Over a vast and endless desert stretched an angry sky. The clouds churned with darkness and turmoil, rolling and tumbling as though they might collapse under their own weight and crush the earth below.
The sky should have been blue as the sea, or white as blank parchment. Instead, it bled crimson—the color of a battlefield wound left to fester. As if the heavens themselves had fought some gruesome war and lost badly.
A sandstorm swept across the desert floor, and in its path stood a city of warm stone and burnished gold.
Broad avenues lined with palm trees ran beside canals of clear blue water, their surfaces dotted with boats that now rocked violently in the rising wind. At the city's heart rose a massive palace of layered domes and terraces, towering above everything around it like a crown of empire. Mountains and dunes ringed the horizon on all sides, giving the city the feeling of something ancient, something wealthy, something carefully protected by both geography and power.
