Kai stepped out from the underground city for the first time in weeks.
Kai had almost forgotten what open air felt like.
When he stepped out of the stone throat of the tunnel and into the demon realm's surface, the first thing that hit him was the wind, dry, metallic, and carrying the faint tang of mana-burnt sand. He inhaled sharply. Weeks underground had made him forget how big the world felt when it wasn't made of tunnels, ashstone corridors, or the glow of the flora beneath the surface.
The sky was bruised violet, smeared with pale streaks of green where ambient mana rippled too strongly for clouds to form. Noon, by demon standards, as Seyren had mentioned. A harsh, overhead brightness that never fully resembled a sun.
