The tide of blood and fire descends from the north like a flood of enraged flowers sweeping in.
The scene slowly draws away, revealing a figure draped in a red-black cloak, standing on a giant's shoulder, eyes burning and bathed in snow like a divine statue.
From this moment on, the Northern Territory of the Empire will greet its darkest spring.
......
As early spring arrived, the boundaries of the endless snowfield began to loosen, ice and snow melted away, and the mountains exposed mottled rocky bones.
Deep in the valley, a babbling stream trickles over the stone bed eroded by ice and snow, occasionally, remnants of ice from high above collapse, shattering and echoing in the canyon like whispered portent.
This is the critical passage leading to the heartland of the Northern Empire—Windflame Valley.
Above the valley, a large-scale military camp is built along the terrain.
