In the spring of 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal formally declared the Sublime Council a criminal organization. The charges included bioterrorism, warmongering, and mass torture, and arrest warrants were issued for its philosopher-generals. The ruling came only after years of evidentiary accumulation and political deadlock: the post-apocalyptic world had long lacked both the institutional stability and the international consensus necessary to confront Aldira openly, and earlier efforts had stalled amid uncertainty, fear, and competing crises. By this point, however, more than a quarter of a century had passed since the initial collapse, and global institutions had regained sufficient stability to focus on Aldira directly.

  Around the same time, the Federated States—still the world’s preeminent power—issued an ultimatum to Aldira, accompanied by a nearly 200-page report. The document accused Aldira of systemic human rights violations, described it as “totalitarian,” portrayed it as “barbaric,” branded it a “bandit state,” and ultimately demanded that it either dissolve itself or undergo “democratic transformation,” voluntarily or by force, within a matter of days.

  Aldira did not respond.

  In response, an international coalition was assembled under the leadership of the Federated States, operating with the sponsorship and logistical framework of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. After completing final operational preparations, the FS-led coalition formally declared war on Aldira, citing the rejected ultimatum as its casus belli. This marked the beginning of what would later be called the “War of Peace.”

  Just one day later, nearly half of Aldira’s already modest navy was intercepted and destroyed in the Battle of the Korea Strait—the conflict’s first direct engagement. Shortly afterward, Ordostok came under sustained bombardment. Once maritime control had been secured, coalition ground forces—drawn from dozens of countries, primarily the Federated States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Australia—began coordinated landings along the southern coasts of Korea, commencing approximately one week later.

  Few Aldiran units met them directly. Instead, the coastal regions lay largely empty, pre-fortified with barricades, obstacles, and dense minefields. This made the advance slow and punishing: even small stretches of terrain could require days to clear, and progress came at a constant cost.

  Heavy air raids over Aldiran territory followed. The Order’s air force was limited in size and capacity, so its defense relied chiefly on ground-based anti-aircraft systems. Under the Order’s direction, extensive shelter networks had already been constructed in every major city and even in small towns, enabling civilians to retreat underground during crises. With the outbreak of war, a significant portion of the Aldiran population withdrew into these shelters.

  This urgency was heightened by the coalition’s declaration that “not a single Aldiran would remain” until the so-called “Supreme Order” surrendered unconditionally. In practice, this translated into a campaign in which the distinction between civilian and combatant was increasingly disregarded, and no restraint was shown in targeting populated areas.

  Nova was present on the battlefield as well, though on a smaller scale than in the wider world. The Order conducted operations even under severe weather conditions, exploiting reduced visibility to deploy aerial supply drops disguised as ordinary cargo—some of which carried the parasite—over coalition positions. Within weeks, infected soldiers began displaying signs of disruption: refusal of orders, desertion toward Aldiran lines, and, in extreme cases, suicide—often preceded by lethal violence against others.

  In response, the coalition instituted a strict quarantine regime similar to those already applied elsewhere. Any deviation from established behavioral norms—any hint of the officially catalogued symptoms—was treated as grounds for immediate suspicion. Affected individuals were either executed or isolated in quarantine facilities, where contact was restricted to personnel in full protective equipment. Survivors were eventually repatriated under severe conditions that sharply limited their exposure to the outside world.

  After two months without decisive progress along the front, coalition forces—despite enduring sudden raids and attritional losses—reached the outskirts of Soryul (Seoul). There, they encountered open urban combat with the Aldiran garrison. Anticipating the assault, Aldiran units had prepared layered ambush positions throughout the city. As coalition forces advanced, they were encircled and engaged from reinforced concrete emplacements on multiple axes.

  Though the Aldiran defenders were not annihilated outright, they were gradually forced back by the coalition’s numerical and technological superiority, and the city eventually fell. Determined to prevent the Order’s forces from regrouping, the coalition pressed north without pause. In just four days—despite sustaining heavy casualties—they advanced on Pyorang (Pyongyang), accepting losses without hesitation.

  When Pyorang fell, reduced largely to ruins, the Aldiran high command ordered a full withdrawal from the Korean front. All remaining forces retreated into the steep, mountainous regions of northern Korea near the Yalu River, where they established a fortified defensive line and prepared to wait out the winter. Northern Korea was abandoned under a scorched-earth policy, while troops redeployed rapidly to the high ground.

  Coalition forces pursued them, and by this stage the entire Korean Peninsula—save for the northern mountain zone—was under occupation. However, the harsh terrain once again stalled the advance, and the front settled into a static configuration reminiscent of the war’s earliest phase. It was at this point that China and Japan formally entered the conflict.

