The sky was wrong.
It did not weep rain, nor promise storm—it was only smoke. A condensation of ash and soot, a shroud drawn thick across heaven until even the pale day bent into something dim and sickly.
The clouds had no weight of water, no promise of cleansing. They were simply the residue of ruin, a ceiling of suffocation that seemed to press lower with every passing breath.
The smell of charred iron and burned flesh clung to the wind like a second skin, and those who breathed it tasted bitterness on their tongues.
It should have been morning—time of reprieve, time of awakening. Yet the Demon Empress still stirred, awake in her palace, and all of Hell's Third Layer trembled under her insomnia.
Below that smothered sky there was no stillness, no calm. Aurora had spoken once of what she saw here: chaos. But words were too soft.
What festered beneath the smoke was worse. Murder poured through the alleys like wine. Screams became the lullaby of children too starved to cry.
