The defenders of Lys's Main Harbor finally spotted the vast fleet approaching late in the night.
Shrill horns pierced the silent night sky, instantly carrying across the entire main island.
But the alarm came too late.
When the fleet appeared like ghosts in the waters off the harbor, the defenders' morale collapsed completely.
Though some instinctively tried to resist and sounded their horns, more had already thrown down their weapons and begun to scatter.
Seeing this, Liu Qian ordered his soldiers ashore.
He led from the front, setting foot on the main island.
His elite soldiers followed close behind, swiftly crushing the scattered resistance around the harbor and securing the docks.
Then the army surged like a flood bursting through a dam, pouring along the winding streets toward the city center and the white Palace on the hill.
Heavy footsteps, clanking armor, soldiers' shouts, and sporadic, short-lived screams utterly shattered Lys's peaceful night.
Countless sleeping Lys men were startled awake. Trembling with fear, they peered through cracks in their windows, only to see the streets swarming with unfamiliar soldiers in armor and bearing weapons, their faces fierce. Frightened, they immediately pulled their heads back, locked their doors tight, and shivered in the darkness.
Inside the Governor's Council, First Governor Lansono Hane forced himself to stay alert as he reviewed the latest reports on the mercenary companies' movements by dim candlelight.
Each report made him more anxious. He desperately wished those mercenaries, who cared for nothing but golden dragons, would reach the Disputed Lands faster, faster still. To keep the wealthy estate hinterlands from being plundered, he had deployed the twenty-five thousand slave soldiers Denaco had barely managed to scrape together around the Outpost Tower and at key junctions along the routes into the hinterlands.
Just then, a faint uproar drifted