Thunder rumbled above. An unexpected summer hail descended on the empire of stone.
Xuma strolled through the silent corridors. At this time of night, guards and eunuchs held their nightly vigil a few buildings away to give the Emperor privacy. Usually, she didn't pay much attention to this practice.
However, tonight, it came in handy.
A few feet from where the eunuchs were stationed, she took a left that led her into an abandoned courtyard. It was darker here. Gloomier with an ambience of desolation hanging in the air.
She wrapped her arms around herself and scrambled to the far corner of the courtyard. Kneeling on the ground, she felt the hard stone with her hands until a loose ridge caught one of her fingers.
"It's here!" Her lips stretched into a smile. She sucked in a deep breath of air to calm her roiling emotions, before heaving the rock to reveal the contents beneath.
Two red stones. And a green wick.
Taking out the items, Xuma walked to the center of the courtyard and looked up into the dark, murky sky. In this empire of heat and snow, rain was a blessing rarely received. Perhaps the heavens knew the reign of the cold-blooded men was about to end.
It was pouring hard as if in celebration. Pouring loud…as if to cover the sound of horse hooves and erase their tracks.
Her expression hardened with determination. Striking the stones together, she held the wick to the spark, and stepped back.
From the heart of the Stone Palace, a green flare sliced through the sky like a shooting star. Like a butterfly's effect, more flares rose from different corners of the palace. In a serpentine form of green, it passed the palace gate, swept through the sleeping city, before dying in front of the ginormous city gate that stood tall like a gate to heaven.
Outside the mighty gate, a swarm of armored men sat upright on battle horses. Quiet and expressionless, they kept their gaze fixed on the sky with nervous anticipation. When the green flare roared to a stop inside the gate, they erupted into boisterous cheers.
"The Signal! General, the signal!"
"It came from the palace…does this mean that...?"
"The Stone Emperor is dead!"
Standing in front of the large army, a handsome young man in green armor stared at the stone gate with disdainful eyes.
"After centuries of conquest. After centuries of reign. The Great Emperor of the Stone Empire fell at the hands of a mere woman…tutt…tutt…tutt…how disgraceful…how shameful."
"Haha! Rightly said, General. Emperor Ghazeyh's ancestors must be rolling in their graves from anger right now."
"Bah! Who can they blame? This is a result of their arrogance and their years of bloodshed."
"General, the city gate is opening!"
A commotion ensued. The atmosphere throbbed with palpable restlessness. The armored men's expressions hardened with tension, as their grip tightened on their weapons.
The moment they had been waiting for...was finally here!
Joan smiled. The blazing hatred in his men's eyes pleased him. Straightening on his horse, he raised his sword into the air and hollered.
"My brothers! After years of living under the oppression of the Stone Emperors, we'll finally have our freedom!"
"Yaaa!"
The army roared, and a war drum blasted.
Kicking his horse, Joan spurred it onward and cried, "Break through the gate! Storm to the Palace!"
"Kill!"
Like a floodgate breaking through a dam, the armored men breached through the gate and swarmed into the Frost-Flame City.
A night of bloodshed ensued.
Blinded by years of hatred and resentment, the mob of armored men indiscriminately slashed their weapons, reaping civilian lives and raping women. Panicked cries and agonized wails pierced through the night, shrouding a blanket of terror over the stone city.
Unprepared for the sudden ambush, the infamous warriors, known for their cold-bloodedness, fell under the knife like stalks of wheat. Under the thirst for vengeance, even adolescents weren't spared.
Buildings blazed as bright as beacons of light. Corpses littered the ground, while the heart-wrenching whimpers of women and infants filled the night.
Sitting on his horse in a pool of blood, Joan stared at the last obstacle standing between him and the Stone Palace.
The Stone Gate.
A memory buried in the depths of his heart surfaced into his mind. In an open field of cherry blossoms and golden lilies, a young girl waved at him with a sweet smile.
"Joan, father said to bring your parents!"
By the side of a lake across from a pavilion, the same girl stood before him in a white robe.
"We are engaged. You know what this means, right? In the future, you can't look at anyone but me. You can't love or care for any girl but me."
Then came the night when everything burned in a sea of flame.
"Joan! Save my father! Please, save my father!"
Seeing her tear-streaked face, he jumped into the raging flame. But when he came out covered in burns and scars, with the body of her father limp in his arms, only a razed world greeted his sight.
She was gone. Everyone was either dead, or on their last breath.
"They took the girls, Joan. Save Xuma."
Those were his mother's final words. He lost her before his eyes. And his father's corpse couldn't even be found.
That night, he lost everything.
A ferocious gleam flashed in his eyes. If it were the last thing he did, Joan vowed to bring the damn wall to the ground!
"Brothers!" he hollered, attracting the attention of his men. Upon hearing his call, they discarded their prey and gathered around him.
"This empire once snatched everything from us. Our homeland. Our family. Our happiness. Tonight, we shall trample it beneath our feet!"
"Yaaa!"
"Kill!"
The thunderous cry churned the clouds above and shook the hearts of the barely lucid women. Though they had just experienced the nightmare of their lives, at this moment, they couldn't help but feel the worst was yet to come.
Leading over a thousand horses, the green-armored man banged on the stone gate, over and over again. An ear jeering sound came from the gate as it groaned and shook under the heavy assault. Before long, a resounding boom exploded through the air.
The end of the Stone Empire was near.