The 15
th of August was to be celebrated three times. It was the name day of wife Maria and the grand celebration of Christianity. He was turning 60 years old out of which 26 he ruled. But his end was sealed courtesy of the betrayal of his close ones, envy and resentment. Not even his integrity and righteousness as a ruler were enough to save him.
We have lost everything, let us deliver our souls at the very least, were his last words. And he witnessed as the heads of his four sons baptized in innocent blood his refusal to renounce his faith.
(Translated by Marta Fulga / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by conf. dr. Daria Protopopescu / Edited by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In October 2022, the group has 9,400 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
