The first few days after Black Iron City fell were quieter than the night of the battle.
Rain fell three times, and the clouds hung low.
Occasionally, the echo of iron boots rose from deep within the streets, then quickly vanished around an alley corner.
Starving residents huddled inside their crumbling homes, windows bolted shut and scraps of cloth stuffed into the gaps beneath their doors.
When children cried, their mothers covered their mouths. The elderly recited prayers to the Dragon Ancestor, not daring to make a sound.
They waited for those "man-eating demons of the Northern Frontier" to start looting, seizing people, and setting fires. They waited for corpses to fill the streets, for someone to kick down their doors.
But nothing happened.
Two more days passed before hunger became unbearable and someone finally dared to open their door a sliver.
They expected streets awash with blood and scenes of chaotic looting.
Instead, the scent of wet earth and rain greeted them.
The streets were unusually clean.
The rain had washed away most of the blood left by the fierce battle a few days earlier. Not a single corpse remained in sight, only patches of earth where pits had been filled in, silently bearing witness to what had happened.
Farther away, several soldiers in black rain capes patrolled a street corner.
Bright red cloth bands bearing a sun motif encircled their arms. Their steps were measured, their gazes fixed ahead.
When passing shops, they even turned sideways to avoid the battered shelves outside, careful not to kick anything.
"Those are... people from the Northern Frontier?" someone murmured behind a door.
No one answered, but more doors quietly opened a fraction.
Then the first wisp of cooking smoke rose from the square.
In Black Iron City's central square, more than