The Volcanic Wastes stretched before Elara and Lirian like a wound in the world’s flesh. Black basalt cracked underfoot, veined with rivers of molten orange that hissed and spat. Ash fell in slow, gray snow, coating their cloaks and stinging their eyes. The sky was a perpetual bruise of smoke and sullen red, lit from below by the glow of distant fissures. Heat pressed against their skin like a living thing, relentless and suffocating. Every breath tasted of sulfur and scorched stone.
