The capital was still sleeping when the first alarms began to sound.
A distant crash broke the calm of dawn, followed by another and another.
They weren't powerful explosions, but their frequency and location were enough to make the wall sentinels stiffen, hands firm on their spears and eyes scanning the horizon.
Black smoke rose from the south of the imperial valley.
The ancient temples, those sacred places where prayers intertwined with the history of generations, burned like giant torches.
The prayer gardens, full of flowers cultivated by monks for decades, were consumed beneath the rapidly advancing fire, driven by the wind.
Even the old mills on the outskirts of Xiyun, which had witnessed hundreds of dawns pass by, burned without resistance, as if someone wanted to mark each vulnerable point of the city with a warning sign.
In the Hall of a Thousand Columns, activity was feverish.
