The great hall of the Starlight household was no longer a hall; it was a crater, a hollowed-out wound in the earth where civilization had once stood.
Dust still drifted down from the ragged, jagged hole torn through the ceiling, slow, ghostly flakes of grey that danced in the shafts of light before settling on shattered marble pillars and the splintered, bleeding remains of the grand staircase.
Daylight poured in through the gaping void where the second and third floors had once been, cutting through the haze like divine spears.
The light fell across a floor so thoroughly pulverized that the remaining marble looked like fractured ice on a pond in early spring, glistening with blood and rainwater.
Somewhere in the twisted wreckage, a loose stone dislodged and rolled, clicking against debris before coming to a dead stop. Nobody in the room moved to see where it went. Nobody dared to breathe.
