The lead-gray vault of the sky hung low, pressing down until heaven and earth could scarcely breathe.
Dark clouds rolled and collided along the leaden horizon like a routed legion of ironclad soldiers. Every thunderous explosion tore open a dazzling white light, as though a broken sword abandoned by an ancient god were cleaving through chaos.
The lightning was no ordinary silver serpent, but twisted, purple-red veins, twitching and throbbing among the clouds and branding scorch marks into the darkened sky.
The land had become a scorched-earth inferno. A cracked, earthen-basin plain stretched to the horizon, every fissure as deep as a ravine, its blackish-brown crust curling upward with desiccated death.
The fertile soil that had once nurtured life had now split into hideous scales, gleaming with a sickly metallic sheen beneath the lightning.
Barren desolation swallowed every trace of life. Even the hardiest thorns had become ashen remnants, and when the wind passed, it raised only choking dust that reeked of sulfur.
Blood rain poured from the sky. It was not rain, but a diluted, rank liquid with the sticky thickness of rust, striking the cracked earth with hollow splats.
Drops of blood spread across the scorched soil, not as nourishing crimson moisture, but as filthy brown stains, swiftly sucked up and devoured by the parched fissures.
The raging wind charged wildly through that bloody stench, sweeping up fine gravel and ash into spinning, dark-red sandstorms that whined as they passed over this deathly silent world.
For ten thousand miles, there was no sign of human habitation, no footprints, no cries of livestock.
Abandoned walls and ruins loomed faintly in the distance, weathered by the wind until they resembled the skeletons of giant beasts.
Occasionally, a bolt of lightning struck, illuminating the outlines of empty villages. Only dilapidated