Part One
Preface
In the beginning there is the plain between the rivers, a wet cradle of black soil and slow water where humanity first decides to stop wandering. Here, in the heat and shimmer of the southern delta, villages cling to the canals like barnacles on a living spine. The people are fixed in place, bound not by chains but by irrigation gates, harvest cycles, and the quiet tyranny of water. They rise with the sun, sleep with the dust, and spend their days coaxing life from mud, reeds, and the stubborn will of the earth.
Above them, the City watches. Its walls rise from bitumen and brick, its towers glint with the pride of a people who believe they have mastered nature’s divinity. The King sits at its center, as a descendant of a god and as the custodian of systems: the keeper of canals, the arbiter of grain, the voice that speaks for the temple and the army alike. His power flows outward along the same channels that carry the water, reaching every cottage, every borough, every field.
