[Important: read this before you continue, this side chapter has a very heavy lore flavor and will not affect the Sacrifice for now its just a chapter of a man on a mountain telling a long story to a kid]
At the edge of the high mountains of Yan, where the wind never truly rests, a Wendigo and a haloed man sat across from one another at a narrow wooden table. Snow gathered along the eaves. The world below lay distant and small.
The Wendigo's breath steamed in the thin air.
[Haloed Man]: Grrovae'zzeal… are you ready to continue the tells?
The Wendigo inclined his head.
[Grrovae'zzeal]: I have waited a week for this, teacher.
The halo above the man's head did not brighten. It remained steady. Constant. Unblinking.
[Haloed Man]: Then we return to where we left off.
A pause.
[Haloed Man]: The Age of Exile.
He folded his hands.
He did not read from a book.
He did not need one.
[Haloed Man]: Between eight thousand and six thousand years before our present reckoning came what your ancestors named the Age of Exile. After the Amnannam. After the fall. After the Elder Hegemons had finished grinding civilization into dust. The Teekaz were broken.
A shadow crossed his expression.
[Haloed Man]: Hundreds of tribes vanished — erased so completely that even racial memory carries silence where names once were. Those who survived abandoned the old word for themselves. They chose another. Sarkaz. Those without a home. Those without a king. Those without a sky that would claim them.
The wind pressed harder against the windows.
[Haloed Man]: For a hundred generations, they wandered Terra. Some scattered to distant continents. Others lingered in the corpse of Kazdel, rebuilding its walls again and again like mourners refusing burial.
He let the image settle.
[Haloed Man]: Understand this, Grrovae'zzeal — they were not searching for land. They were searching for justification to exist.
The Wendigo did not interrupt.
[Haloed Man]: According to Sarkaz's racial memory, Kazdel fell three thousand four hundred and twenty-one times during the Age of Exile. Three thousand four hundred and twenty-one declarations that they were not wanted. Once, the Pegasi trampled its walls. Three days. That was all it required to turn stone into humiliation. And still they rebuilt. Again. And again. And again.
The haloed man's voice never rose.
It did not need to.
[Haloed Man]: Another wound opened during this age. The Sankta. A branch of the Teekaz who chose light over kinship. Who severed their lineage and denied the Sarkaz as blood. To the Sarkaz, this was not a transformation. It was betrayal. And betrayal survives longer than war.
He looked directly at his student.
[Haloed Man]: Even now, many Sarkaz claim the Age of Exile has never ended. For as long as Kazdel stands fractured, they believe they are still wandering.
Snow slid from the roof with a muted thud.
The Wendigo's massive fingers tightened against the wood.
[Haloed Man]: Exile was not wandering alone. It was persecution. Across Terra, Sarkaz were enslaved, hunted, and buried when convenient. In the southern reaches of Columbia. In the western dominions of Leithanien. Gaulish excavations uncovered pits filled with Sarkaz bones. Not battlefield graves. Slave graves. Entire tribes interred alive because their captors feared Oripathy more than they feared cruelty. Tools were found beside them. Metal implements. Fragments of clay dwellings. Proof they had tried to build. Proof someone decided they should not.
The wind howled once against the mountain.
[Haloed Man]: Remember this, Grrovae'zzeal: the Sarkaz were not driven into savagery. They were driven into survival. There is a difference.
Silence stretched.
At last, the Wendigo spoke.
[Grrovae'zzeal]: Teacher… why did they keep rebuilding Kazdel?
The haloed man turned toward the horizon.
The sun had just begun to rise, thin and cold against the snow.
[Haloed Man]: Because a people without a homeland are without root. And those without root drift until they forget what they once were.
His voice softened, but did not weaken.
[Haloed Man]: Kazdel was never merely a city. It was a refusal. It was a memory given walls. It was a cradle rebuilt from its own ashes.
He paused.
The halo remained steady.
[Haloed Man]: That was their destiny. That was our Home... The Second Kazdel Era: the Three Sage-Kings, The "Layer of Cities", the "Infernal Rebel Lord", and the "Errant Sovereign
[Haloed Man]: The Second Era of Kazdel — six thousand to five thousand years before our present reckoning — stands apart from the age before it. The records grow clearer there. Fewer songs. Fewer contradictions. More stone. More ink. It is remembered as the Era of the Three Sage-Kings. Three names endure. Gul'dul of the Gargoyles — the Mason King.Balor'sača of the Diablo — the. Sunwielder. Qui'lon — the Errant Overlord, born of mixed blood and sharper steel.
Haloed Man took a sip from his now frozen tea... he licked it a couple of times.
[Haloed Man]: They were not brothers by birth. They were brothers by choice. Gul'dul rose first. As the second King of the Sarkaz, he turned not to conquest, but to endurance. The Gargoyles, masters of earth and stone, shaped Kazdel into something that resembled permanence. Walls thick as cliffs. Foundations dug like roots. Towers grown from living rock. For the first time since the Exile began, Kazdel did not merely stand...
Grrovae'zzeal reached for his cup and nearly chipped his teeth on ice.
[Haloed Man]: Are you well?
[Grrovae'zzeal]: Yes, teacher. Please continue.
