A Vision of Sacrifice

The desert sun, a relentless eye in the azure sky, beat down upon the palace walls, each ray a hammer blow against the city's weary stones. Within, however, a different kind of heat was building, a fever of the spirit that consumed King Chrisias. He sat in his private chambers, the thick tapestries depicting ancient hunts and glorious battles doing little to cool the air, or the turmoil within him. The air was heavy with the scent of incense, a constant fragrance he had cultivated, hoping it would carry his prayers more swiftly to the heavens.

He had been awake for days, it felt, though the passage of time had become a fluid, unreliable thing. His nights were a tapestry of fractured dreams, his days a blur of fasting and fervent study. The scrolls lay scattered around him, their vellum pages worn thin by the touch of his trembling fingers. He sought not wisdom, not counsel, but a sign, a confirmation of the path he felt God was laying before him.

Then, it came. Not in a whisper, but a thunderclap that shook the very foundations of his being, though no physical tremor disturbed the palace. It was a vision, vivid and undeniable. He saw himself standing on a precipice, the vastness of the kingdom spread out below like a crumpled map. Beside him, a figure cloaked in blinding light, its voice a chorus of a thousand angels. And the message, etched into his soul with fiery letters: *More. Give more.*