The first thing that hit them before their eyes had even adjusted to the sudden change of environment was the smell. It was thick and wrong, the kind of smell that didn't belong to any single thing but to everything at once. Burnt salt mixed with ruptured flesh, rot and something earthy, something broken.
Damon and Nyla appeared at the edge of what used to be the edge of the upside-down tree.
Except that it wasn't there anymore.
The upside-down tree was gone. And long with it, the dark sea had also vanished. It wasn't simply drained or dried, it was displaced, shoved outward from the point of impact in a ring of destruction so wide that it went far beyond what their eyes could trace.
