✮ ✮ ✮ A Summary of Events ✮ ✮ ✮

In the fifth year of the Hato Niranu Emperor’s rule, there came a stream of refugees from the east. In this, the sixth year of the Hato Niranu Emperor’s rule, this one has been assigned the task of summarizing what has been discovered of the incident that led to this exodus from Fal for His Most Divine Majesty.

As this one is sure the Emperor knows, for many centuries, our esteemed homeland has been drawn into many conflicts with the Fal. They were a cruel people, intent to extend their influence over domains that did not rightfully belong to them. At the time of this one’s account of the happenings of the fifth year, the Fal have largely been wiped from this land by their own greed and petty revenge.

Our inquiry into the events that led to this destruction of the Fal and exodus of its remaining citizens resulted in the following knowledge becoming known to us:

In the fourth year of the Hato Niranu Emperor’s rule, the war between the country of Fal and the Cold Tribes of the Tundra came to an end. The Fal Congregate drove the Cold Tribes north, until they had pushed them far past the edges of the Cold Tribe’s borders—which had been agreed on in concert between the Yuta Niranu Emperor, the Cold Tribunal and the Fal Congregate in the thirty-ninth year of the Yuta Niranu Emperor’s rule—and into the Deep Cold.

Although we have sent many envoys to the remains of the Fal, even the greatest of our diplomats have been unable to confirm what precisely occurred in the days following the full retreat of the Cold Tribes into the Deep Cold. What this one and his colleagues have been able to determine, however, is that a member of the Fal Congregate had been experimenting with universal matter, pulling at the divine seams of the universe.

In the days following their victory, some event caused this member to lose control of their power, thereby summoning a hoard of the universe’s children into this world. The resulting destruction led to the death of over eighty percent of the Fal population, with the remaining populace seeking refuge in Dion, the Tundra and even Norvel—although this one does not assume to believe the ones fool enough to seek refuge in Norvel will have survived more than mere days after being cast into the Dread Coliseum.

What became of the member themself is unknown. While some among the refuges we have found at our gates claimed that he returned to his estate with the monstrous creations of his sinful reach into the divine, others have claimed he died, while still others assert that his creations were called back to the divine after he had destroyed so much of his homeland. Most unfortunately, there are also rumours that he joined the convoys, seeking refuge outside of the Fal borders with other refugees.

The answer remains unclear, but what is clear is he is if he ever resided in his family estate, following his destruction of Fal, he remains there no longer. As such, this one recommends the expulsion of all Fal refugees back to their homeland. The danger to their lives is gone. May they return in peace and find new lives for themselves amongst the rubble of their home.

This one also recommends the Hato Niranu Emperor expel the Fal refugees as soon as his divinity sees fit. It would not do well to allow these people to form lives within our borders, nor does it seem wise to allow them to stay, knowing the missing member is rumoured to be among the refugees.

It has been known since our feet first stepped upon this land that the divinity of the universe is to be feared. It offers us power, but only upon its own terms. This transgression against its divinity is an affront to the world we have sought to create, on par with even the heathens of the west’s technological advancements in manipulating its beauty and their very souls.

While we teach of the universe’s divinity in our classrooms, the situation in Fal suggests that even the most stringent of teachings on treating the fabric of our world with respect is not enough. The state of the Fal classroom is well known, and if the member in question was indeed part of the Fal Congregate—and all evidence to date suggests this fact is absolute—they would have received an education on par with even that of the Hato Niranu Emperor and his long lineage.

The member’s apparent disregard for all they learned shows us that, as with so many young people before him, the curiosity of the mind cannot be completely contained through fear of repercussions. It is the simple act of being human that suggests to our minds and souls that curiosity is to be nurtured—it is what leads us forward, what saves lives and makes life the beautiful thing that it is.

However, the danger of curiosity in regard to the threads of the universe cannot be overlooked. While the destruction of the member was relegated to stay within the Fal borders, that in itself is a miracle—one that suggests the member’s so-called loss of control was not a loss of control at all but an active effort to destroy Fal—that this one cannot stress enough.

Had any number of variables been different, this one fears our borders may have been breached by the universe’s children. As much as this one is wont to admit it, with our ongoing war with the barbarians of the south, this one does not believe an attack from children of the universe would have been won.

As such, this one also recommends that we reassess our curriculum in regard to safety and the universe. While this one agrees with the many advisors that keeping this incident from the general public is ideal—each of us is well aware of how stories inspire those who hear them to repeat actions and in a vain attempt to prove they can do it better—it may be of use to share details of this event and the terror that resulted from it within an educational setting, especially at the higher levels.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

In addition, this one suggests that all of those with exceptional connections to the universe be put under heavier watch. While they have done nothing wrong in itself, this one does not believe the potential dangers of their existence can be overlooked any longer. Innocent as they may be, the divinely blessed have always posed a potential risk to not just our country, but the world as a whole.

