The air beyond the iron threshold did not merely burn; it clung to the skin like hot, oily grease.
Thick, rust-colored ash drifted down from an indigo sky, blanketing the jagged volcanic ridges of Tier Three in a soft, suffocating drift. But as Kyle stepped off the threshold stone, the ash-choked wind shifted violently, swirling into a wide, unnatural funnel that parted the red clouds ahead.
They weren't standing on a mountain slope at all.
They were standing on the cracked edge of a colossal, suspended continent—a broken chunk of a realm suspended inside a vast, hollow pocket of space. Spanning the horizon before them was the ruin of a magnificent, white-and-gold city. Gargantuan alabaster colonnades lay snapped like dry tinder, grand amphitheaters were split down the center by jagged fissures of dark violet fire, and sprawling palaces sat submerged in drifts of pale-grey dust.
