Two thousand miles north of Sunset Peak stood the royal capital of the Great Yan Dynasty.
It was the third watch of the night. Forty million people were asleep beneath a silver moon. Damp fog curled around the nine walls of the Forbidden Citadel while sentries paced the battlements.
“Third watch! Bank your fires and trim your lamps!”
In the Inner Palace, Emperor Yan Ming slept beneath layers of silk. Courtyard fountains whispered outside his windows.
Dawn did not arrive gently. It exploded.
FZZZZZT-FLASH!
In a tenth of a second, the city went from midnight to blinding noon. Candles and street lamps disappeared in the white-gold glare.
On the walls, forty guards dropped their weapons. Their shadows, which had pointed south all night, whipped around and stretched north toward the palace.
A sergeant tripped over his scabbard. “The shadows are marching on the throne room!”
Light cut through the Emperor’s closed eyelids.
He bolted upright. “What happened? Is the palace on fire?”
Still wearing a loose nightshirt and slippers, Yan Ming grabbed his seven-ring saber and kicked open the terrace doors.
“Who dares breach the Citadel? Royal Guard—”
He stopped.
Far to the south, above the jagged mountains, burned a second sun.
It was three hundred feet across and two thousand miles away, yet its light struck like a physical blow. Golden Core guards turned away with tears streaming down their faces. The moon had faded to a pale mark. The stars were gone.
“Your Majesty, look away!”
Grand Astrologer Sima Feng crawled up the terrace steps. His tall headdress hung over one ear, and the knees of his robes were torn. His bronze star compass lay broken in the courtyard below.
“Sima, what is that thing?” the Emperor demanded. “Has some ancient immortal ascended?”
“This is no mortal ascension!” Sima Feng clutched the Emperor’s slipper. One glance south made him cough blood onto the white jade. “The astral instruments are ruined! The great star sphere spun until its jade axle melted! The prophecy has come!”
Yan Ming pulled the old man upright. “What prophecy?”
“The Twin Suns Disaster! The First Epoch texts say, ‘When an unholy sun rises from the southern mud, cosmic balance will break. Kings will wander through endless noon until their wits turn to dust!’ A rogue star has taken root in the mortal world!”
Below the palace, panic spread through the capital.
Roosters crowed in five thousand courtyards. Pigeons burst from the roofs. Cats hissed at their reversed shadows. Warhorses kicked their stalls apart as noon heat baked their winter coats.
Millions of citizens rushed into the streets wearing nightcaps and bedclothes.
“The sky is cracked!”
“The sun has had a child!”
“Ring the temple bells! Drive off the southern demon!”
Forty minutes later, the Imperial Throne Room was in chaos.
Emperor Yan Ming now wore formal robes, though his feet were still in bed slippers. Eighty ministers knelt before him with their foreheads to the floor. Harsh southern light cast their shadows backward across the dais.
PING! PING! PING!
The Grand Communications Basin flashed red. Jade slips rose from its silver surface, projecting reports from across the empire.
Western Border Command: Endless noon along four thousand leagues of mountain passes. Glacier melt threatens three guard posts.
Southern Desert Outpost: Midnight temperature up fourteen degrees. Giant scorpions are burrowing to escape the heat. Nomads are proclaiming the Day of Judgment.
Eastern Naval Prefecture: Tide tables disrupted. Fishermen refuse to launch their boats.
Then a message stamped with Canglan’s provincial seal rose from the basin.
Governor Zhao appeared above the silver water.
He wore an orange sash, a yellow hard hat, and green safety glasses. Worse, he was not facing the throne. He was bowing toward the southern sky.
“All glory to the Sovereign of High Noon! All praise to the Master Builder! Canglan Province submits to Sunset Peak! We pledge forty thousand cartloads of spring wheat, eight hundred barrels of pitch, and our labor to the Divine Builder who commands daylight!”
The projection vanished.
Silence filled the hall.
“Canglan?” Yan Ming whispered. “That muddy province where three thousand laborers rioted over spoiled salt? They have abandoned the Dragon Throne for a mountain?”
CRACK!
His fist broke the carved dragon from the throne’s armrest.
“Who lit that fire over my provinces?”
A mountain of armored muscle stepped forward.
Imperial Grand Admiral Meng commanded the Imperial Void Armada. He stood six foot four in three hundred pounds of Dragon-Blood Iron plate. His eyes burned with the power of a Half-Step Divine Transformation cultivator, and a crescent-bladed polearm rested on his shoulder.
“Your Majesty, this is no natural event. Our diviners traced it to an unregistered formation on the southern summit of Mount Clear Sky.”
Meng’s gauntlets creaked around his weapon.
“This southern rogue has betrayed the throne. He has woken forty million loyal subjects, driven our livestock mad, and made our hens lay at three in the morning. He has insulted the Mandate of Heaven itself.”
“Give me a solution, Admiral.”
“Total destruction,” Meng said. Crimson battle Qi filled the hall with the smell of hot iron. “Mobilize all twelve ironclad dreadnoughts. Freeze the false sun and bring this Master Builder back in a cage. If he survives, I will make him answer before the imperial ancestors.”
Yan Ming did not look at the admiral. He was reading the grain report beneath Canglan’s pledge. Roads were still passable, but wells were dropping. A fleet would not move food to a city with empty granaries.
“Destruction is your answer to everything,” he said. “If this Builder controls the southern roads and harvest, breaking him may break our supply lines too.”
Meng lowered his head. “Then let us take him alive and restore the throne’s honor.”
Yan Ming sealed the order because he needed the source controlled, not because he shared Meng’s appetite for a frozen mountain.
“Launch the fleet. Bring me a solution my people can eat.”
***
Two thousand miles south, the mood was very different.
Fifty thousand cultivators lay face down in the gravel on Mount Clear Sky. Some had pressed their foreheads so hard into the ground that they were breathing dust.
Above them, the second sun gave off a gentle warmth. The containment mesh held back its deadly heat. What reached the mountain was rich golden light. Frost melted, and white lilies pushed through cracks in the granite.
Grand Elder Xuan Xiao raised his head. His orange vest glowed, and his yellow hard hat sat crooked over his tangled white beard.
“He did not merely form a Golden Core,” Xuan Xiao said. “He tore up Heaven’s lease. He killed the night and brought eternal daylight to working men!”
Patriarch Iron Blood kissed the soil and adjusted his chin strap.
“No more midnight ambushes. No more frost killing the grain. Just steady, regulated warmth from the Divine Builder. This is paradise.”
On the lodge porch, Austin stood in his work jeans, steel-toed boots, and Sovereign Hard Hat. Shade-14 goggles covered his eyes. A clipboard full of inspection sheets rested under his arm.
He looked down at the weeping cultivators and the new lilies. Then he looked up at the sun.
Through his goggles, it was a manageable green ember. The rest of the sky was still a white glare broken by ugly lens flares.
Austin clicked his grease pencil.
“How do you release a major lighting overhaul without a brightness setting?”
He shook his head.
“Amateur hour.”