This was an emergency bulletin, so urgent that Lorenzo could almost smell the ink fumes drifting off the newspaper.
At dawn this morning, a Jiuxia fleet appeared on the sea shrouded in white fog. They were like ghosts, suddenly manifesting with the sunrise. The fishermen in the surrounding waters had never noticed their presence; only when people could clearly register that they were there did the scarlet banners ignite one after another, blazing fiercely and blotting out the sky.
Everything was so eerily similar to the time, decades ago, when they arrived at Reindona's port—appearing without the slightest warning, then slipping away in silence. Some had tried to track their trail, but all came up empty-handed, as if that so‑called Orient had only existed for those brief few days; after the Jiuxia people left, the very concept of the "East" had been erased from the Western world.
Beyond those memories, it was almost impossible to find any trace that they had ever existed.
