The first warning shuddered through His faithful in the form of a skipped heartbeat, a surge of adrenaline, and a tang of bloodlust.

The second warning came as a heavy tremor rolling through the ground, as Sartan, the Malevolent, stood aloft in the heavens and made the sky itself seem lesser by His presence. His vast silhouette loomed against the violent backdrop of storm-touched heavens, every scar upon His frame thrown into stark relief. Golden fire burned where His eyes fell, and that gaze passed over the whole of mortal existence with merciless precision, weighing each city, and each soul, in silence.

His Brother, He declared, had set mortals upon a path to claim wisdom from memories not their own. Other Gods might sit in idleness and permit such theft without answer. He would not.

"There is weight to memory. A cost that must be paid for knowledge." His voice boomed for all to hear. Nothing of value came freely within the lands of His dominion. Without struggle, therefore, there could be no strength. Slashing at the air with His powerful hands, the Lord of Evil set a challenge to all beneath His eye: that those who wished to claim the memory of Shaitan would earn it through hardship, or they would break in sight of all.

Creation shrieked and split wide, forced to yield beneath His command. Hellfire burst from the wound in sparking torrents, and smoke followed in thick, foul coils that spread across the horizon. Before the gates of Ashtan, Mhaldor, and Cyrene, the first portals tore themselves into being. Stone cracked across the Sunderlands. Waters along the Eastern Shore churned and boiled. In the Eastern Ithmia, trunks twisted and groaned while infernal gateways ripped through root and soil alike. The world bent under the force of His will, and from every fresh rent came the promise of war.

For one long moment He remained above it all, an executioner poised over the block. Then His form began to fade, withdrawing from the firmament and leaving behind neither peace nor reprieve. In His wake, the hosts of the Inferno came screaming into the world.

No land stood beyond reach. Daemonic and demonic hordes pressed without pause, their advance grinding against every defence raised to meet them. Before the gates of Ashtan, Archon Sohl raised a cry of defiance that rang clear across the clash, yet the answering tide swelled in number and force, bearing down with unrelenting pressure. Beyond Sapience, cries went up from Vertan and Vostroya, from the depths of Anzari-tarin, and across the realm of the Kelstaad plains on Bjarndyr.

Fortress arcanum and berserker rage met daemonic flame and gnashing jaw. Scores of forsaken fell beneath the earth as the more stable Tsol of War visited ruin upon the invaders. House Tsez mages wove spell and storm from their high towers. And horns blared across the prairies and fields of the Kelstaad realm, the ferocity of the tash'la quads unmatched in their devastation even as potentials perished in failed metamorphosis.

On Achaea, Eleusians proved the strength of the wilds, felling scores of daemons and demons before encountering a bulbous, swollen baalzadeen. As battle rampaged across the other five cities, Eleusis cut down their daemonic foe and were first to close the rift plaguing their home. Death followed in droves for adventurer and invader in equal measure. Even Dreadlord Zarkuun took to the field with unfettered glee, cutting through the hordes with brutal momentum. His hands found skull and spine, crushing, tearing, and casting bodies aside as blood ran thick in his shadow.

Thousands of daemonic worms prepared to launch a brutal attack upon the tash'la, the earth riving open until an eerie quiet descended upon their realm. Before another blow could land, the hungering host reeled beneath the silence that in its deafening pressure promised devastation untold. And fled. Vertan, too, triumphed in a bombardment of meteoric magic, and the last of the rampaging throng beneath Anzari-tarin found death in the jaws of the shadow dragon.

Only Mhaldor's rift remained aflame upon the mainland, until the gargantuan efforts of Sir Antoninus Nithilar saw to its closing, felling the grotesque baalzadeen almost entirely on his own.

When at last the final daemon crumbled under the combined weight of Sapience, a black morass rolled across the heavens. Sartan, the Malevolent, revealed Himself once more, His presence pressing down upon the world with crushing force and forcing every living thing to bear witness.

Time stretched to an eternity as the typically-disappointed gaze of Evil swept over the lands. Fragmented memories of Sin and Vengeance, birthed from the violent reprisal unfolding, rained down upon the western Isle.

Then, at last, He inclined His head.

Dark radiance gathered about Him. Threads of necromantic energy drew free from the pitted surface of His body, long strands unravelling and coiling through the air in tightening arcs. They bent toward His hand, drawn inward with steady purpose. The web of essence collapsed in a single motion and vanished from sight, taken from the field and claimed for Uphimmin's Crown, where the memories of Elder Shaitan, the Dreadlord Keresis, and the Demon Queen Indrani, now awaited.

~ ~ ~

Unwilling to simply part with His memory, Sartan set a challenge to Sapience: to earn the right to witness it in blood and violence. Daemonic rifts gave way to an invasion of demon hordes from the Inferno and bulbous baalzadeens as their lieutenants. The combined efforts of Sapience drove back the demons, as did the denizens of Kelstaad, Vertan, Vostroya, and the Underrealm, and, satisfied, Sartan allowed mortality a glimpse of His memories of Shaitan. In the process, the remaining memory fragments of Keresis and Indrani coalesced, granting the Crown remembrance of Vengeance and Sin.

Penned by My hand on the 2nd of Lupar, in the year 1000 AF.