By the time Dietrich's death rippled through the empire, the land didn't echo with a unified lamentation, nor did it rise in any noble display of sorrow; instead, it fractured beneath the sudden absence of the one alpha whose oppressive dominance had held the realm together through fear and cruelty and corrupt nobles who were allowed to run rampant.
Among the common people, the news arrived as a suffocating silence, washing over marketplace stalls, narrow alleyways, and clustered homes until even the air felt strangely hollow. Not the kind of suffocating that is filled with sadness, but more like disorientation and confusion because they lost their alpha ruler.
As if the ground beneath their feet had ceased to hold any future for them, an empire without their alpha leader is nothing. And they have two other races that are strong and ready to devour them at any moment.
