Prologue

998999.M41

Somewhere in the darkness, a Basilisk fired, to shatter the silence that ended the age.

The explosion was still echoing when the great bell of the Cathedral began to toll. More than the artillery, that was what stirred first Medin Island, and city by city the whole planet of Ahaggar, to life.

Penitent parades that had waited sleeplessly through the night took their first step to its echo. The streets began to echo, and then to shake underfoot. Choirs of children were shaken awake and hurriedly dressed. The PDF comm network was silenced to broadcast the buzzy, distorted voice of a hymn servitor.

The sun blazed over the horizon in a bloody sky, and a million voices were raised in a hymn to the final dawn.