In a realm untouched by light, the sky bled crimson, stained by both a blood-red moon and a sun that burned with black fire.
The land stretched out like a corpse left too long in the sun cracked, dry, and rotting from the inside.
Wind moved across dark sand, lifting grains into the air, only to drop them into the still, black sea that rested at the edge of the horizon like an open wound.
A solitary path, carved into the dead earth by no visible tools, stretched forward a long, narrow trail leading to a towering platform.
The structure loomed high above the ground, impossibly tall, nearly scraping the sky as if challenging the heavens themselves.
At the very peak, far above the world of the dead, sat a throne of obsidian bones and jagged iron. It radiated no warmth, no life. Only purpose.
Seated there, cloaked in a robe as black as the sea below, was a figure with no face.
The hood masked everything but the faint flicker of gold where an eye might have been.
