Thick black smoke blanketed the sky over Thornwick. The once-bustling streets now lay in deathly silence. Choking, acrid fumes filled the air, mixed with the metallic tang of blood and the putrid stench of decay.

At the mass burial ground in the southwest of the city, massive fires still raged. Flames crackled and hissed as they consumed what remained of human life. Charred bodies twisted in the heat while half-burned limbs occasionally tumbled from the pyre, exposing white bone.

Matthias stoo