A Shadow from beyond the edges of Time watches over mankind.
Since before he created Adam and Lilith from the dust of the ground, he watched over the realm that he had claimed for his people, the Angels.
Long after the founding of Heaven, a Masquerade was established- to ensure that Heaven and Hell could only interfere covertly in the affairs of mankind...
The Masquerade would last for an Aeon...
...and on July 17, 1924, it came to an end.
The sudden flash of golden light in the black void of space near the orbit of the Moon would have gone completely unnoticed- because it had been visible for a few seconds, far too brief to be recorded unless a telescope happened to be pointed in that direction at that exact moment...
Unnoticed, in fact, had it not been for what came through it...
It was a portal, opened to allow the passage of 36 massive objects from beyond the thin veil between worlds...
Angelic spaceships. Shining mechanical wonders of cold, celestial metal. Warships of the Celestial High Fleet.
They slowly flew past the Moon, casting long shadows on the barren expanses of the lunar maria...
As they approached the Earth's stratosphere, they spread out, each headed for a predetermined target on the planet below...
...
It was around 4:00 AM in Paris, France. The world had gathered in the Ville Lumiere for the 1924 Summer Olympics.
No other city had hosted the Olympics twice, and several countries attended for the first time. Nor that any of that seemed to matter when the vast golden spaceship, dwarfing anything humanity had ever managed to lift off the ground, appeared and started hovering high above the Tour Eiffel.
In the middle of the night, journalists from all over the globe who were covering the Olympics started sending frantic messages to their countries of origin, only to learn that equally amazed and terrified reports were coming in by telegraph and radio from major cities across the planet...
In hindsight, it was the dawn of the modern era of global communications, much to the amazement of Marconi himself. No other event in human history had been followed by so many millions of people throughout the world.
...
As reports kept arriving, something became terribly clear; the golden brilliance of some otherwordly metal, the awe inspired by the sheer technological superiority of whatever distant world they had come from, and especially the arcane, undecipherable glyphs carved on those titanic hulls- everything pointed to the ruins of the lost crystal city which had been discovered beneath the mountains of Antarctica in 1921.
The lost city being completely unknown to ancient or modern history, the public had settled on naming the city after its discoverer:
HITLEROPOLIS
Whatever civilization had built Hitleropolis numberless millennia before the most ancient pyramids and temples of the ancient world existed, they had returned.
...
In Europe alone, the spaceships were hovering above seven capitals: Paris, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Warsaw, Rome and Athens. Slightly further east, there were reports of sightings from Kiev and Constantinople.
In London, many expected the landing of the Martians and the other horrors envisioned by H. G. Wells (who was just as awestruck as everybody else).
In Rome, the court of Pope Pius XI was briefly thrown into chaos, before the Holy Father informed his subjects that he had secretly received advanced warning of the coming revelation. He then appeared in Saint Peter's Basilica- quickly filled by the panicked masses of the devout Romans- and exhorted all the faithful to pray for the safety of the world...
...
Across the ocean, more spaceships were seen above at least five North American cities: New York, Washington DC, Toronto, Vancouver and Los Angeles.
In Washington DC, President Thomas Marshall, against the exhortations of his security staff, refused to evacuate the White House.
As a spaceship appeared in the sky of New York City (circa 10:00 PM), where was quite the sudden ruckus in the small Long Island village of Shoreham, about 100 kilometers to the east, near Brookhaven. No one would have heard of this place were it not for Nikola Tesla's experimental wireless transmission station known as Wardenclyffe Tower- which had been demolished in 1917. What weren't demolished, however, were the underground tunnels and labs that had been built in secret to hide the advances of wireless technology from Tesla's competitors (especially Marconi, whom Tesla believed was copying him).
By the time the DHORKS was established in 1919, Wardenclyffe Tower had been largely forgotten. The property was eventually acquired by a front organization and the federal government took over, expanding the underground complex into a DHORKS compound. Doctor Tesla was naturally informed of the true nature of DHORKS, since no one was better qualified than him to help with the sort of exotic research they were conducting, combining insights from science and magic to "investigate supernatural threats to the United States".
After the discovery of Hitleropolis in 1921, the labs of Wardenclyffe would house highly advanced artifacts uncovered in Antarctica. Every government that had managed to come into possession of such artifacts was attempting to reverse-enginner them. Such research was going absolutely nowhere; even within DHORKS magitech was purely theoretical, and deriving a working theory from the study of artifacts would have been a dubious process even if they were intact- as opposed to being ancient relics.
In 1923, DHORKS agents came into contact with both Angels and Demons; they learned of the imminent end of the Masquerade and started to plan accordingly...
As the news arrived that the spaceship was above New York, fantastically advanced devices were loaded onto a zeppellin, virtually a flying lab, tasked with gathering as much data as possible by getting as close to the damn thing as possible. Doctor Tesla would naturally stay behind (the mission being too dangerous) but he would be in contact with the team on board at all times via radio.