[Haloed Man]: It endured. But endurance invites challenge. An unnamed Elder Hegemon descended upon Gul'dul's fortress. No song preserves its title. Some wounds are remembered only by their shape. The Hegemon did not lay siege. It melted the castle. Stone ran like wax. Towers folded inward. Decades of labor dissolved in hours. Gul'dul was captured when the walls he trusted turned to slag around him. And before the Elder's army could finish its work, two figures arrived. Qui'lon, blade drawn. Balor'sača, sunfire gathering in his palm. They had once belonged to the Condemnor Clan — a lineage feared even among Sarkaz. Where Gul'dul built walls, they broke enemies. Where he fortified, they advanced.
He closed his eyes and smiled.
[Haloed Man]: They did not hesitate. Together, they carved through the Elder's host and forced the Hegemon to withdraw. In that battle, friendship became sovereignty. With shared bloodshed and shared purpose, the three rose as Sages of the Sarkaz — their influence shaping centuries to come. And for a time, Kazdel did more than endure. It stood unbroken, and they would later become the subsequent Kings of Sarkaz, whose influence remained prominent in Sarkaz history.
He browned some tea and continued to tell the story.
[Haloed Man]: Yet unity does not erase difference. During the Era of the Three Sages, Kazdel was divided by two powerful visions of survival. On one side stood the Gargoyle-led pacifist faction. They sought isolation. Reconstruction. Endurance through distance. To them, Kazdel's salvation lay in stone and patience — in walls thick enough that the world would forget to knock. On the other stood the Condemnors. A radical movement born from Diablo's Condemnor Clan. They denounced the legitimacy of non-Teekaz Terrans. In their eyes, every invasion Kazdel had suffered was proof that coexistence was a delusion. Only eradication would secure peace. Only dominance would prevent another Exile.
The wind rattled the shutters.
[Haloed Man]: Gul'dul and his kin did not allow the divide to fracture Kazdel. They acted as mediators — not because they lacked conviction, but because they understood timing. Across Terra, the civilizations of the Ancients and the Elders flourished, and the Sarkaz, though resilient, remained weakened after millennia of persecution. War, in that moment, would not restore Kazdel. It would destroy it. Yet the friendship of the Three Sages did not endure forever. Time, envy, and the weight of ambition slowly drove them apart. Balor'sača, consumed by lingering resentment, sought to reignite the war against the Ancients and Elders — claiming he acted in Gul'dul's name. Gul'dul, steadfast in his vision of endurance, refused to sanction bloodshed. Tensions reached a breaking point when Balor'sača captured a group of Caprinae — exiles who had disguised themselves as Sarkaz after being driven from their homelands, their horns marking them as kin in appearance if not in blood. The Caprinae professed peaceful intentions, swearing they only sought to live alongside the Sarkaz.
The Haloed Man took a breath and started reading again.
[Haloed Man]: Gul'dul, however, trusted neither their words nor their resemblance. He deemed them spies and ordered their execution. Balor'sača, enraged that Gul'dul would not retaliate, confronted him within the palace. Words failed, and the dispute escalated to steel. In the end, Gul'dul fell by Balor'sača's hand... I never realized how hot hatred can burn... By the time Qui'lon returned to Kazdel, the deed had been done. The Black Crown rested upon Balor'sača, and he was anointed the third King of the Sarkaz. The era of unity had ended, leaving a kingdom bound not by friendship but by fear and ambition. Because of the new tyrannical rule, many Sarkaz tribes left Kazdel because the "Condemnors" acts of killing anyone who isn't considered a Pure-blooded Sarkaz, that would be the Anasa, Oni, and many others.
The Haloed Man. This time opened a book and started reading.
[Haloed Man]: Balor'sača's iron rule was marked by chaos and bloodshed. He plundered settlements of the Ancients and Elders under the banner of revenge, further staining the reputation of the Sarkaz across Terra. His reign of terror could not endure unchecked. Seeking justice for his fallen friend and the survival of their people, Qui'lon challenged Balor'sača to a duel in the Bleached Wasteland — the same desolate expanse where the Amnannam had first been summoned. According to Sarkaz chronicles, the duel ended decisively: Qui'lon decapitated Balor'sača with the Wrathful Cerulean Flame, his blade a torrent of fire and steel. In his final moments, Balor'sača cast a curse upon the Sarkaz: all future Kings would face betrayal at the hands of their kin. Whether by superstition or fate, the generations that followed would see the prophecy unfold in cruel and tragic ways. A wrathful, mindless man turns a golden destiny into one full of blood and backstabbing.
He looked at the teapot and pourd him self a drink.
[Haloed Man]: Recognized soon after by the Black Crown, Qui'lon became the first mixed-blooded King of the Sarkaz, a sovereign whose reign would span three centuries. He labored tirelessly to undo the havoc wrought by Balor'sača. Kazdel was rebuilt, and the Sarkaz Royal Court was established — a system designed both to curb the independent power of the tribes and to cement a lasting royal lineage. Though Qui'lon crushed repeated uprisings by the Condemnor Clan, he spared the tribes that had followed them and exiled the surviving clansmen rather than executing them outright. His attempts at reconciliation, however, could not satisfy the Ancients or Elders. In response, they launched a military campaign from the west against Kazdel. Facing dwindling resources and a weakened army, Qui'lon abandoned the city he had fought so hard to restore. Leading the Sarkaz tribes loyal to him eastward in search of a new home, he vanished into history. His death remains the only certainty; the Black Crown would continue to anoint new Kings of the Sarkaz in the centuries to come, each inheriting the weight of his legacy — and the shadow of Balor'sača's curse.
Taken a sip from his tea and looked at the foot of the mountain.
[Haloed Man]: Well, that is it for now. Let us see the guests who have come
[Chapter end]