turahan's sharp intake of breath made him step closer. It was paint indeed –Inscription in Arabic script, the crimson letters stark against smoke-stained stone. One of the Janissaries murmured a puzzled prayer under his breath at the sight. Murad narrowed his eyes and slowly read the words, written in a rough yet clear hand: