Sage Raph rested his palm on one of the sealed boxes and breathed out slowly, the weight of decades settling across his shoulders. "The battles ahead will not be the sort historians write about with poetic admiration," he said in a calm, heavy voice. "They will be brutal. They will be terrifying. Entire regions may turn to ash before this is over. The Core of Dominion must remain one of our hidden trump cards. Revealed only when there is no other option left."
Lucas felt the gravity of those words. Sage Raph was not the kind of man to exaggerate. If he foresaw bloodshed on that scale, then the coming war was far worse than Lucas had imagined.
After a long moment Lucas asked, "Sage… do you intend to join the fighting yourself? With something like this at stake, I cannot imagine you sitting quietly on the sidelines."
