Two Centuries of Silence
That is how long it has passed since the day the heavens split without thunder and the earth shook without an earthquake. The Great Rupture. It did not come with fire and roar; it came with a quiet whisper of breaking laws. Gravity forgot how to hold, time forgot to flow forward, and space began to fold into unimaginable origami of reality. Most of humanity vanished into that abyss within the first day, disintegrating into atoms in the crucible of rewritten physics.
But humans are stubborn creatures. Like grass breaking through asphalt, they found cracks in the new world order. Where chaotic waves of anomalies whimsically canceled each other out, islands of calm emerged in an ocean of madness. The largest of these stretched across an extensive basalt plateau, protected by a ring of grim black mountains. These mountains had no name on the old maps. Now they are called the Silent Sentinels. And in their shadow, under a blood red sky, grew the Citadel of the Sun. And around it, like steel rings on armor, the borders of the Last Bastion Empire closed.
Twelve million two hundred thousand four hundred and thirty one souls. That is exactly what the census takers counted during the last full moon. Each one a cog in a giant machine of survival. Castes determined fate from birth: the Labor Fund fed everyone, the Iron Administration governed, the Army of Stability guarded the frontiers. But above this strict pyramid towered another elite those who could not merely survive in the new world, but command its madness. The Order of Resonance. Those in whom the Power awoke.
PART ONE: BLOOD AND BASALT. THE ANATOMY OF AN EMPIRE
The Empire was not a country in the old sense. It was a single organism struggling against a hostile environment. Its territory, the Core, stretched eight hundred kilometers from the Citadel. Here, stabilization pylons worked cyclopean structures of black stone and shining quartz that suppressed anomalies and held reality within acceptable limits. Beyond the Core lay the Wastelands. Endless, shifting landscapes where the ground could be hard as steel in the morning and liquid as mercury by noon, where gray dust fell from the sky, and where other forms of "life" lurked in the fog.
Everything was governed by the Iron Administration a faceless and omnipotent bureaucracy. Every gram of grain, every liter of water, every nail was accounted for and distributed. Freedom was an abstract and dangerous concept. Order was everything. And the highest manifestation of this order was the Order.
PART TWO: A LADDER OF BONE AND WILL. THE RANK SYSTEM
In the world after the Rupture, power obeyed a strict hierarchy. An impersonal, all pervading protocol of the new reality the System measured the might of all that existed. Ranks were divided into three categories, and the chasm between them was wider than that between a pauper and an emperor.
Ranks of the Order of Resonance:
· Lower (Enlisted): The army's foundation. Neophyte, Disciple, Adept, Warrior. There were over two hundred thousand of them. An Adept could freeze a puddle of water, a Warrior could cover a squad with an icy wall. They died in droves on the borders, but their mass was the Empire's shield.
· Middle (Officer): Elite within human limits. Master, Virtuoso, Hero. About four thousand souls. A Master of Fire could incinerate a whole squad of creatures with a wave of his hand. A Virtuoso of Shadow became invisible even to instruments. A Hero was a personality whose name was known across an entire province. Such individuals could wage guerrilla warfare in the Wastelands for months and return with trophies and new scars.
· Higher (Legendary): Living weapons of strategic importance. Their faces were stamped on rare imperial coins, and their names were spoken in whispers.
· Demon. Power comparable to a natural element. A single Demon specializing in earthquakes could collapse a cliff onto an army of monsters alone. Estimates put their number in the Empire between four and five thousand.
· Archon. Commander of legions, ruler of a fortress city. Their will suppressed weak anomalies within a kilometer radius. No more than a thousand in the entire empire.
· Saint. The absolute. Only six hundred and forty individuals. Each a unique phenomenon whose power could determine the fate of entire regions. Saint Gregory the Impenetrable, seventy years ago, held the Gorge a mountain pass alone against a tide of Corruption, and after the battle, only a field of basalt, smooth as glass, remained. Their identities were classified, their true powers the subject of legends. They answered only to the Emperor and their own secret council the Conclave of Light.
Ranks of Wasteland Creatures (Corruption):
· Lower Corruption: Creature, Vermin, Monster. Insect level intellect, dangerous in numbers or size.
· Middle Corruption: Fiend, Nightmare, Blight. Here, magic and cunning appeared. A Fiend could cast illusions, a Nightmare could invade dreams, a Blight could poison the land for kilometers around.
· Higher Corruption: Catastrophes incarnate.
