Chapter 200: Second Catalyst

AD: 1527, 7th year of the spiritual restoration era

The smoke rose high into the sky, tainting the pristine, blue of the summer clouds with its dark grey content. 

So far out into the hills, the sounds of the ongoing massacre could be barely heard. The screams of the wounded, begging of the condemned, and all the innocent victims of the brutality of war...

Those who died died. Those who survived could no longer claim to be innocent, not after seeing what the hell looks like from up close and personal. 

Not when the survival came at the cost of either watching all their family and friends die or outright abandoning them to their deaths in a bid for one to survive themselves. 

The restoration movement, with all of its lofty ideas and grand plans for the future, has now devolved into a mere caricature of itself, a thisted rendition of what was, even though it was its main goal to take what is and turn it into what could it be.