In the year 220 of the Imperial Calendar, a young man carrying a longsword and wearing armor arrived in a small town in the southern part of the empire. The town had been built decades earlier, during the empire's pioneering of the south, and had a permanent population of around 600. These days, the empire's powerful figures had gone even farther south in search of rare treasures, and people were flocking after them. As a result, few travelers passed through this town.
Parched and exhausted, the young man sat down in the town's only tavern, ordered some food and drink, and ate slowly. Several kilometers away, a woman wearing a finely tailored coat and a hunter's hat galloped down the road, kicking up clouds of dust.
