Kyren's POV
*****
The second he stepped through the portal leading to the Dark Lands he sensed it.
A familiar feeling in his gut he's only ever gotten when he was around a particular old wench who refused to leave his life.
Then he crossed the threshold, his boots crunching against the sharp red desert sands. He was standing at the excavation site.
Or at least, what was left of it.
"Gods…" his nostrils flared as soot, smoke and death entered them.
The bodies of the soldiers he kept in charge of looking after the zone were littered around him—charred, mangled, squashed to a bloody pulp.
There was no end to the uniquely cruel ways his rogues were slaughtered.
His eyes darted to the centre of the excavation zone, where the divine stone's crater was.
The flora life that had been growing around the spot had all shrivelled into lifeless husks of their former selves. Death and decay seemed to cling to the very air—which was saying a lot for a place as desolate as the Dark Lands.
