As they descended, the city seemed to rise around them.
Buildings that had appeared modest from the rim became towering masses of pale stone, their sheer walls broken by narrow recesses and immense, empty doorways.
Ornate ledges projected above the streets, some still intact, others hanging in fractured sections that looked ready to fall at the slightest disturbance.
Between them, elevated passages connected one structure to another, though many had collapsed, leaving their broken ends suspended over the avenues below.
There was a solemn beauty to the place, made all the more harrowing by its silence.
Whoever had built it had shaped even the smallest visible details with care, carving delicate borders around doors large enough to admit giants and setting slender columns beneath roofs that now lay in heaps across the ground.
By the time they reached the lower road, the trees were no longer visible.
