Abbasid Caliphate, Baghdad
The Caliph of the Abbasids stood upon the highest balcony of the Palace of the Green Dome. Below him, the vast city pulsed with its usual life, merchants shouting prices in the spice souks, the call to prayer rising from a hundred minarets, the distant clatter of camel caravans arriving from the east.
Yet today the usual rhythm felt wrong, as though the entire world held its breath.
Thus the Caliph, Harun al-Mu'tasim, watched the horizon where the eastern road met the city walls. A dust cloud the size of a small mountain rolled toward Baghdad. Even from this distance he could see the glint of steel, tens of thousands of armored soldiers marching in perfect formation beneath crimson-and-gold banners that bore characters no Arab scribe could read.
His vizier, a trembling old man named al-Fadl, knelt beside him, forehead pressed to the stone.
