Lindarion didn't respond immediately. His gaze swept over the horizon, where faint glints of crystalline structures rose from the dust. They looked like roots, or perhaps bones, turned to glass. The closer they drew, the more they shimmered with strange light.
The sky itself seemed fractured. Clouds formed circular patterns, as if circling a wound the world had never healed.
Ashwing muttered, "Looks like someone tore the sky open and forgot to fix it."
"Someone did," Nysha said quietly. "The last time this land saw fire, the Demi-Gods fell."
Lindarion stopped at the edge of a ridge. Below, the land dipped into a wide basin, a frozen battlefield. Shattered weapons lay scattered, half-buried in dust and glass.
Ancient banners still fluttered in the dead wind, the sigils long faded. And through it all, thin roots of translucent crystal ran like veins, pulsating faintly with pale blue light.
"This," Lindarion murmured, "is where Veyrath was chained."
