Three hundred and eighty miles northeast of the Imperial Capital of the Celestial Dragon Empire, the southern tail of the Kurogane magnetic iron mountain range finally gave way to the steep, pine-clad limestone cliffs of Whispering-Iron Gorge.
Here, the magnetic star-iron ore that had scrambled spiritual compasses for the past two hundred miles thinned out into ordinary river-granite, and the ancient Royal Highway wound through a deep, misty valley bordered by rushing white-water rapids.
As twilight fell on the fourteenth evening after departing Iron-Blood Pass, the fifty thousand soldiers of the Capital Reserve Legion and the advance divisions of Marquis General Bao's Imperial Vanguard pitched their night perimeter camps at the northern and southern mouths of the three-mile valley, while the central circle of gilded imperial carriages halted in a wide, flat clearing beside the river at the center of the gorge.
