The back garden of the Starlight household had ceased to be a sanctuary; it had become a slaughterhouse of architecture.
What was once a place of manicured beauty and gentle whispers now resembled a battlefield where two gods had collided and failed to finish the job.
Shallow, jagged craters pocked the lawn like fresh wounds, stretching in a chaotic trail from the shattered marble colonnade to the dried, cracked bed of the pond.
Between these craters stood the grotesque stumps of ancient marble pillars, sliced clean through at the waist as if by an invisible blade of impossible sharpness.
In a dozen places across the scorched earth, thin tongues of violet fire still licked at the air fire that burned without fuel, flickering with a hungry, unnatural intelligence that defied the laws of combustion.
Smoke drifted lazily through the gaps in the ruined walls, carrying the bitter taste of ash and pulverized stone.
