Prologue

And it came to pass in days of iron and smoke. Upon the two hundred and forty-eighth day of the Second Great War, the sons of men made ready their arms against one another. The Empire and the Alliance.

Ancient rivals. sworn enemies. Contended for dominion over the mountain-filled continent. And the earth groaned beneath the weight of their marching hosts. For a thousand days had the First Great War endured, and though the Empire had claimed the crown of victory, it had been by a hair’s breadth. Now, in the Second, their banners swelled with pride, for it seemed that the day of triumph would come swiftly before the three hundredth sunrise.

But upon that night, when the sky was asleep and the air was still, the stars themselves fell upon the fortress called Berlin. Behold, from the heights of heaven descended shapes unknown to mortal ken—the Anomalies, whose forms were as nightmares clothed in flesh. Among which were Salad Mothers, beasts swarming like locust seas, ribs baring like the gates of hell, and from each tip of bone hung cords of living sinew. From her bowels she cast forth fiery spawn, and these rained upon the earth as burning meteors, bursting into the blade-fingered devourers of men.

And the watchmen upon the walls beheld their coming. Their hearts melted within them. The first strike was thunder, the second the breaking of mountains, and the third the scream of the dying world. The gates of Berlin were broken, the stones were scattered, and the streets were filled with the cries of the living flesh. For the Anomalies slew without word, without reason, and without end. Berlin was not the end, but the beginning.

On the two hundred and forty-ninth day, the slaughter spread to all corners of the Western Continent, for the Anomalies had come not as a host but as a flood, and there was no wall nor weapon that could hold them back. And on the two hundred and fiftieth day, mortal-kind was brought low, and the world was given into the hands of the abominations. For years the land lay desolate; the fields grew wild, the cities fell to ruin, and the bones of the slain whitened beneath the open sky.

Yet from the ashes arose one man—a Sternritter of a downtrodden name and unyielding heart. He gathered unto himself the remnants of humankind: the wanderers, the soldiers without masters, the children orphaned by the war. He forged them into the host of the Revolutionaries, and together they brandished a most powerful weapon upon the Anomalies—Atr. Through fire and blood they marched, and many fell, yet still they pressed onward, for the fate of man was bound to their courage.

And in the days that followed, the Third Great War was ended in victory. Then began the Cleansing, and for ten years the Anomalies were hunted without mercy, until none remained. Thus wrought the Age of Man.