Behind the Scenes: Prologue and Part One
A creator’s note on silence, memory, and the first cracks in Dominion’s control.
When I wrote the prologue of Echoes from Dominion: Rifted, I wanted the reader to feel the weight of a world that had become too controlled to breathe freely.
Veridion Prime is efficient, polished, and outwardly impressive. Beneath that perfection is something colder.
The first disruption had to be small, but impossible to ignore. Drone Patrol Beta does not explode in dramatic fashion. It simply vanishes.
The image of the three interlocked rings was meant to feel like a signal from somewhere buried, something Dominion believed had already been erased.
The council chamber scene shows how power responds when control is challenged. Drae dismisses the event as static because people in power often rename danger until it sounds harmless.
Axchael’s appearance near the end of the prologue shifts the story into a more intimate register. Until then, we are watching Dominion react. With Axchael, we begin watching someone notice.
The beginning of Rifted is about the moment before awakening: a vanished drone, a forbidden symbol, a name that should have stayed buried, and a man waking with a memory he was never meant to recover.