The winter of Imperial Year 779 came especially late. Not until December did the first cold wave roll across Valen Fortress, sweeping from east to west over the entire land. Within ten hours, the temperature fell below freezing, yet the first snow was nowhere to be seen. Instead, thunder boomed. A bolt of lightning struck down two sentries on duty before the Commander-in-Chief's Mansion and snapped the flagpole. Then came a torrential downpour. After three days and three nights of relentless rain, the skies finally cleared. A brilliant rainbow appeared in the east, while an enormous cross emerged upon the western horizon.
No one could remember weather so unnatural. Well-traveled old men recalled the winter fifty years earlier, when winter thunder had likewise rumbled and rain had fallen without cease. The following spring, three hundred thousand Border Defense Army troops had mutinied en masse. On the Gudu Plain, less than thirty miles from the Imperial Capital, the Zichuan Army fought a savage battle against the rebels, who had been reinforced by the Flowing Wind Army. The dead lay piled layer upon layer across a battlefield stretching over a hundred kilometers; even the wild dogs had eaten until their eyes turned red. The old men swore that this must foretell an unprecedented battle between the Family's royal army and the Far East rebels in the coming year, with perhaps even more dead than fifty years ago. People nodded one after another as they listened. Though the Council of Elders had already passed a resolution to negotiate peace with the rebels, and talks were underway, nearly everyone—from Family officials and nobles to ordinary citizens—shared the same premonition: a brutal battle with the rebels was unavoidable, and an unprecedented disaster was about to descend.
The citizens of the Imperial Capital were gripped by