The golden pillar that pierced the midnight clouds didn’t carry heat.
It carried an oppressive, choking thickness of pure spiritual power. A crushing air pressure that forced every wild beast across three mountain ranges to press its snout into the mud in scared submission.
The pillar landed at the northern boundary of Iron Sword Province, ten miles from Seven Star Pass.
It wasn’t an armada. It wasn’t a fleet of dreadnoughts or a legion of royal heavy phalanxes.
It was a single figure.
*
The emissary was ten feet tall, hovering three inches above the scorched grass.
He was clad in an unbroken, seamless shell of white starlight fine china armor, his face hidden behind a blank, featureless golden visor that reflected neither torchlight nor shadow.
