The capital city— the sprawling, noisy, chaotic metropolis of a hundred thousand people— woke to a different world. The sky was different. The air was different. The smell was different. The smoke— the black, oily smoke from the palace— still rose. The fire was out. The flames were dead. But the smoke remained. The evidence. The scar.
The noble houses were burned.
Not all. Not every house. The ones that mattered. The Duke family mansion— the eastern wing burned, the western wing scorched. The Marquis estate— the gate destroyed, the garden ruined, the main building blackened. The Royal Faction compound— leveled. The stones scattered. The walls crumbled.
The extreme level of the massacre was visible.
