Arch-Chancellor Malakor didn’t look like the supreme ruler of an empire when he staggered through the shattered doorway of the Obsidian Vault.
His gold-trimmed ritual robes—spun from mountain silk and stitched with three thousand seed pearls—were torn and blackened by fire soot. His golden breathing mask, bolted directly into his jawbone to filter the surrounding glass-like dust, was hissing erratically, leaking plumes of acrid steam that smelled of scorched brass and vinegar.
Behind him, only two elite praetorians remained. Their broadswords shook in their hands as they looked upon the altered altar and the silent, unmoving silhouettes of the summoned Rens standing in the shadows.
Malakor’s bloodshot eyes locked onto Ren Prime, his chest heaving with asthmatic fury.
“You insolent, ink-stained rat,” Malakor wheezed through the brass grill of his breathing mask, his voice metal, distorted, and poisonous. “You think a drop of peasant blood on an old skin can overturn four hundred years of dynastic dominion? I’m the Chancellor of the Grand Synod! I hold the Imperial Seals! I hold the military charters!”
Malakor reached into his heavy silk sash. He drew out a roll of heavy, purple-dyed thick parchment bearing the Great Wax Seal of the First High court—the original Sequestration Writ of Eminent Domain.
