Across the narrow road, royal guardsmen planted their heraldic pavises into the packed gravel, watching for approaching silhouettes.
The guards tightened their shield straps and opened a narrow lane for the last civilian runners before the King stepped to the front.
The King stood at the forefront of the royal formation, his golden mantle pinned back to free his sword arm.
In his right hand he held the ancestral blade of the realm, its polished fuller reflecting the flickering torchlight.
Twenty radiant Shards orbited his crown like miniature stars, shimmering with the absolute apex of mortal cultivation.
For twenty years, foreign envoys and Underworld priests claimed that mortal kings existed merely to collect tithes for distant thrones.
They whispered that mortal blood lacked the divine lineage required to stand against the incarnate wills of heaven.
Tonight, upon this narrow mountain road, the sovereign of the realm intended to prove those ancient lies hollow.
