Chapter 67: March to Fight
The sun did not rise over Astaris.
It bled.
A scarlet wound split the horizon, casting the once-proud heart of Magus Mundo in shades of crimson and smoke. Astaris — the city of kings, the capital of light — was now nothing more than a graveyard of stone and bone. Its alabaster spires lay broken and hollow. The cobbled avenues where scholars once debated and merchants haggled were cracked and crawling with black veins of corruption. Even the wind had turned cold, carrying with it the acrid stench of decay and the distant screams of a world being devoured.
We marched through it anyway.
Boots crunched on charred debris. Banners — those of kingdoms and empires that once swore never to fight side by side — fluttered together above our heads. The Magus Mundo Allia
