The murals unfolded like scripture written in stone, each panel flowing into the next as though the entire hall were a single story carved into the marrow of the temple. As Alatar walked, the silence seemed to deepen, each step drawing him further into the saga of the Malakors.
The First Mural – The War of Beasts
The mural sprawled like a battlefield frozen in time, the entire wall groaning beneath the weight of its detail. No single glance could capture it all—each section told a fragment of the struggle, each curve of stone alive with memory.
It began with the world in upheaval. The land was wild, unshaped, and untamed. Mountains split like jagged teeth, oceans seethed in eternal storm, and forests writhed with growth so dense they devoured light. From this chaos rose the Beasts—colossi older than the rivers, creatures born of the marrow of creation. They were not merely animals but calamities incarnate.
A leviathan coiled across the length of the mural, its scales carved with such precision they shimmered faintly under the gem-light. It wrapped its body around mountains, dragging them down into the sea, jaws wide enough to swallow valleys whole. Beside it, a horned colossus trampled forests into kindling, its steps carved into the mural as earthquakes captured in stone. Above, a predator with wings broad enough to eclipse the sun was rendered mid-dive, talons descending like razors into the earth. Each Beast was monstrous, not only in form but in essence—they radiated dominion, and the mural seemed to whisper of their arrogance, their assumption that the world belonged to them alone.
But opposite them rose the Malakors.
Each titan stood taller than the mountains they defended. Four-armed, their bodies were carved with cords of muscle like knotted stone, every line etched with divine precision. Their faces bore neither fear nor malice, only inevitability—an expression of those who knew they had come not to fight, but to conquer. Each of their arms bore purpose: one hand clutched weapons of fire-forged steel, their edges still glowing faintly as though memory preserved their heat; another tore at the Beasts with sheer strength, fingers sinking into flesh rendered with such detail Alatar could almost feel the strain; a third arm bore shields of living rock, carved to ripple as if still resisting titanic blows; the last hand traced burning runes across the air, glyphs that blazed even now in faint Etymon-script, spells etched into the bedrock of language itself.
The clash filled the mural from edge to edge. The leviathan writhed as a Malakor tore one of its coils in two, molten blood spilling like rivers across the carving. The horned colossus was depicted mid-roar as a titan's hammer split its skull, the blow scattering bone fragments etched with such violence that they seemed ready to fall from the wall. The winged predator spiraled in death, one of its wings aflame, struck down by a storm of glyphs hurled like spears of light.
And yet, victory was not without cost. The mural showed Malakors fallen too—colossal bodies lying broken across the land, their blood carved into the stone as glowing rivulets of silver. Their deaths were rendered with reverence, not weakness; each titan who fell became the soil from which the survivors' dominion would grow.
As Alatar studied the mural, he felt it stir. The gems lining the pillar beside it pulsed faintly, and for an instant the air filled with a low vibration—a soundless roar that pressed against his chest. His breath caught. It was as though the War of Beasts had never ended, as though the mural was not a picture, but a prison holding the memory of battle.
And beneath that sensation came a truth. This was not merely history. It was declaration.
The world had not been inherited—it had been taken.
The Second Mural – The Rite of Dominion
The mural that followed was not of battle, but of aftermath—an event carved with such precision it seemed less art than revelation. Where the first mural had been chaos and blood, this was order forged through sacrifice.
The scene stretched across the wall in a vast circle, as though Alatar himself were standing inside the ring. The Malakors loomed, arranged in solemn unity, their four arms raised to the heavens. No weapons now. No beasts to slay. This was not war, but rite. Each titan's posture radiated gravity, every gesture calculated, deliberate. Their faces bore an expression Alatar could not at first name, until he realized—it was reverence, not toward one another, but toward the act itself.
At the center of the circle, the pyre roared. Not mere flame, but fire carved alive, its stone flickers glowing faintly as if they consumed the very air around them. From the pyre flowed channels—grooves etched into the ground of the mural itself, cut so deeply they caught the gemlight, glowing like rivers of molten light. These channels ran with sacrifice.
Mortals filled the mural, smaller figures captured in agonizing detail. Some were bound in chains, their faces twisted in terror as they were cast into the flames. Their hands clawed at the air, their mouths stretched open in silent screams. Others walked willingly, their faces lifted in rapture, arms outstretched to embrace the fire. Their bodies dissolved mid-step into embers, fragments of their forms etched as sparks carried upward into the heavens.
