Polar Day And Polar Night

The Holy City was burning.

Not with flame, but with the unmaking of existence itself. Upon its magnificent light-forged walls, several colossal **Void-Cinder Abysses** gaped like festering wounds, ravenously sucking in and *shrouding* the flowing liquid-gold laws. The golden walls lost their luster at a visible pace, graying and collapsing like ancient gilt foil eroded by time and oblivion. The eternal sacred sigils etched upon them flickered and died, covered and frozen by encroaching, icy cinders, emitting faint yet piercing cracks.

The city's hymn of praise twisted into a cacophony of terror, despair, and the shrieking dissonance of shattered faith. Luminescent messengers darted like panicked fireflies, their wings brushing the drifting cinder-dust, instantly dimming and snapping, plummeting as burning, frigid sparks. The radiance of the sacred flame orbs grew turbid and faltered beneath the cinder-field's shroud, like candles guttering in the wind.

"No—! Sacred Edict! Holy Bastion! Quarantine the corruption!" Remaining high-tier Light Domain entities shrieked, hoarse voices straining to muster the last dregs of law-energy, attempting to erect isolation barriers around the Abysses. Yet, the nascent golden ramparts were scarcely formed when drifting cinder-tendrils from the Abysses brushed against them.

*Hssss—!*

Like a hot blade through butter. The holy bastions were instantly sheathed in dead cinders, structures crumbling, dissolving silently into fresh fodder for the Abysses. All resistance seemed pitifully frail before the Void-Cinder Abyss's power to *shroud* law and *devour* being.

Grand Inquisitor Elias hovered above the trembling crystal dais. The radiance enveloping him wavered for the first time, like a candle in the wind. His pure golden eyes, unblinking, were locked onto the figure suspended at the heart of the cinder-storm beyond the city walls.

The Void-Cinder Sanctum.

Burning cinders formed its distorted, colossal frame. Flowing cinder-magma churned within fathomless black fissures. Two abyssal voids replaced eye sockets, coldly observing the city's ruination. In its grasp, not a blade, but a massive, shifting *Reliquary* wrought of coiling, extending cinder-tendrils, its tip dripping globs of burning slag that seared trails of slow annihilation through the city's dissipating light-clouds.

Elias's gaze pierced the burning cinders, pierced the abyssal voids, seeming to perceive something more fundamental—the icy core of will that had forced itself back into being under the *Heaven's Chastisement*'s ultimate negation, now burning the city's glory as its fuel. An unprecedented chill, born not of power but of cognitive upheaval, froze his soul.

"Filth... could... *shroud*... Radiance..." His voice was low, carrying a tremor of disbelief he couldn't suppress. The Light Domain's vaunted order, its foundational laws of Holy Light, were crumbling like sandcastles before this cinder-power born of the exile wastes.

The Void-Cinder Sanctum seemed to sense this penetrating gaze. Its void-covered "head" slowly turned towards the crystal dais. No words, no emotional resonance, only a pure, all-*shrouding* cold will slammed like an invisible hammer against Elias's consciousness.

*Hmm!*

Elias jolted violently! The radiance around him flickered wildly. The crystal dais groaned under strain, shedding shards from its edges. He felt his authority as Inquisitor, his connection to the Primordial Radiance, grow sluggish, dimmed under that icy will's *shroud*!

Just then!

"Aaaargh—!!!"

A scream of ultimate agony, not from a single throat but from the very laws of a core district, tore through the air!

At the heart of the Holy City, the base of the most majestic structure—the Pinnacle of Dawn's Radiance, a spire like forged metal piercing the heavens—space tore asunder! A Void-Cinder Abyss, larger than the others, its edges burning with viscous cinders, yawned open like a maw of the deep!

*Screeeeech—!!!*

The most ancient, most condensed Holy Light laws forming the Pinnacle's foundation shrieked like glass in a furnace upon contact with the Abyss's edge! Pure golden light-streams were violently siphoned, devoured! The foundation grayed and collapsed at a terrifying rate! The massive light-columns supporting the spire instantly spider-webbed with cinder-cracks!

"The Pinnacle!" "The Core Flame!" Countless voices wailed in despair!

The Pinnacle of Dawn's Radiance was not merely the city's apex; it was the prime anchor and amplifier of the Light Domain's core flame—the Primordial Radiance—within the mortal realm. The destabilization of its foundation spelled unthinkable disaster!

The Void-Cinder Sanctum raised its dripping slag-hand, pointing remotely at the collapsing Pinnacle base. Its abyssal "gaze" fixed there, a cold, fractured thought reverberated through the cinder-storm:

"Light's... Foundation... Is... Also... Cinder..."

