Calvaris, the First Flame

Calvaris is the capital of New Antioch, the city where the Sacred Flame was first raised from Matra’s hearth into empire. It is called the First Flame, for here the covenant of service was declared, the Triumvirate first sworn, and the founding fires kindled that still burn in the great temple at the city’s heart.

The city rises upon a series of broad terraces cut into stone hills, each walled and fortified so that Calvaris appears as a fortress in tiers. At its summit stands the Hall of the Triumvirate, where council, command, and priesthood contend beneath a single roof, and where the flame burns before them as witness. Beside it towers the Grand Temple of the Flame, its colonnades opening onto a vast brazier said to hold fire that has not gone out since Antioch’s founding. Pilgrims come from across the provinces to see its glow.

The streets of Calvaris are wide and ordered, designed not for beauty but for the movement of legions and the gathering of citizens. Statues line the avenues, not of kings or generals, but of common citizens raised for their service: the mason who set the keystone of an aqueduct, the midwife who endured plague, the soldier who held a broken line. Each statue is inscribed with name, service, and honor, so that memory is carried in stone as well as in flame.

Markets fill the lower terraces, their stalls busy with grain, stone, timber, and iron carried in from the provinces. Inns and taverns bear steady hearths where no fire is allowed to die. The air is filled with the sound of drill from barracks, the chanting of priests at shrines, and the toll of bells that mark the hours of work and worship alike.

Festivals transform the city into a sea of light. During the Festival of Remembrance, every terrace glows with lamps, and the rolls of the dead are read until dawn. At the Festival of the Oathfire, citizens from across the empire ascend the terraces in solemn procession, bearing unlit torches. At the temple brazier they are kindled, and with flame in hand the new citizens speak their vows and descend again into the city as voices admitted to Antioch’s covenant.

Calvaris is both fortress and sanctuary, both temple and court. Its walls are thick, its towers numerous, but its strength lies not in stone alone. It is the city where sacrifice is memory, where service is law, and where Matra’s hearthfire became empire. To walk its terraces is to feel the weight of endurance itself, and to leave its gates is to carry the certainty that Antioch will stand so long as Calvaris burns.