Chapter 1 (1/1)

ACT 1: DARKNESS IN THE NORTH

CHAPTER 1-1: THE SETTING SUN

A nation had fallen

It was never officially announced The people only realized it by the them all this time had vanished

The first signs appeared at the border in the north

Beyond the villages and the towns, through the far the borders by the forests and the swaed

Each day before the sun would set, the guards the holy fire blessed by the priests to keep the Household of the Dark at bay, away from the domain of man

These flarew less and less

At first it had only been in one place, but then in the next, three had vanished, and the depth of the night grew grimmer

But the Household of the Dark continued to stay their hand, and they did not attack The lanterns, however, continued to vanish, until eventually, the guardsmen stopped their patrol

They stopped for they were no longer receiving their dues

Thein fro with it, the finances to keep the lanterns alit each night To say no less of which, the soldiers and the priests even began to struggle with si

The small barracks were the first to fall

Then with the order of the soldiers in chaos, desertion and negligence soon followed The general tried to quell the chaos, but alone in the face of anarchy, he was killed And so, ere once barracks, houardians that protected the citizens, had now changed to dens of outlaws They did as they pleased with no regard for the law that they once protected Yet no matter how much time passed, the troops that should have come from the mainland to suppress them never came

Without even the faintest traces of the echoes of the arhtest rumors of their course of action, several moons passed

––––Not long after… the darkness made its move

As the beacons flickered dead one after another, the creatures ever hidden within the depth of the forest and the marshes, slowly moved At the dawn of dusk, they quietly encroached into the domain of , they began to act with no mercy

With their fields burnt and their lives threatened, the peasants had no choice but to run for the castle walls The arainst the Household of the Dark, but in exchange, they enslaved those with nowhere to go

Without even the passing of a year, within the territory of the prosperous Diateus Empire, in the barren wasteland, a bottoes, isolated, they each passed laws as they pleased Arts and culture were thrown to the dust as people sold everything they could to survive They sold their possessions, they sold their neighbors, they sold their self-respect, they sold even their own blood and kin

Whether it was the Vitia Province to the north of the e Divara Sea, they all ran from the same fate