Ashen Moon
an excerpt

The sun hung low in the sky, and the light shone almost bloody across the landscape. The only shadows withered beneath crumbling stones and behind the shafts of ancient, rotting arrows still grimly erected in the remains of what had once been bones, but now turned to dust at the slightest whisper of wind.

The wind didn’t sing anymore. For more than five thousand years, it had not so much as whispered in the desolate wasteland. The only reminder that the barren desert had once held life was the cathedral-like palace, looming in the distance like an extinct volcano.

What had once been a city of the Gods now was a city of ravens and other carrion-eaters. Creatures of Death.

Approximately half a league away, one patch of earth remained untouched by the scorching rays of the sun. No trees or flowers grew in the soil, but several mushrooms grew in the shadows cast by a block of white marble. Several carnivorous plants grew in the sun, and even a few tufts of grass were breaking earth, but none grew more than ten feet from the stone.

A sudden flash of fire erupted from the stone’s surface, leaving no trace of ash or soot, but an afterglow bright enough to be seen for up to two leagues away, even with the sun’s blinding rays. A young man—nineteen, maybe almost twenty—stepped down from the stone as though nothing had happened, then paused to shield his eyes from the sun with his left hand.

A simple stone ring adorned his right middle finger, but for al its simplicity, it was impossible to describe. At first glance, it seemed blue, but then seemed to be made of sandstone, and upon a third inspection, may have been carved from turquoise. But other than the ring, nothing about him seemed important.