Conquerors could overrun a city’s walls, could kill every living soul within it, fill every estate and every house and every store with its own people, yet rule nothing but the city’s thin surface, the skin of the present, and would one day be brought down by the spirits below, until they themselves were but one momentary layer among many. This is an enemy we can never defeat, Duiker believed. Yet history tells the stories of those who would challenge that enemy, again and again. Perhaps victory is not achieved by overcoming that enemy, but by joining it, becoming one with it. The Empress has
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