*KRAKOOM—!!!*

Heeding the command, the massive Abyss latched onto the Pinnacle's base redoubled its devouring force! Vast swathes of the foundation crumbled, unmade! The Holy Light laws composing its structure were utterly decomposed, *shrouded*, converted into frigid, pure energy of negation, feeding the cinder-storm swirling around the Sanctum!

Deprived of its base, the majestic Pinnacle groaned with a deafening roar, its colossal metallic spire beginning to tilt! The immense sacred flame orb at its summit, symbol of the Light Domain's eternal fire and burning through endless ages, dimmed violently, flickering erratically, its surface even beginning to frost over with an ominous cinder-shade!

"Stop it! At all costs!" Elias roared, his golden eyes burning with fury and a sliver of fear! He threw his arms wide, attempting to rally the *Heaven's Chastisement*'s waning power, even risking his own essence to blast the Abyss devouring the Pinnacle!

But the Void-Cinder Sanctum moved.

Its void-covered "head" swiveled towards Elias. The cinder-hand pointing at the Pinnacle snapped open, then pressed down towards Elias and his crystal dais in a commanding gesture.

"Judgment... Shall... Be... Shrouded..."

*Hmmmm—!!!*

Space above Elias imploded! A Void-Cinder Abyss, rimmed with viscous, burning cinders, manifested instantly, descending upon him with ravenous hunger!

Terrific suction locked onto Elias! The boiling radiance around him was wrenched away as if by an invisible fist, surging towards the black maw! The crystal dais shrieked as it fractured, dissolving into countless burning, crystalline shards! Elias himself plummeted as if into invisible quicksand, his ascent brutally halted!

His attempt to command the *Heaven's Chastisement* was severed! He was now mired in the Abyss's devouring swamp!

"Grand Inquisitor!" Remaining Light Domain powerhouses cried out, eyes wide with horror, scrambling to aid him. But more cinder-tendrils lashed out from the Sanctum like chains of death, instantly ensnaring their holy shields, *shrouding*, eroding, pinning them fast!

Despair, a frigid tide, drowned the remnants of Dawn's Radiance.

The Void-Cinder Sanctum ignored Elias's struggle. Its abyssal "vision" returned to the tilting, collapsing Pinnacle. Its form—if the shifting cinder-mass could be called such—drifted slowly towards the city's heart.

Where it passed, the city's glory faded like a dying star. Golden streets were *shrouded* in cold cinders. Sacred structures weathered silently and disintegrated under the cinder-field. Fleeing citizens—mighty winged messengers or humble faithful—brushed by drifting cinder-dust saw their protective radiance snuff out instantly. Bodies rapidly grayed, stiffened, becoming like charred wood effigies frozen mid-flight in terror, ultimately crumbling into cold cinder-dust, merging with the spreading cinder-waste beneath their feet.

The Holy City was dying. Not through physical destruction, but by being *shrouded*, assimilated, transformed into a cold-burning necropolis of cinders.

The Void-Cinder Sanctum finally hovered before the leaning Pinnacle of Dawn's Radiance. The great temple groaned like a dying giant. The sacred flame orb at its peak was feeble, guttering, thickly coated in cinders like a dust-choked pearl.

It slowly raised its cinder-tendril "hand," reaching for the orb symbolizing the Light Domain's final glory. Cinder-tendrils coiled, *shrouded* it, like the greediest vines entwining a dying prey.

"Primordial... Radiance's... Final... Cinder..."

The icy thought tolled like an ending bell over the dead city.

Cinder-encrusted fingertips touched the core of the sacred flame orb.

*Pfft.*

A soft sound, like a candle snuffed.

The core flame that had burned for eons, symbol of the Light Domain's eternal order, vanished utterly under the *Touch of Void-Cinder*. Its last gleam of gold-white extinguished.

In its place, suspended where the orb had been, hung a cold, deep, perpetually collapsing point—a **Cinder Singularity**.

It rotated slowly, radiating the ash-choked breath that devoured all light and heat.

The Void-Cinder Sanctum's void-covered "head" slowly turned towards the depths of the Light Domain, the source of the Primordial Radiance's resonance. Its cinder-wrought, amorphous form loomed larger, colder, amidst the colossal plumes of cinder-dust billowing from the collapsing Pinnacle.

The Holy City was shrouded. Its final cinders formed.

The next destination on the path of Shroud was the source of Light.

The tide of cinders began its silent, inevitable flow towards the deepest sanctum of the Light Domain.