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  China, viewing the war as an opportunity to expand its regional influence and reclaim Manchuria, launched an offensive from the southwest. The advance progressed rapidly. Chinese mechanized and infantry units crossed into Aldiran territory and pushed deep inland, encountering little resistance beyond harsh terrain, damaged infrastructure, and sporadic skirmishes. To Chinese command, the absence of sustained opposition suggested that Aldira’s remaining forces were exhausted, fragmented, or withdrawing north in disarray.

  This absence was deliberate. Aldira avoided direct confrontation with numerically superior forces, instead employing a strategy historically used by steppe and frontier powers against China itself: withdrawal, observation, and delayed encirclement. Aldiran units dispersed into the forests and mountains of Manchuria, abandoning settlements while maintaining constant surveillance. As Chinese columns advanced, their formations stretched, supply lines lengthened, and coordination between units weakened, especially as terrain and weather limited mobility and air support.

  When Chinese forces entered the open plains of central Manchuria—ringed by forested high ground—the Aldiran response was swift. Coordinated attacks severed supply routes, disrupted communications, and struck command elements. Mobile units emerged from concealed positions and closed the perimeter from multiple directions. Within the day, Chinese formations were encircled and rendered combat-ineffective. What had appeared to be an effortless advance ended in a sudden collapse.

  Following this victory, Aldiran forces advanced toward Beijing with a large, consolidated army. The city had long been strategically vulnerable, its proximity to the frontier making it both symbolically and militarily exposed. Aldiran command regarded Beijing as a node of administrative continuity, ideological reproduction, and logistical coordination—an urban organism whose dismantling would paralyze resistance far beyond the battlefield.

  Upon securing the city, Aldiran units executed senior administrators, security officials, and party functionaries identified through seized records and prewar intelligence. What followed was not an uncontrolled riot but a structured sack, conducted according to operational directives. Approximately 20 percent of the city’s built environment was deliberately destroyed. Government ministries, municipal headquarters, military command centers, and police facilities were systematically razed. Communications infrastructure and transport hubs were damaged sufficiently to disrupt coordination without rendering the city entirely uninhabitable. Industrial districts were selectively burned, while cultural institutions were looted or dismantled. Hospitals were not targeted outright, but many were left understaffed or structurally compromised as personnel fled or were detained. Most residential districts remained standing, though scarred by sporadic fires, shelling, and shrapnel damage. Essential utilities—electricity, water, and gas—continued to function intermittently, often at reduced capacity, ensuring survival without recovery.

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  The violence against the civilian population followed the same logic. Approximately 200,000 people were executed, primarily through firing squads at designated killing sites on the outskirts of the city. This was an ideological extermination. Victims were shot, bodies left where they fell, and records meticulously kept. It was the most extreme manifestation of anti-Chinese sentiment in Aldira’s history, intended to erase enemy morale.

  Despite the scale of destruction, Aldiran forces did not attempt to hold the city. Having achieved their objectives, they withdrew back toward the mainland. Foreign embassies—initially stormed and closed—were later reestablished in temporary or improvised facilities, though much of the city remained damaged and required extensive reconstruction. From that point onward, the front stabilized. China launched no further offensives, restrained by the fear that another advance would invite a catastrophe even more severe. Thus, the Aldiran objective was achieved.

  During this period, relations with the neighboring Siberian Commune steadily deteriorated. Communities infected with Nova began to appear in several of the Commune’s urban centers, triggering unrest, labor stoppages, and sporadic violence. Public condemnations were followed by formal measures: land borders were sealed, diplomatic channels suspended, and all communications severed.

  These actions had material consequences. The closures disrupted existing supply routes that Aldira had quietly relied upon. After several days of stalled negotiations, the Order concluded to an invasion. Rather than launching a prolonged campaign, Aldira opted for a limited incursion, deploying units recently withdrawn from Beijing to apply pressure along key transit corridors and resource nodes.

  The conquest was not aimed at territorial expansion. Aldiran command regarded the Siberian interior as strategically barren—vast, cold, and difficult to hold—but recognized its logistical value. Faced with the prospect of deeper penetration and sustained disruption, the Commune agreed to negotiations. The resulting Yenisey Treaty secured Aldira access to essential weapons stockpiles and food supplies that had become increasingly difficult to sustain under wartime conditions. With these objectives achieved, Aldiran forces withdrew and were redeployed to the Korean front.

  Regarding Japan’s situation: Japanese forces imposed a naval blockade and carried out landings on Hokkaido, which had been under Aldiran control for nearly a decade. Isolated and cut off from reinforcement, Aldiran units on the island were rapidly overwhelmed, and Hokkaido returned to Japanese control with comparatively limited losses. Japan formally reasserted sovereignty over the region.

