PROLOGUE: The Dark Lord's Vessel
Have the gates of death
Been opened unto thee?
Or hast thou seen
The doors of the shadow of death?
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― Job 38:17
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SHAY'TAN
The Infernal Palace rose out of the darkness, the place where the material world ended and primordial chaos began. It was an imposing structure, infinitely tall, long and wide, pitch black, shaped to provide a place for She-who-is and He-who's-not to meet. All around it swirled the Nothing; a howling, maddening storm of darkness, the Song of Destruction in its rawest, most terrifying form.
Shay'tan ran his paw down the enormous carved gate, a pair of double doors which dwarfed even him, a fire dragon. On that gate was carved the root system of the Eternal Tree. He traced a root all the way up into the branch which nurtured th