Meanwhile, events unfolded all around the world, too fast and in too many places for any single person to follow...
...
To the south, spaceships were hovering above Havana and Mexico City. In the latter, the ship stood ominously above the Metropolitan Cathedral, where the sacred precinct of the Aztec Templo Major had once been.
In Brazil, another spacecraft was seen above the peak of the Corcovado mountain, overlooking Rio de Janeiro. It would the southermost sighting in the whole world.
...
One third of all the reports arrived from the vast colonial domains across Africa and Asia, accompanied everywhere by grandiose displays of religious fervor by the followers of multiple faiths, convinced as they were of the imminent return of some prophet or god.
From the French colonies came news of disorders in the cities of Dakar in French West Africa and Saigon in French Indochina.
Likewise, Dutch authorities faced troubles in Jakarta, and American authorities in Manila.
By far the greatest number of such accounts came from the world-spanning British Empire; Lagos in Nigeria, Jerusalem in British Palestine, Singapore and Hong Kong in the Far East and four major cities in India alone: Delhi, Karachi, Mumbai and Calcutta.
Another spacecraft hovered above Teheran, the capital of Persia.
In the Far East, the two greatest cities of war-torn China were also visited: Beijing and Shanghai.
Seoul was a unique case, located as it were in a country where the despised colonial oppressors were neither European nor American...
...but nowhere was the sight of the golden spacecraft as uncanny as in the devastated city of Tokyo...
…
Ten months prior, when the sun rose on September 1, 1923, metropolitan Tokyo was home to over two million people.
At two minutes to noon, the ground began to shake violently- it did not stop shaking for four minutes.
With hundreds of buildings already collapsed, the tsunami that followed completely laid waste to Yokohama...
...and the devastation of nearby Tokyo had just begun.
A disaster on a scale unheard of since the Genroku Earthquake of 1703. It would be called the Great Kanto Earthquake.
Within minutes of the first seismic wave, hundreds of fires had started all over a city mostly made of wood and rice paper. Water mains and pipes were all broken- nothing would stop the flames from spreading and engulfing all of Tokyo.
By a sheer stroke of luck, the earthquake struck right after a Summer typhoon had passed. If a butterfly in the Amazon had caused the weather to be different that day, the strong winds coming into Tokyo Bay would have doubtlessly caused the fires to spread much more rapidly, creating firestorms that would have turned the whole city into one "sea of fire" (zenshi hi no umi).
When the damage to the city was assessed, three days and hundreds of aftershocks later, it resulted that the the flames had not spread nearly as much as expected, and tens of thousands of people were alive because of it.
Accounts differ as to how this was even possible. Following the chaos of the earthquake and the panicked flight of hundreds of thousands of people from the city, there would be eyewitnesses claiming that the spread of the fires was stopped by a sudden, miraculous freezing wind sent by the kami; a kami-kaze...
...Some even claimed to have seen the kami, in the shape of a great white and blue peacock...
…
The city was several months into the post-earthquake reconstruction when the spaceship arrived.
It is hard to grasp just how deeply the national consciousness of Japan, already shaken by catastrophe, had been affected by the revelation.
There was an awareness- deeply felt, ineffable- that history was repeating itself...
...that after seventy years another Commodore Perry had arrived on a ship from a more advanced civilization...
...with threats of war and the unspoken promise that Japan would never be the same again...
…
Across the Sea of Japan, the same was taking place in Vladivostok...
...and over 9000 kilometres to the west, at the other end of the longest railway line in the world, was Moscow.
…
The seventeenth of July (which was the fourth of July in the Julian calendar of Russia) was a day of fasting and repentance for the people of the Russian Empire...
...the Feast of the Royal Martyrs.
On that day in 1918, the Tzar's wife Tzarina Alexandra and her five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei were murdered by the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg.
At the end of the Russian Civil War, they were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church. The restored Tzarist regime made the Feast of the Royal Martyrs the most glorious celebration of what amounted to a modern imperial cult...
...the Tzar was the Anointed of God, destined to save his people from the red tide of communism...
In 1920 the Tzar was brutally murdered in mysterious circumstances, in his own palace, on the eve of the Feast of All Saints...
The Russian people's devotion to the Holy Tzar only increased under the rule of his brother, Tzar Mikhail, despite (or as a reaction against) his efforts to reform the Empire.
…
In the early morning of July 17, 1924, around 6:00 AM, as the celebrations were about to begin in Moscow...
...the sky above the Kremlin turned dark, suddenly filled by one immense, shadowy veil of darkness.
The veil only grew bigger as the thing descended, shrouded in glory and terror...
...and the vast emptiness was only pierced by lightning, by flashes of pale, azure light revealing the dark shapes of colossal arches and ramparts and walls in the blackened sky...
A spaceship vastly bigger than the others- leading them. A flying Citadel.
Thunderbolts struck the high towers of the Kremlin again and again, their ghastly light reflected by the Moskva River below...
