Year 127 – The First Dominion Era Begins
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The Expansion of Dawnward Bastion
After being granted the Blue Ring of Dawn by the golden-ringed giant known as Icarus, Zaxton stood on a precipice no other dwarf planet had ever reached. With his ring came not just authority—but gravity. His very presence distorted the land, pulling lesser cultivators into reverent orbit.
At his command, the Bastion expanded, rising from quiet meadows into an obsidian fortress carved with astral glyphs. Spirit forges bellowed smoke laced with starfire. Celestial irrigation channels carried liquid qi into flowering terraces. The Bastion became a sovereign body—his first moon, bound not by mass but by will.
His followers, too, took new names and purpose:
Rin, now Solaris the Ember Crowned, formed the Hall of Planet-Forged Flame—a place where beast and cultivator were fused through the crucible of orbit law.
Jin, now Vortigon of the Storm Orbit, molded the Graviton Guard, a martial division whose every step crushed stone and defied mass.
They called him The Dwarf Sun—a mockery of gas giants made into prophecy. Lesser dwarf planets, seekers, and vagabonds came, kneeling not in fear but in awe.
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The Distress Call from the Third Realm
Then, on the 43rd month, the Gate trembled.
A sky-sealed message, torn and bleeding at the edges, cracked open before Zaxton. It read like a death rattle:
> "Mt. Fai burns.
Eight moons have turned.
They say you are never to return.
Your seat is empty, and they claim it.
But we remember. We call you now, Master.
Please… bring the night."
Zaxton did not speak. He did not blink.
He merely turned, raised a single hand—and ripped open the veil between Realms.
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The Return of Dominion and Judgment
He descended from the heavens like a judgment deferred.
From a gate torn high above Mt. Fai, a storm of stars and planetary pressure cracked the sky. The people looked up—not at hope, but at a falling apocalypse.
Zaxton returned, cloaked in voidsteel, the Blue Ring orbiting him with impossible slowness. His gaze alone silenced cities. The skies darkened with his presence.
The Eight Moons who had rebelled stood atop their stolen thrones, flanked by loyal armies. One raised his hand to speak.
Zaxton severed it before words were formed. Not with a blade—but with sheer gravity. The air screamed.
> "You made your choice," he said. "Now you will feel it."
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The Massacre of the Eight
He moved through the battlefield like a black comet—silent and cataclysmic.
Vastryl of Iron Cry was reduced to dust before he ever drew a weapon. A pulse of Zaxton's blue ring shattered his body like brittle bark. His pieces never hit the ground—they were pulled into orbit and left to float, a warning.
Tal'Aru, the Hollow Veil, tried to escape through a mirror gate. Zaxton grabbed the reflection and ripped it inside out. Her scream echoed through the minds of a thousand mortals.
Sorun, Moon of Marrow—he begged for clemency.
Zaxton boiled the marrow inside his bones first.
There were no battles. No speeches. Only endings.
By dusk, eight moons had fallen, and more than twenty thousand followers were erased from existence. Some were buried beneath collapsing mountains. Others imploded into craters, their cores caving under the pressure of planetary law.
The Third Realm wept.
And Zaxton stood, alone atop the burning husk of Mt. Fai.
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The Remaking of the Third Realm
What rose from the ashes was not the old order reborn—it was an empire rebranded in fire and orbital truth.
The Celestial Ring Assembly replaced the broken Moon Conclave. No longer would titles be given by heritage or whim. Each new Moon would be forged, not chosen.
He raised Yren of Crimson Ice, who had stood beside him in the Fourth Realm, now called the Moon of Execution's Mercy.
He lifted Malchior the Twin-Sung, once a ringless vagabond, now the Moon of Balanced Flame.
And Orrin the Pale Path, beast-tamer and tactician, was now Moon of Hollow Roots, sworn in blood and silence.
These Moons bore new marks—binding glyphs etched by Zaxton himself, which could not be removed, only shattered with the bearer's death.
He decreed before the Realm:
> "There is no forgiveness for betrayal.
Only burial.
From this moment on, your orbit is mine."
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Final Word
He turned, walking into the Gate once more, leaving behind a Third Realm that would never forget what it meant to betray a star.
And from the void, they whispered a new name:
> The Ring-Breaker. The Dwarf Sun.
The One Moon Who Burns the Others.
Blood in Orbit, Silence in the Sky
Year 159 – The Rise of the Realm Master and the Ring of Mourning
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The Crown of Planets
When Zaxton returned to the Fourth Realm, he did so wreathed in the smoke of rebellion and the silence of victory.
His conquest in the Third Realm—an entire moonscape reshaped by sheer wrath—echoed across cosmic channels. Ringed Planets held council. Dwarf Planets gathered and whispered. Even some Gas Giants, long distant and indifferent, paused.
He did not have a title before.
Now they gave him one:
Realm Master.
The First of the Orbitless.
The Only Dwarf Planet to Be Feared by Gas.
He returned to Dawnward Bastion, now a bustling satellite city of loyal moons and fledgling planets. Countless cultivators rotated around his gravity—a sovereign system.
But Zaxton had seen too much. Lost too much.
He said nothing.
And so, he vanished.
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The 32-Year Silence
He entered seclusion beneath the Bastion's core—deep within the Hall of Resonant Orbit, where silence weighed heavier than time.
Thirty-two years passed.
The Realm evolved.
Sects rose, wars burned, alliances forged and broke. Many believed Zaxton had died or ascended. The title "Realm Master" became ceremonial to some, heretical to others.
And then, on the dawn of the 33rd year, the skies tore open.
Zaxton emerged.
He was no longer what he had been.
Where once orbited a single Blue Ring, now orbited two, layered and interlocked—double rings, a twin lunar weave of unimaginable density. His core sang with an aura that mimicked Gas Giants, yet without their size. He was still classified as a Ringed Planet—but no one dared say "dwarf" again.
Another miracle.
But the sky had gone dark in his absence.
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The Shattering Revelation
Awaiting him was horror.
A message, delivered by a battered envoy from the far orbit colonies:
> "Your Bastion was attacked… while you slept.
The Gas Giant Empire of Cynosure descended.
They feared your influence.
They came like storms.
Your people… your students… were taken.
And your son…"
Jin.
His firstborn.
The Vortigon.
The Guardian of Orbit.
The one who never left the gate.
> "They hung him in the orbit of their capital.
A message… to you."
The words burned into Zaxton's mind like black fire.
He did not speak. He did not scream.
Instead, he extended both arms.
The two Blue Rings that orbited him—stable, proud—began to rotate violently, spiraling against one another in a friction of grief and rage. The sky trembled. The earth beneath Bastion cracked.
He compressed them.
What should not have been possible—what violated planetary law—he made real.
The twin blue rings shattered, shattering the sound barrier itself, and condensed into one.
It was not blue.
It was a deep, blood-red ring, forged from sorrow and vengeance, orbiting tighter, heavier, hotter than any known celestial mark.
The sky wept.
His followers fell to their knees.
The stars dimmed.
He had created something new.
A ring that had no color in the known spectrum.
A Mourning Ring.
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The Final Words of the Realm Master
He turned his gaze toward the north, where the territory of Cynosure began its slow, smug orbit across the high plane.
He did not issue a declaration. He did not send a message.
He only said:
> "I am coming."
Then he vanished, as he always did.
But now the entire Fourth Realm shivered, for they knew—
> This was not the vengeance of a father.
This was the retribution of a planetary god.