First Light of a New Age

Chapter 127: Embers of Order

It has been a week since the war of Liberation had ended, as the smoke of war was still flying toward the sky and into the horizon like a curse refusing to fade. It drifted lazily above the skeletal remains of once-mighty fortresses and kingdoms of the Third Civilization Zone, which were filled with proud nations and powerful magic but were now lay blanketed in the mournful silence that only followed conquest.

Though the banners of the Austronesia People’s Empire no longer flew over every stronghold, their absence was a deception. The Empire’s shadow was still there and moved like a tide beneath the soil and in the hearts of the liberated with its iron and invisible grip, stretched long over the lands they had conquered and those they had merely passed through.

What they left behind was more than memory, it was infrastructure, ideology, and control.

Even as their steel-clad divisions marched home, their footprint remained in the land like scars. The Empire had not merely waged war, it had rewritten the ecosystem of power, and their soldiers didn’t just conquer, they dissected every object of value, whether magical or mechanical, was cataloged and extracted ruthlessly.

Magical Libraries were emptied with their scrolls locked in cryo-vaults, enchanted weapons were wrapped in null-matter bindings and shipped off-land. Relics worshipped by forgotten pantheons were boxed like museum pieces, never to see daylight again.

Even the unborn were taken such as magical beast embryos that pulsed softly in their stasis crystals and were stolen from mother nests and hidden valleys.

What could not be carried was burned, what could not be burned was shattered, and what could not be shattered was sabotaged beyond recovery so no one else could use it.

And yet, the Empire did not leave only ruin in its wake. To the manaless humans they liberated, they gave tools of war and survival such as crates of old WWI or WWII weapons marked with the imperial eagle descended from transport drones like divine gifts.

Outdated rifles, collapsible turrets, anti-personnel mines, drone skeletons stripped of advanced AI but still lethal, all left behind to the survivors as not leftovers but instruments of transformation.

“Tools of freedom”, the locals called them. Simple, reliable, and deadly more than enough to repel the weakened remnants of beastmen or rogue warbands that plagued the countryside like feral dogs and mistook the Empire's withdrawal for weakness.

Empire operatives taught the native humans how to form militias and trained them in every village, teaching how to operate weapons, build simple defenses, self-defense, guerrilla tactics, and emergency engineering. They did not teach belief in the Empire, they taught survival through it.

And always, behind them was a message in each withdrawal. Translated into every tongue and carved into the ruins of fallen fortresses, the proclamation read.

“To the free humans of this world, we give you the weapons of your salvation. The chains of blood and magic are broken. You are no longer subjects. You are defenders of your kind. Join us, and become sons and daughters of the People's Empire. Reject us, and we will still protect you from a distance. But stand against us, and you will be buried with the rest of this cursed age.”

For many, this was enough. Like a spark in the ashes, tens of millions of manaless humans who were once enslaved or left to rot in the old order now saw a future, even if it was forged from the barrel of a gun, made the pilgrimage toward the homeland of their liberators.