...and the masses of Moscow, driven by some glorious madness, by the expectation of the Apocalypse itself, filled the Red Square, oblivious to the clear danger...
...
Tzar Mikhail, having received the news over in the capital, departed Saint Petersburg for Moscow on a special train; he was accompanied by a select few including his wife Tzarina Natalia and his 'spiritual counselor', the Georgian bishop Father Dzhugashvili. They knew Mikhail had been warned of the coming revelation, but still, the sudden journey from the "new" capital of Peter the Great back to the ancient seat of the Empire where it began on the fateful day Ivan IV- the Terrible- crowned himself Tzar, was all too clearly an omen of things to come...
They arrived in the evening and were escorted into the Kremlin. The spaceship hovered right overhead, and for hours there had been no sign that the celestial visitors, whoever they might be, had any intention to communicate. And then, suddenly, they appeared...
Exorcists, flying down in their glimmering armors, their faces covered by ghastly horned helmets...
...except for the one leading them...
...a man with a vast black scar oh his grey-white face, wearing a resplendent golden crown.
Next to him flew a woman, gloriously arrayed like the commander of the Lord's armies...
They hovered high above the ramparts of the Kremlin, overlooking the Red Square below.
Tzar Mikhail, with Natalia and Father Dzhugashvili, went up the stairs of the ancient fortress walls to try and speak with the Angels...
...who landed on the red stone walls of the Kremlin to meet them.
…
The scarred man seemed almost to smile seeing them.
They froze in terror as they recognized him...
"B- Brother!?"
"Mikhail," A voice as grave and cold as the Russian winter replied, "you have done well in my absence. Rest assured that I have been sent to relieve you of the weight of the crown only because this Empire and all of Creation have entered the Last Days."
Mikhail turned to Father Dzhugashvili...
"Your Highnesses," he spoke in his Georgian-accented Russian, "great is the Providence of Our Lord, who has exalted and preserved you to lead us in your appointed time..."
"Ah, Iosif," Scar Nicholas replied, "good and faithful servant... I'm glad to see you've been as loyal to my brother as you were to me. Rest assured that your flock will need a Shepherd of Steel more than ever before..."
They all bowed to their once and future Tzar.
…
Scar Nicholas, his retinue of Exorcists by his side, appeared before the assembled people of Moscow...
...the Red Square could have as well been empty, so terrible was the eery silence that had fallen over everything, filled only by the rolling of thunder...
...and then, with an unnaturally booming, thunderous voice that could be heard in every corner, from the Resurrection Gate all the way to Saint Basil's Cathedral...
...he spoke:
"PEOPLE OF ALL RUSSIAS!
The Lord your God the Authority has sent me back to you, like He once delivered me from the hands of His enemies.
Like this Empire once stood on the precipice of Revolution, so on this day the whole world stands on the precipice of the End Times...
For a vastly GREATER, incomparably more EVIL Revolution is upon us!
At long last, the armies of the Arch-Rebel are about to be set loose upon the face of the Earth, to fight on the plain of Armageddon against the Authority and His Angels!
The rest of mankind does not stand a chance against the forces of Hell; for this degenerate world has long been corrupted by the Satanic taint of modernity and godlessness spread with devilish cunning by Jews and Communists...
But the Authority, in His mercy, has elected a chosen nation, a holy people, to guide the rest of the world to victory in the coming battle...
YOU ARE THAT HOLY NATION!
You are the Light of the World that the Bolsheviks could not snuff out...
It is on this day that the prophecy of Philotheus finally comes to pass- two Romes have fallen, the third stands and there will be no fourth!
Today this Holy Empire becomes an Everlasting Kingdom...
...And all nations that will stand in its way SHALL FALL!"
The jubilant crowd of the faithful fell in adoration of their Tzar-Redeemer!
The Patriarch of Moscow leading them, they started chanting confused hyms and titles in the colossal mayhem...
"Chelovek Sud'by!"
"Spasitel' Mira!"
"Tsar' Vselennoy!"
Flying in formation, the other Exorcists rose in the air..
...Lute drew her silver sword, held it high above her head and recited praises of the Authority, echoed by the raucorous, Angelic voices of her minions...
"ALL HAIL THE AUTHORITY!"
"AUTHORITY!"
"ALL HAIL THE AUTHORITY!"
"AUTHORITY!"
"ALL HAIL THE AUTHORITY!"
"EMPEROR OF THE UNIVERSE!"
Scar Nicholas, the most evil enemy of the Russian people, smiled ...
"It's good to be back..."
...
Twenty-four hours after they first arrived, all the spaceships- all but one- left the cities of the Earth and converged on a predetermined orbit, where they flew in formation...
...circling constantly around the planet, a Damoclean sword hanging over mankind...
Only the Citadel over Moscow remained- the city below now cast in perpetual darkness- to serve as a constant reminder...
...that a Shadow from beyond the edges of Time watches over mankind.
In the land of Russia, where the shadows lie.