While the battles beyond the border grew more brutal by the day and the Chaos's endless assault battered the walls of order, the kingdom's inland territories remained peaceful and serene. White City was like a dazzling jewel set into the great plains. When the sun "Ulo" cast its radiance over the land, the entire city glittered. People awoke to the morning light and made their way onto the roads paved with white stone, greeting one another as they prepared to begin a day's work. Thus, the city seemed like a machine slowly starting up, gradually turning with a lazy hum.
The gates of Golden Rose Palace opened to either side with the creak and grind of mechanisms. Knights and heralds in splendid attire galloped out of the palace, carrying orders from the king and various other powerful figures. Some rode toward the residences of dukes and counts, some toward the mysterious towers of the Royal Warlock Association, and others toward the halls of scholars and mages. The information they carried would keep many people busy for a long time to come. The banquet the previous night seemed not to have hindered the ancient kingdom's Ruling Machine at all. Instead, it had injected it with even greater momentum. The king had now received the latest intelligence from beyond the Chaos Boundary, the scholars had to determine why the Hearth Device had mutated, and the occult masters had begun rummaging through mountains of case files in search of signs heralding the next change in the Great Chaos Tide. Generals and soldiers were busy as well—the doubts voiced in court regarding General Magus's failure to defend the border had vanished after Princess Veronica personally pleaded his case, as though those powerful ministers had only now remembered that, compared to holding an old general