Above the pyre, the smoke coiled, but it was not smoke as mortals knew it. It twisted into symbols—Etymon-script, the Syntax of beginnings, each character burning as though the mural itself could not contain their power. They were not words meant to be read, but laws meant to be obeyed. Dominion written in the first tongue.
The Malakors themselves channeled this act. One arm held the chains that bound the unwilling, dragging them forward with pitiless inevitability. Another arm reached toward the willing, guiding them into the fire as priests would guide supplicants. A third carved runes into the air, their forms spiraling into the smoke. The fourth remained outstretched above, drawing the flames higher, calling upon forces beyond mortal comprehension.
As Alatar stood before it, his breath slowed. At first there was the instinctive tightening in his chest—the human reflex to recoil at suffering, at the sight of mortals burning alive. The mural did not flinch from the agony; it glorified it, captured the terror and ecstasy equally. His hands curled slightly at his sides, not in fear, but in the effort of acceptance.
Then something shifted in him. He looked closer—not at the victims, but at the symmetry, the inevitability of the act. This was no slaughter for cruelty's sake. It was necessity. A sacrifice that transmuted weakness into foundation. Each mortal who screamed, each who walked willingly into flame, became part of the greater order. Their end was not meaningless. Their end built permanence.
The warmth of the mural reached him, a heat that was not illusion. His skin prickled, his lungs filled with an acrid taste as if he too stood at the pyre's edge. But rather than turn away, Alatar straightened his spine. His expression hardened into calm comprehension.
He whispered to himself, not in doubt but in revelation:
"This is what it means… to forge dominion."
The thought did not disgust him. It anchored him.
The gems around the mural flickered in answer, as though acknowledging his shift. The silence deepened—not oppressive, but approving.
Alatar moved on, changed. Where once he might have balked at such horror, he now carried with him an understanding: power was not claimed in kindness, but in blood, fire, and inevitability.
The Third Mural – The Age of Worship
The third mural loomed broader than those before, a panorama carved not of war or ritual, but of empire in its fullness. Where the first mural had thundered with chaos and the second had burned with fire, this one resonated with silence—the stillness of submission, the weight of worship.
At its center towered a single Malakor, four-armed and unyielding, its body carved in flawless symmetry. It stood not in battle, but in poise, its arms lifted in gestures of command and blessing. Two arms held relics—an obsidian hammer and a radiant staff—etched in such detail they seemed to hum with remembered power. Another arm was raised outward, palm open, as though offering protection. The last pointed downward, fingers extended toward the countless figures beneath.
Mortals stretched across the mural's base in unending multitudes. They were etched smaller than before, their faces deliberately erased, their individuality consumed by devotion. They bowed low, their spines curved like waves of grass before the wind, their hands pressed to the ground, their weapons laid down in submission. Each was faceless, and in that facelessness, they were united—not people, but congregation.
Temples rose behind them, their pillars tall as mountains, carved with spirals of script and crowned with spires that reached beyond the mural's frame. Fires burned in braziers that seemed almost to flicker under Alatar's gaze, their smoke curling upward to weave into the Malakor's form.
The atmosphere of the mural was not violence, but inevitability. It whispered not of conquest, but of permanence. The Malakors were no longer warriors—they were sovereigns, arbiters of order, centers of gravity around which the world itself revolved.
Alatar slowed, his steps measured. His eyes traced the faceless mortals, their endless kneeling forms, and he felt something stir in his chest—not pity, not scorn, but recognition. He remembered the heat of the second mural, the flames that demanded sacrifice, and now he saw its purpose fulfilled.
"Sacrifice births worship. Worship cements dominion."
The thought came not as a question but as a truth, as natural as breath. His lips curved slightly, not in cruelty, but in a calm understanding.
And then, the mural seemed to test him. A faint whisper filled the air—not words, but the low susurration of countless voices chanting. It was a sound without language, a tide of devotion that pressed against his ears and chest. For a heartbeat, it was overwhelming, a flood of faceless adoration.
But Alatar did not flinch. He inhaled slowly, letting the weight settle over him. Instead of resisting, he accepted it. The chants no longer crushed him; they bowed to him.
His shoulders straightened. His gaze hardened into the same inevitability carved upon the Malakor's face. The hall reflected it—the gems along the wall pulsed in rhythm with his breath, the air itself shifting subtly, as though acknowledging his bearing.
Where once he had entered the temple as a seeker, uncertain and wide-eyed, now he walked with the first taste of sovereignty.
Alatar's steps echoed deeper, each one less that of a man, more that of a figure growing into the regality he was meant to embody.
The worship of the mural was no longer only theirs. It had become his.