The ancient city walls lay in ruins, tattered banners fallen to the ground.
The city had been breached. Billowing smoke veiled the blue sky and white clouds, leaving everything dim and dreary. Ash carried skyward by hot currents drifted down in a scattering shower. Charred half-burned timbers jutted from broken walls and collapsed ruins. Even cloth wrapped over mouths and noses could not block the choking smoke that provoked coughing...
Sobs and weeping rose as surviving commoners dug the bodies of their relatives from collapsed houses.
In the burned ruins, blackened corpses remained frozen in struggling poses. Crumbling earthen walls, dark and broken, came crashing down and buried the wreckage. An old, battered ox cart creaked as it hauled a load of corpses toward the mass grave beyond the city.
A tabby cat from some unknown household crouched before a collapsed home, quietly waiting...
Big Yellow Dog pressed tightly against an elderly man, seeking safety in his arms. The old man looked at the bodies of his family beside him, muddy tears silently sliding down his weathered cheeks. After one night, only he and an old dog remained of his household...
The provincial city had fallen, and the warlord king's troops had lost control after breaching the city.
Chaos reigned within the city. Mad, scattered soldiers looted gold and silver everywhere, while hooligans, ruffians, gangsters, and villains seized the disorder to murder, set fires, and violate women. It took the army that had stormed the city an entire day and night to quell them. The royal palace had been breached; that Vassal King drew his sword and slit his own throat, while the rest of the powerful and noble fled through the gates. The entire city had lost all order.
The young general of old now bore an added trace