The Sovereign was gone.
Not dead. Not overthrown. Simply absent.
For nine centuries, the bedrock beneath Ashenveil had hummed with a low vibration that every citizen felt in their teeth and boots. It was not sound; it was the physical weight of an active divinity holding seven provinces together through constant attention. When a bridge cracked in the eastern marl, the stone hardened before the masonry parted. When grain blight drifted across the river flats, the spores turned to ash in mid-air. The Imperium had never run on administrative competence; it had functioned because a living god sat beneath the world, calculating every stress line before the stone could snap.
Now, that hum was dead.
