In any kingdom, the firstborn son of a noble family will always inherit the entire family estate.

The second son will generally become a butler, or a similar higher-class servant. Because they want to ensure there's a child left to inherit their estate in any unfortunate circumstance, nobles will often have between three to five children.

As the firstborn will inherit the estate, and the second-born hopes to become a butler, all other noble children are generally doomed to poverty with no experience to recover. Many young men have ended up in this unfortunate circumstance, and many more will in the future.

Among the slums of Jeraea, a moderately large Sangrean city, lived one such young man; the fifth son of the Hiscovol family of nobles.

Glen Hiscovol trod along the filthy dirt roads of Jeraea with a downcast look upon his face, even more downcast than usual. Glen had worked many odd-jobs during his seven years in the slums, having accumulated a meager life savings, all of which had just been stolen from him in a mugging. While he knew he was lucky to have made it out alive, it was hard to be thankful, as he now had no money to survive the coming winter.

Glen stood still and turned his eyes away from the ground for the first time in the past few hours. He looked up to the sky. It was a nearly cloudless day, with only a few streaks of white fluff scattered around. He could swear he could feel the cool winter winds blowing in from the north. While the breeze may have been relaxing to some, to Glen, it was nothing more than a gentle reminder that it's almost too late.

He looked around him. There were a few bright-eyed people in the crowd, but they were few and far in-between. This was largely because Glen had finally reached the lower-class housing district of the city, which was largely populated by people like him who never knew if they'd live to see the next day. The chattering of the crowd made him feel claustrophobic.

As he continued walking, Glen plunged deeper and deeper into the slums. The further he went, the gloomier everyone's moods seemed to get. This atmosphere could be considered oppressively dejecting, but Glen was used to it, and it felt almost welcoming to him.

He didn't even bother to glance to his sides as starving children lay motionless in alleys and those who haven't completely given up stood in the streets begging for money or food from anybody who might have some to spare.

Unfortunately for them, most of the working men of Sangrea had been drafted in preparation for the upcoming war with their neighboring kingdom, so the resources for food were not abundant enough to leave anyone in the slums with a crumb to spare.

This was the world, and to a man like Glen, it wasn't worth batting an eye at.

He continued trekking down the road, unsympathetic to the common sights surrounding him. It was very rare for something unusual to happen in these slums. They were a stagnant place, festering with scum like an untended pond. This made it all the more shocking when Glen turned at the sound of a fanatical man running through the streets, screaming something in a fearful tone.

While the man was still a ways away and it was hard to make out exactly what he was saying, Glen could still see the faces of the slum dwellers further down, people who had seen and lived through the worst of the world, contort in a mix of pure shock, terror, and outright disbelief.

As the raving man grew closer, his words grew more audible.

“It's fallen! ———— has fallen! Run ——— lives! ——— the north!”

Glen strained his ears to understand before the man repeated the phrase once again.

“It's fallen! The Palisade has fallen! Run for your lives! Flee to the north!”

Glen froze in place. This man was delirious. As he considered the likelihood that what he had just heard was true, he questioned even if it was worth considering at all. The Palisade had stood for thousands of years up until this day, and history had proven it was completely impassable. He heard it again, louder this time.

“It's fallen! The Palisade has fallen! Run for your lives! Flee to the north!”

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The protection of The Palisade wasn't something that humanity considered a blessing, it was a basic fact of life as simple as gravity. Would somebody even joke about this kind of thing? Would the idea even occur in a lunatic's mind? Glen frantically racked his mind to figure out how he should interpret and deal with the information he had just been given. The raving man finally reached and ran past him.

“It's fallen! The Palisade has fallen! Run for your lives! Flee to the north!”

As Glen heard it clearly for a third time, he realized that he had to make a choice quickly if the raving man was telling the truth. With that in mind, he decided that doing nothing wasn't worth the risk. He raced towards his tent to pick up his belongings and flee the city; not away from, but towards the southern border.

• • •

Liam Broderick was a Gevillian knight, and he placed his pride in his role as a defender of his people.

Ten months prior to this day, an advisor to his king had been exposed by an anonymous tip to be a Sangrean dignitary, and he had been leaking classified information for an unknown amount of time. They had put up with Sangrea's continued offenses for decades, but this was the final straw.

Gevilia declared war on Sangrea, and had spent the past ten months amassing and preparing their army. Liam, being a captain, was assigned to organize the forces of this city, and today was the day he had finally finished. As Liam walked down the halls of the capitol building, he paid no attention to the gloomy, foreboding atmosphere, lost in his thoughts.

He always wondered why his nation hadn't at least taken political action against Sangrea to punish them for their many connivances. The twin nations had had a long history of minor strife and ambiguous social tension, but they had always maintained that it would hurt more than it would help to launch an invasion.

The new king, however, violated this unspoken rule for the first time in human history; it was unclear if it was a calculated decision or an act of impulse, but what was done was done. The public had already been rallied, and the vocal minority affirmed that they had tolerated Sangrea's impudent attitude for long enough.

It was only a few years ago that Gevilia lost to them Seton, a legendary enchanter and blacksmith who had been providing the Gevilian military with powerful magic weapons for years, just before he completed what was, according to him, his greatest project. It can only be assumed that they intended to hold him captive and use his abilities to find a military advantage.

It was a long walk, but Liam finally had his commander’s office in sight. As he approached the door, he could hear fearful and argumentative shouting behind it. He decided not to open the door, instead listening in on the conversation.

“I beg your pardon sir, but this is more than a fork in our plans; this is an extinction event!”

“Then what do you propose we do, colonel? What is the appropriate response for this kind of circumstance?”

He’d never heard the general sound so panicked, nor had he heard any man speak to the general in that tone of voice. What could they have been so stressed over?

“Well, it most certainly isn’t appropriate to do nothing at all. The Palisade has fallen. The Palisade has fallen. Are you processing what that means, sir? We need to redirect our entire army towards the southern border, not Sangrea!”

Liam couldn’t believe what he had just heard. He peeked through the door in disbelief and saw the general, taking a few steps back and falling over into his office chair. The general buried his head in his hands.

“Oh my… this can’t be happening…” The general’s voice wavered in fear and disbelief.

Liam dashed to the hall window and stared outside, desperately searching for the familiar shimmering barrier reaching into the sky; defying his expectations, the horizon was clear. It was so sudden that it was almost impossible to wrap his head around.

Could something like this even happen? Because humanity had assumed for so long that the Palisade was impenetrable, over the generations they had lost their knowledge of what kinds of things were on the other side.

He tried to slow his breathing and calm his thoughts. The Palisade had remained in place for over a millennia. While nobody seemed to know what had caused it to fall today, he could still make a few assumptions. Because today wasn’t any particularly round or anniversarial date in regards to the Palisade, it was highly unlikely that it was arranged to fall after a specific amount of time.

On the other hand, though Gevilia didn't have a great deal of magical knowledge as a nation, it had nonetheless been previously confirmed that the Palisade powered itself through residual magical energy in the surrounding area rather than the usual–not to mention easier– method of being powered by the caster's own magical energy. This meant that it couldn't have simply run out of power.

The remaining likely explanations were that there was someone (or something) either very powerful, or very diligent on the outside. Both possibilities made it increasingly probable that a massive battle was about to start.

With that in mind, Liam made up his mind in an instant. He was a knight; he was a protector of the people. It was his duty to defend his people– to defend humanity from whatever was about to arrive. Liam steeled himself for what would come next as he turned towards his superior's door, instilled with the confidence and pride only a human could carry with them.