Their ancestor did not act alone.
He may have negotiated the sealing rather than commanded it, because the carvings show exchange rather than decree and depict sacrifice rather than conquest.
“He gave something,” Axel says quietly as he studies the etched posture of his ancestor kneeling rather than standing tall.
“Yes,” I answer, because the script beneath the image references blood bound to land and lineage thinned to anchor structure.
He may have sacrificed something essential to secure the first seal, because the next carving shows the Alpha line diminishing in symbolic stature while the red bloodline disperses outward across territories.
The betrayal that followed may have been fear compounded by generations who forgot the negotiation and remembered only the flames, because later
