All Sent to Social Reform

As the weather turned colder, the chill wind that had blown all night failed to disperse the smoke and scattered dust hanging over Twilight Fortress. In the dawn's first light, the ancient walls resembled a charred skeleton, its bent, twisted limbs stretching painfully toward the sky.

As Augustus walked up the Mayan pyramid-like stone steps of the Zak'ul temple, he could still vaguely recall its astonishing grandeur and beauty, like a miracle.

Countless graceful lines following the proportions of the Fibonacci spiral had been set into the temple's skyward stairways like the naturally formed veins of leaves. Countless translucent green crystals had been carved with exquisite craftsmanship into organic rock walls that seemed to breathe. Green phosphorescence, symbolizing life, filled every corner, as though one had entered a divine realm of light.

Standing atop the pointed crown of Twilight Fortress's majestic obelisk, Augustus looked in every direction and saw nothing but blackened earth riddled with enormous craters. There had once been a lush, brilliantly colored forest here, with a million strange plants and species that were all masterpieces painstakingly shaped by nature. Augustus could only catch glimpses of their poetic, auspicious names through the ancient Protoss language.

Several miles away, there had once been a crystal-clear river winding through Twilight Fortress before flowing into a beautiful teardrop-shaped lake. Now, the river had long since been vaporized by the high-energy railguns of Colossi and Warhounds, leaving only a long, filthy swamp where countless destroyed mechs lay buried.

Zak'ul's ancient ruins and its magnificent forbidden archives had been leveled to the ground. Their devastation was almost comparable to war-torn Aiur.

To humans, it would at most seem regrettable. Compared with the lives of soldiers, Augustus considered these ancient ruins utterly insignificant. But to the Protoss, this was an incomparably painful loss. Temples