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The Gatewatch went looking for Bolas’s weakness and discovered a world engineered as his weapon.

Amonkhet and the Hour of Devastation

The Gatewatch attacks Nicol Bolas on Amonkhet and discovers that Naktamun’s trials manufacture his Eternal army. Bolas destroys the city’s promised order, defeats the planeswalkers individually and exposes how fragile their alliance remains.

Why this story matters

The route in brief

Amonkhet was the Gatewatch’s first deliberate attack on an enemy who was not already consuming a plane in front of them. Ajani argued for preparation and allies; the others chose speed, believing recent victories demonstrated what five planeswalkers could accomplish together. They arrived with a target but almost no understanding of the world he had shaped.

Naktamun made Bolas’s control look benevolent. Gods protected the city, honoured mummies performed labour and young people trained for trials promising a perfect afterlife. Every comfort supported the same hidden purpose: select the strongest dead, preserve their bodies in lazotep and remove the memories that might make them something other than obedient soldiers.

The Hour of Devastation exposed both deceptions at once. Amonkhet learned that its faith had been designed as an extraction system, while the Gatewatch learned that solidarity without preparation was not strategy. Bolas allowed them to survive because defeat made them more useful scattered, frightened and aware of his advantage.

Read in order or choose a turning point

Story Chapters

  1. An attack without a plan

    Five Gatewatch members followed Bolas to an unknown plane, treating unity as a substitute for intelligence.

    Gideon, Jace, Liliana, Chandra and Nissa travelled to Amonkhet after deciding that Nicol Bolas was too dangerous to leave unchallenged. They did not know his forces, objective or relationship to the plane. Confidence came from Zendikar and Innistrad, where combining specialised powers had produced victories under immediate pressure.

    The desert nearly killed them before they reached a city. A god intervened against its monsters and directed them toward Naktamun, contradicting the expectation that Bolas’s world would advertise cruelty openly. The city was clean, ordered and filled with citizens who appeared proud of the system surrounding them.

    That contradiction should have slowed the attack. Instead, different members pursued separate needs: Gideon investigated the gods and trials, Jace searched for structure, Nissa listened to the plane, and Liliana concealed her interest in Razaketh. They shared a destination without sharing all their reasons for being there.

    Open dedicated chapter

  2. The trials of perfection

    Naktamun trained every generation to desire an honourable death, converting community and faith into selection pressure.

    Five gods guided initiates through trials of solidarity, knowledge, strength, ambition and zeal. Success was celebrated as preparation for the God-Pharaoh’s promised afterlife, and death during the final test was treated as fulfilment. The culture did not need constant visible force because its highest honour had been aligned with Bolas’s need.

    Gideon entered the trials and struggled with their appeal. Oketra embodied protection, discipline and community in ways that resembled values he already held. The people around him were not fools; they displayed real courage and cared for one another. Their virtues had been placed inside a conclusion designed by someone else.

    The honoured dead were embalmed differently from the mummies serving the living. Lazotep created durable bodies whose identities could be removed. What Naktamun called passage was an industrial process selecting skilled combatants for an army that would never return the glory promised to them.

    Open dedicated chapter

  3. A history stolen

    Nissa heard the damaged plane remember life before Bolas, revealing that Naktamun’s eternal order was only decades old.

    Nissa’s connection to Amonkhet was weak and painful, but the land retained fragments the city’s teachings denied. She found memories of an older world, eight gods rather than five and catacombs emptied of bodies Bolas had claimed. The apparent timelessness of Naktamun had been manufactured after mass destruction.

    Bolas had arrived when the Mending reduced old planeswalkers’ power and built a route toward recovering dominance. He killed most adults, altered the surviving children’s memories and reshaped the gods. Several generations then grew inside a story whose only author was the dragon they worshipped.

    Chandra and Nissa’s discovery changed the question. The Gatewatch was not searching a functioning culture for one hidden weapon; it was standing inside the weapon’s factory. Freeing people required more than exposing a lie, because family, faith and every measure of achievement had grown around it.

    Open dedicated chapter

  4. Liliana’s hidden target

    Liliana used the campaign to reach Razaketh, forcing her allies to spend strength on a battle she had not disclosed.

    Razaketh was one of the demons holding Liliana’s contract and the immediate reason she had wanted Amonkhet included in the Gatewatch’s path. She had not explained the full risk. When the demon appeared, he controlled her through the agreement and turned her private campaign into an emergency for everyone nearby.

    The Gatewatch helped create an opening while Liliana called on the dead beneath the desert. Using the Chain Veil and an enormous tide of mummies, she overwhelmed Razaketh and destroyed him. The victory removed another master, but it also exhausted the group shortly before Bolas’s planned return.

    Her friends recognised the manipulation. Liliana had relied on their oath while withholding information necessary for consent. They remained together because Naktamun’s crisis was larger than the breach between them, but the alliance entered its decisive battle with trust already damaged.

    Open dedicated chapter

  5. The promised Hours begin

    The Gate opened onto ruin, the Hekma failed and Bolas’s hidden gods dismantled Naktamun’s defenders.

    The second sun moved between the horns above the city and the sequence promised by scripture began. The Gate to the Afterlife opened, but paradise was only desert filled with threats the Hekma had excluded. Naktamun’s certainty collapsed faster than its citizens could replace the beliefs organising their lives.

    The Locust God, Scarab God and Scorpion God arrived as instruments Bolas had hidden from the rewritten pantheon. They killed or corrupted the gods who had protected the city. With Kefnet gone, the Hekma failed, allowing desert horrors and the Curse of Wandering to enter streets built around permanent safety.

    The dead selected through generations of trials emerged as Eternals coated in blue lazotep. Their arrival revealed the purpose of every celebrated death. Naktamun had not been preparing citizens for a reward; it had been refining inventory for a war on another plane.

    Open dedicated chapter

  6. Bolas breaks the Gatewatch

    Nicol Bolas defeated the five planeswalkers separately and let the survivors carry his message into the Multiverse.

    The Gatewatch confronted Bolas amid the devastation, driven by anger and the belief that combined strength still guaranteed a chance. He separated their advantages with ease. Nissa found the land already claimed, Chandra’s fire could not control the engagement, Gideon’s invulnerability did not protect his mind and Liliana understood how thoroughly the dragon had arranged the encounter.

    Jace attempted a final mental attack and was thrown blindly across the Multiverse, arriving on Ixalan with his memory shattered. The others escaped by planeswalking at different moments, no longer operating as a team. Bolas chose humiliation over execution because survivors could spread fear and because the fractured Gatewatch remained useful to his longer plan.

    Behind him stood the results: an Eternal army, access to Tezzeret’s Planar Bridge and a plane broken open after serving its assigned purpose. Hazoret led survivors away from Naktamun. The Gatewatch left with the lesson Ajani had offered earlier—an oath could define duty, but only preparation and wider alliances could make that duty effective.

    Open dedicated chapter

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