The fragile peace that had only recently settled over the inner world, shattered like a glass mirror hitting stone.
While the Demigods, the guardians of the Emperor's domain, had withdrawn to the city of Gods to pursue their own divine ascensions, a vacuum of oversight had opened in the mortal realm.
In this silence, the mortals were left to their own devices, unaware that the cracks appearing in their society were not accidental, but the deliberate handiwork of the Jade Empress.
Though she ruled a mere hundred thousand worlds, a fragment compared to the sprawling Cosmic Empire, the Empress possessed an intuitive mastery of perception that Anohara, who focused solely on the structural and logistical betterment of his empire, lacked.
She understood that in a world governed by information, the one who controls the narrative controls the reality.
