The commanding heights of the Iron-Blood Cloud-Piercing Citadel offered an unobstructed, panoramic view of the devastated eastern plains. High above the churning, monsoon-battered lowlands, General Tokugawa stood upon the grand balcony of his fortress. He was a man carved from the unforgiving stone of the Rising Sun Empire, his heavy, lacquered armor absorbing the minimal light of the clouded moon. His hands rested upon the hilt of his ancestral katana, his sharp, calculating eyes tracking the distant, flickering watchfires of the Celestial Dragon Empire's forward encampment.
