The strongest walls are never breached from the outside. They are opened from within, by hands that once helped build them, by voices that once sang their praises, by hearts that decided greed was more comfortable than loyalty.
Every great citadel that has ever fallen began its collapse with a door being unlocked by someone who had a key.
-From the Third Archive of the Covenant of the First Stone, author unknown
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The Covenant of the First Stone was tearing itself apart.
The pristine white walls still rose a mile into the sky, and the sacred inscriptions still honored Ancestors who had blessed this place since before memory began, but the serenity those walls had contained for generations was gone. In its place sat something ugly and loud and dangerous, something that had been growing in the shadows of the citadel for longer than most of its inhabitants realized.
It had started a day ago.
