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On the first day of February, the Angel of the Holy Word arrived near the City of Silver during his second census of the Forsaken Land of the Gods.
The aged, stooped angel carried an old lantern burning with black spiritual flames and leaned on a twisted wooden staff, swaying as he walked alone through the endless darkness and occasional flashes of lightning. He looked remarkably like the image on the Hermit card.
Lightning was flashing frequently across the sky. Stiffer, the Angel of the Holy Word, stopped in a valley roughly a hundred kilometers from the City of Silver in a straight line. Standing on a steep cliff, he gazed at the ruins ahead by the light of the lightning-there had once been a flourishing human city here, one that had traded with the Kingdom of Silver. Its population had been mostly human, with some friendly members of other races living among them.
The city had been beautiful, orderly, and full of life, just like every city-state and kingdom under the Creator's rule.
A sunlit land appeared before Stiffer's eyes. People in ancient clothing passed one another, talking and laughing, while children and youths holding food and fruit played beside the streets.
The illusory sunlight vanished from his sight, and savage lightning tore through the night sky.
The city's ruins were divided into three parts: one atop the cliff, one in the valley, and another beyond the enormous rift, on the cliff opposite.
From these remains, it was easy to infer how the city had been destroyed: the earth had split and the mountains had collapsed, sending swathes of houses and their inhabitants plunging into the valley. A perfectly sound city had been divided into three by a fissure in the earth. The survivors on either side had