See! See! See! - Traditions | Power Metal Saga - Chapter 1

[Fragment from The Last Years of the Old Council] For a thousand years, the Thirty Thousand had been raised beneath the same burden. They trained before dawn, studied after exhaustion, learned command before comfort, restraint before pride, and duty before desire. Their sons and daughters were never guaranteed a place among them. Strength was tested, intelligence was tested, judgment was tested, discipline was tested, and compassion was tested hardest of all. Many failed. Those who remained were not taught that they deserved to rule, but that if they ruled, they owed more than everyone else. Then came the Orator. He had arrived in the kingdom as an immigrant years before. He had worked beneath its laws, lived under its protection, and learned exactly where resentment could be found. He did not begin with lies. He pointed at the council seats, at the tax exemptions, at Eir taking their wounded first, at the commanders whose names belonged to the same tradition that had ruled for centuries. Then he asked the crowd to look again, and again, and again. See. See. See. Soon thousands stood behind him. They did not storm the Council with rifles. They came with petitions, banners, chants, and enough bodies that the old doors could no longer remain closed. The guards did not fire. The Thirty Thousand had spent generations learning how to kill enemies, but no academy had ever taught them how to slaughter the people they had sworn to protect. So the doors opened. The Orator walked between men whose fathers had died for the very people cheering outside. He entered the chamber as a petitioner and left it with a chair. For the first time in a thousand years, someone sat among the rulers who had never carried the burden required to become one of them. And the beginning on the end was upon them yet none of them knew it. A chronicle forged in epic power metal. Book of Kastelholm