A short while earlier...
The fractured sky had only just begun to rain down beams of astral radiance when the first great power arrived.
A deafening roar echoed across the distorted landscape as an enormous obsidian warship emerged from a tear in space. Its front was sculpted into the snarling visage of a six-headed hydra, each head opening its maw as streams of darkness poured into the surroundings. Countless black-and-white banners fluttered from its towering masts, bearing the emblem of the Abyssal Radiance Empire.
Dozens of figures descended in orderly ranks.
Every one of them wore luxurious black-and-white robes embroidered with intertwining hydras. Their blue hair fluttered against the oppressive darkness that naturally gathered around them, and faint azure scales occasionally surfaced along their necks and hands, revealing traces of their half-hydra bloodline.
Leading them was a broad-shouldered middle-aged man whose eyes resembled deep abyssal whirlpools.
