The air still shimmered with the memory of heat. Charred remnants of countless homes littered blackened streets like so much refuse.
Celestia, City of a Thousand Stars, City of Sorcery, crowning achievement of a millennium of cultural refinement, lay broken. Dead. Lifeless.
It had been a city of singular beauty. Graceful towers had risen proudly to ethereal points, while below elegant homes shined white in the sunlight. Men and women had bustled down spotless marble streets. Everywhere one looked the city had thrived, vibrant and alive.
And now the city's towers lay toppled, the pulsating rhythm of vibrant life replaced with the echoing silence of a tomb.
A man wandered the empty streets, slowly dragging himself from the corpse of one fallen building to the next, sometimes digging, sometimes stopping only to stare with slackened jaw at the desolation all around. Finally he halted, an empty, blackened wall before him, his shock and exhaustion at last overcoming the need to search. The hope that there was any hope at all.
"My fault. All my fault," he whispered, sinking to his knees amid the rubble. Tears ran unheeded down his ageless face, leaving dirty streaks through grime and ash.
His thoughts would not clear, could not wrap around the extent of his folly. It was not supposed to be like this. Today was to be his crowning triumph, his great gift to the city.
He peered from the blackened wall to the nearest pile of rubble, and remorse once more stabbed like a blade. Some gift.
All he had left were the memories. Bitter, bitter memories. Once more, one last time, he closed his eyes and let them come.