The skies had long forgotten their gentler hues, eclipsed by a dense canopy of soot-black smoke threaded with ribbons of malevolent crimson. Below, flames roared triumphantly, swallowing the remains of Elmire with a voracious hunger, tearing through the village as if to punish the very earth beneath. It was as if the land itself wept, drowned beneath layers of molten rage.
I stood on a ridge overlooking the ruins, my dual-colored hair whipping furiously in the howling winds conjured by the sheer destruction before me. One eye amber, one vivid green, both now dulled and subdued by a cruel enchantment woven tight around my will—a leash of shadow tethering me irrevocably to the whims of the woman standing at the epicenter of chaos.
Azael.
