The sky above the Jiuzhou Continent turned the color of bruised plums.
Twelve thousand miles above the underground trench, thirty ancient, dormant supervolcanoes along the Burning Dragon Mountain Range burst their granite plugs at the same time.
Towering columns of pitch-black ash, white-hot foam-stone, and poisonous sulfur dioxide roared forty miles into the stratosphere.
Daylight was snuffed out across three empires.
In the royal capital of the Great Da-Qi Dynasty, Emperor Yan stepped onto the Dragon Balcony, coughing into a silk handkerchief as soot rained down upon the golden roof tiles like black snow.
“The heavens have opened the fire of destruction,” Emperor Yan lamented, his royal ministers weeping around him. “The fiery ash will blot out the sun for a thousand years. Our crops will wither, our cattle will starve, and the mortal world will freeze in darkness.”
Down in the underground World Core, the heat had reached four thousand two hundred degrees.
The newly benched trench was not shaking from earthquakes. It was shaking from pure, pure heat pressure.
