Ancient Texts
The Scroll of the Sacred Wars
Mercy alone could not hold the gate.
The Scroll of the Sacred Wars is preserved among the Ashen Scrolls of the First Sanctifiers. It records the terrible necessity of the priest-warriors: that there comes a moment when mercy alone cannot hold the gate, and the sacred must be defended by what the world mistakes for violence.
The First Sanctifiers are remembered not as soldiers, but as priests who carried swords beside their psalms. They did not love war. They loved what war was asked to protect. This is the sorrow at the heart of the Sacred Wars — that holiness sometimes requires the hand it wished could remain open.
“And the priests carried swords beside their psalms, for mercy alone could not hold the gate once the fallen remembered war.”