One need only turn to their nightmares to imagine a world where one of the most divinely blessed reaches into the universal matter, pulling out globs of its beautiful horrors to create an army for their sole use.

~ Lord Pu’byana, Seventieth Head of the Divine Council

Emilia glared down at the paper, which she had found tucked between the pages of a book on marriage customs in the age of Buta Aru Emperor. Her ability to read Dionese script, flowing and beautiful and nearly indecipherable as it often was—especially in flowery court documents—wasn’t great. This wasn’t even modern Dionese, instead some ancient dialect that she definitely wasn’t translating correctly in places.

The member was probably meant to be translated as something less direct—something beautiful and wordy, as was the Dionese fashion—while Cold Tribes, Deep Cold and barbarians to the south were definitely too literal, and while Cold Tribes could refer to the Northern Tribes, she’d never heard them referred to as such—although they did have a gathering of the hy that she supposed could be considered a tribunal of sorts—nor had she ever heard the land where the Moonlit City stood referred to as the Deep Cold. Norvel actually read as insane warmongers, but the mention of the Dread Coliseum confirmed for her that it was either a very rude way of referring to Norvel—or whatever had existed in its place at the time—or the actual Dionese world for them… which, if their official word had literally translated as insane warmongers, that was pretty harsh.

Translation issues aside, this document was pretty clearly a message to the emperor about the same incident Conrad’s story had been about. The fifth year of the Hato Niranu Emperor—Emilia wasn’t sure when that had been, her knowledge of the specific dynasties of the Dion Empire limited to only the last thousand years, but if she had to guess… based on the current head of the Divine Council being the one-hundred and seventy-seventh … it was at least a seven or eight thousand years ago. So, long before so much of the world’s knowledge had been lost during the Colonial Wars.

Emilia blinked around the room, wondering if it still existed—wondering if it had ever existed like this. Considering how much the raid and its maintainer had been fucking with her and the others, was there anything to say this document was even real? That this entire place wasn’t an amalgamation of memories from every Dionese hero who had come through this raid and a thousand others?

It wasn’t exactly a secret that the platform took bits of information from heroes heads. In theory, what it took was only supposed to be accessible to the system itself, which would then censor and sanitize what it found. No classified secrets could make it into the hands of raid designers or platform maintainers—at least, that’s how it had been when they’d designed the training system, and Emilia knew Helix had been adamant that they would not be using that particular part of the system to siphon information out of hero minds.

That didn’t mean Hail hadn’t snuck in the ability to do so, and it certainly didn’t mean that the raid maintainer couldn’t tell the platform to fuck with her, just a little more. The platform would search her mind, find ways to mess with her. What better way to do that than to drop her into the oldest-known library on the planet and set her on a trail to find a document that confirmed that Conrad’s story had actually occurred?

There were a thousand reasons why the underlying system shouldn’t have let this library exist within the raid. The biggest reason was simply that anyone monitoring the raid would now know exactly where the hidden library was, something that in itself was considered a secret worth killing over to many members of the royal family. The other reason was that if this document was real, it was obviously secret. She shouldn't have been able to see it, not under normal system rules.

So either the rules had changed, something—or someone—had fucked up the privacy limits of the system, or something strange was going on.

Emilia’s mind slid back through all the strange things that had happened in the raid, part of her wishing she raided more, simply so she could know whether some of those things actually were weird or not.

Mostly, she could only compare it to the years she had spent inside the training system—her training system—long ago as that was. Something about the raid now… Emilia stopped, letting her eyes close and breathing in the system, the dream and nightmare, both within and without. Data and information, facts and lies. Once, she had breathed life into this system, sacrificing blood and sleep and her mental health to give it life.

In many ways, it was her child—a child she had abandoned, leaving it to be picked over and mutilated by Hail and the government.

“⸂I’m sorry,⸃” she whispered, and for the briefest moment, she thought she heard it whisper back. Not in words or anything she could actually hear or feel, but it felt like there was… something.

Then it was gone, and when Emilia opened her eyes, she was staring at the wall of the stairwell, now devoid of blood. Her back ached, and while she couldn’t turn and look at it, she would have been more surprised if it didn’t have a new {Blood Tattoo} etched into it.

Her attempts to push herself up stalled when a dialog popped up, asking if she’d like to merge, store or erase her old and new {Blood Tattoos}. That… she hadn’t really expected for that to be an option. Maybe she should have. She probably should have.

Emilia glared at the dialog, willing it to tell her more about what each option offered her. No more information about what would happen—or if she could change her mind later—appeared, and instead she pushed the dialog box to the corner of her vision. She had no intention of trying to use the {Blood Tattoo} at the moment, so answering that question could wait.

Unfortunately, Tobias’ lower body was still sprawled over the floor, bloodless as it now was, and Emilia wrinkled her nose and turned away from it, instead pulling her overflowing group message up and groaning.

She’d been out for a while, apparently, and shit had gone down—literally.

What a lovely situation to wake up to.