Outside the train window, the scenery silently twisted and faded.
The last embers of the sunset sank thoroughly into the horizon, as if pulling away the last trace of warmth from the world.
Darkness, thick as ink, instantly swallowed the entire forest, with a biting cold creeping in like a living creature, sneaking silently into the carriage through the closed window crevices.
The vibrant and lush jungle had completed a horrifying transformation in a very short time.
Those lush trees seemed to have been scorched by invisible flames, leaving only charred, twisted skeletons of dead wood, their jagged branches stabbing towards the leaden sky like countless ghostly claws scratching at the void in despair.
Bark peeled and mottled, revealing the pale or decayed interior beneath, indistinct in the dense night.
An intermittent, mournful cry of unknown origin drifted, sometimes distant, sometimes near, through the air.
