Night had descended upon the plateau like a suffocating shroud, vast and starless at first, until the heavens slowly pricked open with scattered needles of pale light. The moon was a thin, brittle sliver, casting its silver glow across the broken land. Jagged ruins rose in the distance, arches and spires cracked by centuries, their silhouettes sharp against the horizon like teeth jutting from a corpse.
The group had taken shelter in a shallow hollow beneath an outcrop of rock. The fire they built hissed and spat as it devoured damp wood, its glow clinging to the hollow walls, painting them in restless amber. Shadows danced, thin and skeletal, as though the fire revealed the ghosts of long-dead sentinels.
