The Primeval Era

The strongest walls are never breached from the outside. They are opened from within, by hands that once helped build them, by voices that once sang their praises, by hearts that decided greed was more comfortable than loyalty.

Every great citadel that has ever fallen began its collapse with a door being unlocked by someone who had a key.

-From the Third Archive of the Covenant of the First Stone, author unknown

---

The Covenant of the First Stone was tearing itself apart.

The pristine white walls still rose a mile into the sky, and the sacred inscriptions still honored Ancestors who had blessed this place since before memory began, but the serenity those walls had contained for generations was gone. In its place sat something ugly and loud and dangerous, something that had been growing in the shadows of the citadel for longer than most of its inhabitants realized.

It had started a day ago.

Saint Obara of the Second Flame had stood before the gathered masses in the great plaza outside the Cathedral of the First Dawn and spoken words that split the Covenant down its center. Her white robes had been immaculate, her voice steady, her cultivation radiating with the controlled authority of someone who had spent decades climbing toward the heights of power within the Covenant’s hierarchy. She had looked out across hundreds of thousands of mourning faithful and told them that the Hallowed Voice had gone astray.

That he had colluded with demons.

That the disappearance of the Holy Daughter and the assault on the Saint of Stone were not attacks from outside enemies, but consequences of the Hallowed Voice’s secret dealings with forces beyond the River of the World. That evidence had been found, testimonies gathered, and that the sacred leader they had trusted for longer than most could remember had been selling their faith to creatures that feasted on human souls.

The plaza had erupted!

Not everyone believed it. Thousands upon thousands refused the accusation outright, their devotion to the Hallowed Voice running too deep for words alone to sever. But thousands more wavered, and in that wavering, the crack became a canyon. Saints who had nursed ambitions for decades saw their moment and seized it. Anointed Ones whose loyalty had always been to their own advancement rather than the Covenant’s mission stepped forward to support Saint Obara’s claims. Within hours, the citadel had fractured into factions, and within a day, those factions had armed themselves.

Now the Cathedral of the First Dawn sat at the center of something that looked very much like a war about to begin.

The loyal stood closest to the cathedral. Holy Women and High Paladins who had served the Hallowed Voice across lifetimes of dedicated faith held the inner ring, their white and gold Mana flaring in defensive formations around the sacred structure. Rivers of Mana still surged through the channels carved into the ground around the cathedral, and the loyal had woven their own cultivation into those rivers, creating barriers that would make any direct assault costly beyond reason. Hundreds of Seventh Circle and 6th Circle Warriors stood shoulder to shoulder with Organ Sanctification warriors, and all of them wore expressions suggesting they would die where they stood before they allowed anyone to touch the man inside.

Surrounding them, the accusers had gathered their own forces.

And they had not gathered them alone.

The Dominion of Crimson Stone had answered the call for aid with enthusiasm that should have made anyone with sense deeply uncomfortable. More than a dozen Eighth Circle Imperators sat astride subjugated dinosaurs that circled the airspace above the cathedral in slow predatory patterns, their crimson-runed Pterosaurs casting shadows across the white stone below. More than a hundred Seventh Circle Imperators formed ranks in the plazas and streets leading to the cathedral, their crimson armor catching light that the white citadel had never been designed to reflect. Thousands more filled the spaces behind them, Sixth and Fifth Circle warriors standing in organized rows that stretched back through the citadel’s streets, an army that had been moved into position with a speed suggesting it had been prepared long before Saint Obara opened her mouth.

The faithful of the Covenant who had sided with the accusers stood among the Dominion forces, their white robes mixing with crimson armor in a display that would have been unthinkable a week ago. Saints and Anointed Ones who had served the Covenant for years now stood beside foreign Imperators as if this were the most natural alliance in the Lands of Stone.

The citadel was under lockdown. No one entered and no one left without passing through Dominion checkpoints that had been established at every gate along the mile-high wall. The common faithful, the hundreds of thousands who wanted nothing to do with any of this, huddled in their dwellings and prayed to Ancestors who did not seem to be answering.

---

In a commandeered hall near the outer edge of the cathedral plaza, two figures stood over a table carved from white stone that had once been used for Covenant administrative meetings. The table was now covered with markers representing troop positions, supply lines, and the defensive formations surrounding the cathedral.

The first was an Imperator of the Dominion of Crimson Stone.

He was enormous, even by the standards of cultivators who had spent lifetimes refining their bodies through Mana. Crimson and gold armor covered his frame in plates that had been forged by techniques the Dominion reserved for its highest-ranking officers, and his muscles pressed against that armor as if the metal were struggling to contain what lived beneath it. His face was hard, scarred across the jaw from a wound old enough to have been earned in the service of a different empire entirely. His eyes burned with crimson Mana, and when he spoke, his voice filled the room without effort.

He was Royal Captain Draegan Morath. Once the Fourth Royal Captain of the Vakochev Empire, ranked far above the late Sir Alex in the hierarchy that had served Emperor Zuku Vakochev. Now wearing crimson and gold instead of the colors he had been born serving.

This fucker.

The second was Saint Obara herself!