For two full seconds, the Great Plaza was as dead silent as a tomb. The sheer numerical weight of the statement seemed to hang suspended in the freezing air, waiting for the human mind to process it.
Then a woman in the third row let out a shriek so loud and sharp it sounded as if she had been stepped on by a warhorse.
Instantly, the entire plaza erupted into absolute, unbridled madness.
The crowd did not just cheer; they roared, they screamed, they stamped their feet against the cobblestones until the timber of the platform vibrated.
The imperial trumpeters, entirely forgetting their formal cues, raised their instruments and blew a wild, jagged fanfare, while the bell-ringers in the cathedral towers above began hauling on their ropes, sending a deafening, golden chorus crashing down over the city roofs.
"Three?!" a boy shouted, grabbing his father's coat. "He said three?!"
