The Dominion was the age of ambition made stone. The Lloviane and Varsosters forged the great coalition and bound the continent with policy and pavement. The Evengadul laid the Green Roads like arteries, and aqueducts became the empire’s quiet miracle—water disciplined into obedience. Poets called it the Verdant Dominion because the land seemed to bloom under order; administrators called it simply “function.” But empires grow addicted to their own permanence. In the Dominion, safety began to feel normal, and normality is the seedbed of arrogance.