Mortal superstition was a stubborn, inefficient variable.
When Orion and Elara executed the Eclipse Protocol the previous year, they had simply combined their domains to safely incinerate a buried pocket of cosmic radiation. To the Warlord's Council, it was a localized tactical maneuver.
However, to the isolated mortals living in the deep southern farmlands, watching a pitch-black sun drop from the sky and drill into the earth was a theological revelation.
They did not understand the physics of elemental fusion. They only saw that the blinding light of the Vanguard had been swallowed by the unyielding dark of the void. And because the crops over the impact site grew with unprecedented vitality—a byproduct of the neutralized radiation—the farmers drew a catastrophic conclusion.
They believed the dark demanded worship.
Deep beneath the southern fields, hidden within an abandoned limestone cavern, the Cult of the Eclipse was holding its inaugural midnight summit.
