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Marko Vuković fights in the Balkan War in 1991. Marcus Vukovius is a legionary of the Roman Empire on the Danube frontier.

Both are thirty years old. Both bear the same name. Both share the same blood.

When a blow to the head swaps their consciousnesses, each awakens in the other’s war: the modern soldier in the brutal world of Rome, the ancient legionary in the technological chaos of the 20th century.

As they try to survive by pretending to be who they are not, they discover that history does not advance as we believe: technology changes, laws persist, and war remains equally unproductive in every era.

As their values begin to alter the course of both wars, one truth becomes inevitable: not everyone can return.

Written in sober, human prose charged with irony, The Same Name Under Two Skies is a novel about the invisible inheritance of violence, the fragility of progress, and the only possible victory in war: deciding how not to lose oneself completely. 

CHAPTER 1 – Modern Mud

Mud always smells the same.

Marko thought it unintentionally, and it annoyed him that it sounded almost poetic. Mud had no right to poetry.

It was cold, heavy; it got into your boots and never came out.

Mud mixed with gunpowder, with old blood, with that sour smell men leave behind when they live too long with fear.

The trench was his entire world. A strip sunken into the earth, with damp walls and exposed roots, where men smoked in silence and spoke in whispers, as if the air itself could betray you.

The autumn sky over the plain was gray and low, an industrial gray that looked manufactured for war.

Marko Vuković, thirty years old, adjusted his helmet with an automatic gesture. It never fit right.

It either squeezed too tight or moved around as if it didn't belong to him.

He thought of his mother telling him to take it off, that he was going to get sick.

He thought about the absurdity of remembering that here.

"Did you hear?" Ivan whispered from the left.

Ivan was younger, early twenties, but he had the eyes of someone older. Eyes that had already seen enough.

He had that ambiguous face of someone who looks about to crack a joke or break down, depending on which way the wind blew.

"Hear what?" asked Marko without taking his eyes off the edge of the trench.

"That someone from Zagreb is coming today. An 'important' one. To take photos." Ivan spat into the mud. "Maybe he brings chocolates."

Marko exhaled through his nose.

"If he brings chocolates, I’ll give him the rifle and let him stay."

Ivan smiled faintly.

"And if he brings cigarettes, we’ll name him general."

That was trench humor: it didn't make you laugh, but it kept the trembling at bay.

In the distance, the artillery hammered with regularity. It wasn't close fire, but it wasn't reassuring either.

Marko had learned to distinguish the sounds. Not out of curiosity, but out of necessity.

The mortar had a dry "plop" before falling. Heavy artillery closed the sky like a metal door.

Stray shots buzzed like insects.

When one started noticing those differences, he thought, one was already lost.

They were near Vukovar. The line changed often; the map was drawn with mud and fear.

Serb, Croat… sometimes the difference was an accent or a flag hanging from a broken pole.

Marko rested his forehead against the dirt and closed his eyes for a second.

He saw the courtyard of his house in Zadar.

His father chopping wood, his mother calling from the window, the sea shining in the background as if it belonged to another life.

At thirty, he had believed one was already set: job, house, something resembling a future.

He had a rifle and mud in his teeth.

"Hey," said Ivan, quieter. "Are you okay?"

"I’m alive," replied Marko. "That’s enough."

Ivan was about to say something when the air changed.

It wasn't the sound first. It was the pressure in the chest, that sudden void that appears when the world decides to move without asking permission.

"Get down!" shouted someone.

Marko was already going down.

The explosion fell close. Too close. The trench shook as if a giant hand had grabbed it and slammed it against the ground.

Dirt, stones, fragments. His helmet shifted. His left ear went dead in a sharp, constant ringing.

He half-rose. He saw Ivan with his mouth open, screaming something at him that couldn't be heard.

Everything seemed to move slower.

Marko raised his head just enough to locate the source of the fire.

It was a minimal error. Imperceptible.

Something solid struck him in the temple. It wasn't an explosion: it was an impact. Dry. Brutal. A stone, metal, wood;

He would never know.

The world tilted.

He felt he wasn't falling backward, but inward. As if his own head were a long, dark corridor.

He thought a single word, the last complete one:

No.

The noise disappeared.

But it wasn't darkness.

It was a full, thick silence, as if the world were holding its breath.

In that impossible space, he saw something that had no right to exist: a wide river covered in mist, men lined up with shields, a standard with an eagle… and a face identical to his own looking at him from another time.

He wanted to scream. He had no mouth.

The image came closer, or he went closer to it, and for an instant, he didn't know where his life ended and the other began.

And when he opened his eyes, that was no longer his sky.