The physical architecture of the Eternal Forge had not changed, but the atmospheric pressure within the chamber was suffocating. The crushing gravity of a Rank 9 deity was absolute.
Grand Ordinator Valerius Thornwick knelt before the central dais, his ink-stained robes spread neatly across the obsidian floor. He held a scroll, heavily sealed in Korthane gold, tightly against his chest. His breathing was rapid, shallow, carrying a desperate, fragile excitement.
Zephyr stood in the center of the tactical grid, his consciousness split between the trembling mortal before him and the massive, grinding pressure of the containment shell kilometers below. He did not look at the Ordinator. He looked at the aetheric projection of his western frontier.
Four hundred towns were failing. The structural integrity of the Sovereign Imperium's outer foundation was buckling under the sustained economic warfare of the Korthane Hegemony.