  Subsequently, in a coordinated operation with the Federated States, Japanese forces seized the Kuril Islands, while American forces captured the Commander Islands through amphibious operations launched from Alaska. This maneuver placed Kamchatka under direct threat, although no landing was attempted. Seeking to consolidate its gains, Japan also landed troops on Sakhalin, bringing the island under Japanese control. In response, Aldiran forces demolished the bridge linking Sakhalin to Amur and subjected all attempted crossings to sustained artillery fire, successfully halting any further advance. After this point, Japan refrained from additional independent territorial occupations, concentrating instead on logistical, naval, and air support for the coalition.

  On the Korean front, a solid Aldiran defensive line initially prevented coalition forces from achieving a breakthrough. Over time, however, Aldiran units steadily exhausted their stocks of equipment and ammunition. By October, shortages had escalated into a full-scale matériel crisis, as the Aldiran economy proved incapable of sustaining a prolonged war of attrition. The Order approached effective bankruptcy. Although its industrial base was heavily oriented toward armaments and heavy industry, supplying an army of Aldira’s size—disproportionately large relative to its limited economic capacity—had always been a structural strain.

  That very size had long served as a deterrent, deliberately maintained to discourage external aggression. Under conditions of total war, however, it became a liability rather than an advantage.

  Civilian enthusiasm for the war remained strong, and large numbers of volunteers presented themselves for enlistment, only to be turned away for lack of weapons. This scarcity was the principal reason a general mobilization was never declared: manpower was abundant, but arms were not. Morale and discipline largely endured, yet economic realities imposed limits that ideology could not overcome.

  The total naval blockade of Aldiran ports—previously vital for food imports and fishing—combined with the loss of southern Korea and Hokkaido, which had supplied much of the Order’s agricultural output, forced Aldira to rely almost entirely on limited local farming and hunting. Winter conditions rendered both ineffective. Wildlife was scarce, harvests minimal, and supply reserves quickly depleted. A widespread famine followed, with deaths from starvation becoming increasingly common.

  These conditions precipitated a general military breakdown. Before any coherent winter counteroffensive could be mounted, the Korean front began to collapse. Rather than surrender or desert, many Aldiran soldiers resorted to suicidal assaults. As organized resistance eroded, coalition forces crossed the mountain ranges and advanced into the interior, occupying southern Manchuria. Soon thereafter, an advance toward Ordostok began. At that stage, geography, climate, and sporadic civilian interference were among the few remaining obstacles.

  When it became clear that the war had reached an irreversibly catastrophic impasse, the Aldiran elite prepared a final ritual. On the appointed night, thousands of members of the ruling class assembled in Undulon Square in the capital, the main square of Ordostok, which was used mainly for religious rallies and collective rituals. Each carried one of the last fully stocked weapons, in accordance with strict prescription. The square was draped in banners and emblems. Fires burned throughout the night, sending columns of black smoke into the sky, while from the central platform, the Sublime Council delivered an extended address affirming absolute devotion to the Black Book and demanding loyalty without exception.

  The address was delivered while coalition forces stood only kilometers from the city and the capital shook under continuous bombardment from air and sea. Yet among the assembled there was no visible despair, no appeal for mercy, no suggestion of retreat. Only rigid, unyielding devotion remained. Near the end of the ceremony, the multitude, acting with the explicit sanction of the Council, raised its weapons. At a predetermined signal, they fired inward. Within moments, thousands were dead. Immediately before the act, a single phrase rose in unison, calm and unadorned: “For the Order.” It was spoken without emphasis or exclamation. The scene was reminiscent of the suicide rituals attributed to the disciples of Hasan Sabbah after capture nearly a millennium earlier.

  That winter night, in which nearly the entire governing class extinguished itself, marked the de facto destruction of the Aldiran Order. The general population was not immediately harmed; however, because the elite—though less than one percent of the population—had carried nearly all critical administrative, military, and ideological functions, and because meaningful replacement was impossible, the state was left effectively headless.

  The event had taken place in urgency due to enemy air raids and had lasted only about half an hour. Because the square was in an open area, the airspace had to be secured during that brief interval. For this reason, specialized anti-aircraft units had been heavily deployed throughout that part of the city, and thus the sky was kept safe throughout the ritual.

  After the elite committed suicide, the units still capable of fighting continued to do so, because with the loss of the authorities communication had collapsed, and as a result they were unaware that the war had, in fact, already ended. This situation was sometimes likened to the final phase of World War II, when the Emperor Hirohito signed and issued the surrender declaration, yet in many regions certain Japanese soldiers refused to comply and continued fighting with unwavering devotion.

  Hours later, coalition troops entered Undulon Square, now transformed into a mass grave. The capital was occupied, and across all captured territories, systematic reprisals against Aldirans began, laying the foundations for mass genocide. That morning, with the dissolution of its remaining governing bodies—and amid widespread anti-Western unrest among Nova-carriers worldwide—the twenty-four-year-old People’s Supreme Order of Aldira had de jure collapsed.