Val Royeaux woke in gold.
Morning did not arrive there the way it did in Skyhold — creeping through frost and stone —
it unfolded.
Light spilled across marble balconies and turned the canal water into moving silk.
Banners breathed lazily in the early breeze, their colors reflected in polished windows and lacquered carriages below.
Music drifted from somewhere unseen — a violin practicing a court piece before the day began in earnest.
The city did not wake in a hurry.
It presented itself.
Perfume and fresh bread.
Boots that had never touched mud.
Servants already running.
Nobles already watching.
Every movement is observed.
Every gesture is calculated.
Every smile is a weapon.
In the Grand Market, tailors argued over fabric imported from Antiva.
In the upper terraces, a young lord rehearsed his greeting for the Inquisition envoys who were expected later that week — trying three different tones of humility in a mirror and hating all of them.
In the cathedral square, chantry sisters lit morning candles and whispered prayers for order, for stability, for the end of chaos in the south.
They prayed for the Inquisition by name.
The bells rang.
Not an alarm.
A celebration.
A minor noble wedding — lace and white horses and a procession of masked guests laughing behind painted porcelain smiles.
Petals fell from balconies.
A bard sang of peace restored.
Of the Herald.
Of the world saved.
No one noticed the first shadow.
Because in Val Royeaux shadows were part of the architecture.
Statues cast them.
Spired roofs cut them.
Balconies layered them.
The city was built to look dramatic.
To look theatrical.
The first scream sounded like a rehearsal.
A stage performer losing their voice in an overenthusiastic aria.
People turned.
Annoyed.
Amused.
Then the petals falling from the balcony above the wedding changed.
White to red.
Soft to heavy.
Something struck the marble in the square.
Wet.
With a sound no one in Orlais had ever heard before.
Not in war.
Not in execution.
Not in any performance.
A hand.
Still wearing a wedding ring.
The sky had not darkened.
There were no clouds.
The sun still shone.
And yet —
things began to fall.
Not from above.
From everywhere.
As if the air itself had been opened.
Limbs.
Faces.
Armor still attached to nothing.
A child's ribbon tied around a severed braid.
The illusion was perfect.
Each piece landed beside someone who knew it.
A husband saw his wife's arm fall across the steps.
A mother dropped to her knees as her son's head rolled against her dress.
A chantry sister stared at a familiar hand clutching a rosary that had been buried with a friend years ago.
They were not real.
No blood spread.
No bodies moved.
But they were recognizable.
And recognition broke the city faster than any blade.
Screams tore through the square.
Masks fell.
Composure died.
Orlais — the empire that survived on appearances — forgot how to perform.
Then the real attackers came.
Not from the gates.
Not from the streets.
From rifts that tore open between statues, beneath bridges, across rooftops.
Venatori in crimson.
Creatures that did not belong to this world.
Vampires in dark hoods moving through sunlight that did not burn them.
They did not charge.
They walked.
Purposeful.
Controlled.
They killed with precision.
Not crowds.
Not indiscriminately.
Targets.
A noble who had publicly praised the Inquisition.
A merchant funding their supply routes.
A chantry speaker who had called the Herald "the Maker's chosen."
Each death is deliberate.
Each witnessed.
Each leaving space around it.
"Let them see."
The words were not spoken aloud.
But the Venatori repeated them like a litany as they moved.
In the cathedral, the great doors slammed open.
A single red banner was driven into the marble floor before the altar.
No speech.
No declaration.
Only a symbol burned into the cloth.
Corypheus.
The attackers withdrew as suddenly as they had appeared.
Not chased.
Not resisted.
They left through the same tears in the air.
The illusion still falling.
Still breaking the minds of those who watched.
Silence followed.
Not peace.
Shock.
The kind that turns a city into a graveyard without burying a single body.
The first real corpse lay in the square beside the wedding procession.
The bride knelt in her dress, holding the body of the noble who had sponsored the Inquisition's embassy.
Her veil was red.
Her scream never stopped.
Hours later, the illusion finally ended.
The limbs vanished.
The blood that never existed disappeared.
But the memory remained.
Burned into every witness.
And on the cathedral doors — carved into the marble so deeply it cracked the stone — were the words:
"THE INQUISITION BROUGHT THIS."
By nightfall the city had already chosen its story.
Not who attacked.
But who caused it.
In Skyhold, the messenger arrived before dawn.
Mud-streaked.
Half-mad.
Repeating the same sentence as if it were the only thing keeping him alive.
"Val Royeaux burns."