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Arc Four: Sovereigns at War
Prologue: The First Massacre
The city of Velaria had never known silence like this.
Even in war, sound was constant — gunfire snapping across the wards, the thunder of Dominion boots, the crackling of fires consuming block after block. But now, in the gray before dawn, the air carried nothing but dread.
Dante crouched at the edge of a ruined balcony, his coat torn and blackened from the night’s retreat. Smoke clung to his lungs as he scanned the streets below. Rubble stretched in every direction, the skeletal remains of towers that had once pierced the sky now reduced to jagged bones.
“Where are they?” Mira whispered beside him, her voice taut as wire. Her rifle was steady, her eyes darting to every shadow. “The Dominion doesn’t vanish. Not like this.”
