A lovely read! Here are my thoughts:
Things I really enjoyed!
- The foreshadowing worked extremely well here.
- The necessity of ritual in the character, even in this setting, helps establish the sense of lore behind the Eternal Dynasty
- The description of the worn, battle damaged suit at the start really helped sell my on the situation right from the get go.
Thoughts if you ever revise this:
- A division of 4 sections made the story feel a bit choppy. I think the second and third sections could have been fused into a single section. Reducing some of the battle (full credit, I enjoyed reading it) could allow for more space to build characters and dialogue if desired.
Nit-picks
- Creature was repeated a fair amount in the third-section. Additional words such as "monstrosity", " behemoth", etc could add some variation.
This was really an amazingly themed and written story. Thank you for writing it for this jam!