· Devil. A giant with skin of lava and breath that scorches steel. Entire cohorts of Heroes were assembled to destroy one.
· Archfiend. Destroyer of cities. Possessed intellect comparable to human, but filled with pure hatred for order.
· Fallen. Power equal to a Saint. Their appearance meant a state of emergency and the mobilization of all regional reserves.
· Accursed. A walking apocalypse. In two hundred years, only three such beings have been recorded. Each appearance left a new scar on the map scorched valleys, seas of poisonous fog, zones of permanent gravitational collapse.
PART THREE: SEAL, ASPECT, GATEWAY. THE MECHANIC OF POWER
Power was not given freely. It was taken in battle, paid for with blood and sanity. Teenagers aged 14 18, caught in frontier zones during energy storms (Surges), received the Brand of the Abyss a painful, black tattoo appearing on their skin. It was a sign: their body had become a conduit for Chaos.
They were taken to Coherence Institutes, more like fortress monasteries. There, the Awakening Ceremony was held. A Neophyte was placed in a stone cistern filled with liquid light stabilized Essence of the Rupture. The System scanned the depths of their soul, their fears, their secret desires. Based on this analysis, it assigned an Aspect the fundamental nature of their power. Fire. Ice. Blood. Stone. Shadow. Call. Memory. Pain. It was both a sentence and a gift.
The Aspect granted basic abilities. But its true power was revealed through Gateways. A Gateway is not a spell to be learned. It is an epiphany, a new law discovered by the Resonator within their own soul. It could not be taught; it had to be understood.
· A Warrior with the Stone Aspect could summon boulders.
· Upon opening the "Heart of the Mountain" Gateway, they could turn their flesh to granite for a minute, becoming immune to blades.
· A Master who comprehended the "Geomancer" Gateway no longer summoned stones they conversed with the earth, making it crack, heave, and swallow enemies.
Opening a Gateway was the greatest feat and was noted by the System.
PART FOUR: TITLES AS SCARS ON THE SOUL. FEATS AND RECOGNITION
The System was impersonal but not blind. For outstanding actions, it granted Titles. This was more than a rank. A Title was woven into the very essence of the Resonator, granting passive blessings and marking their path in eternity.
· "Shield of the Helpless" for one who saved dozens of innocents from death. The Title enhanced defensive abilities when the weak were behind the Resonator.
· "Nightmare Hunter" for destroying a hundred Fiends. The gaze of such a title holder could momentarily pierce the illusions of lower Corruption.
· "Negotiator with the Abyss" a rarest title for those who managed to establish contact with an intelligent Wasteland entity and survive. It granted a vague foreboding of traps and the schemes of other beings.
· "Returned from Oblivion" for those who survived in a Pocket Reality, a micro hell of lethal, absurd laws. Such a title was the brand of a lucky madman and increased resistance to mental attacks.
Titles formed clusters, creating a unique chronicle of merit. A person's name, rank, and titles were their true face in the new world.
PART FIVE: SILENT GODS IN THE RUINS OF THE WORLD. THE LEGACY OF THE ANCIENTS
The Empire's official religion was devotion to the Emperor and duty. But in the slums, forgotten bunkers, and remote outposts, a different faith smoldered. Worship of the Ancients.
It was believed that before the Rupture, the world was different. It was ruled not by laws, but by entities that were part of reality itself. In the cataclysm, they perished but did not vanish. Their colossal power, their Legacy, shattered into Shards and scattered across the most terrifying corners of the Wastelands.
These Shards the "Sleeping Eye," the "Singing Stone," the "Weeping Spring" were prayed to. Meager offerings were brought to them, asking for protection from monsters, hunting luck, healing. The Inquisition of the Order burned these cults with hot iron. Heretics and their families were erased from the face of the earth.
But the truth, known only to the Conclave of Saints and the high command of the Administration, was more terrifying than any heresy. The Shards were real. They were not gods. They were wounded, half asleep, mad fragments of an unfathomable consciousness, craving wholeness. Contact with a Shard could turn a Disciple into a Demon overnight, open Gateways for them that Saints dared not dream of. But the price was terrible: loss of sanity, mutation of the body into something monstrous, complete enslavement to the will of a fragment of an ancient deity.
Thus, a Secret War was waged. The Empire hunted Shards to seal them in lead sarcophagi in the deepest dungeons of the Citadel. Renegades and sects sought them to gain power to overthrow the Bastion. And the Shards themselves... waited. Waited for the perfect vessel, strong enough to bear their power, and weak enough to submit.