The sun was at the horizon casting a pale gold light over a world.
The once-bustling streets were now an eerie graveyard, filled with the thick stench of burning flesh and the oppressive weight of silence.
Ash floated through the air like snow, blanketing everything in a dull, grey coat of sorrow.
The flames had died down, but the heat still lingered, hanging heavy in the air like a ghost that refused to leave.
Yunfeng stood in the middle of it all.
His face was streaked with soot, white hair now speckled black with ash. His blue-green eyes stared out over the smoldering ruins, the glow in them still sharp but his expression unreadable. Slowly, almost numbly, he looked down at his hands.
Hands that had once held books and drawn doodles in the margins of his notes.
Hands that had now taken lives.
