Viri Imperium

Prologue

It was said that the world had never looked so dark. Violent billowing plumes of metallic ash marched through the sky like armies in formation. The ground was laced with deep tremors and ruptures, marking the path of destruction. Sharp, pointed sticks jutted out of the ground resembling once vast and tall forests. Burnt and flaming leaves spun in the rough wind, leaving trails of grey smoke in curving tendrils and the smell of death everywhere.

People claimed that you could taste the lives lost in every breath, tasting their final words, swallowing their dying hopes. This is what happens when our species cannot learn to trust one another.

"They will destroy us if we do not obliterate them first." These were the words that had left every leader's reckless mouth. Each word pressing hard against their teeth, for everything was a lie. And every word was responsible for the ruin of us all.

Every country pledged war, no goal in their pathetic minds aside from destroying the other. People killed out of pure stupidity, too caught up in the war of domination to realize that there would never be a winner.

Although, as time went on after The Great Betrayal, life returned to our charcoal world. Slowly, what was ash became soil and from that soil came green. After twenty years or so, the forests were able to rebuild themselves, returning to the rustic glory they once knew. The same could not be said for the humans.

Nothing would be the same from that point forward. Once, people knew how to live among each other in peace, and there was a time when there was no war or agonies threatening the land our people called home. Unfortunately for me, I was born almost one hundred years too late.

The world is much different now than it once was. I live where men reign. Viri Imperium.