Emberflame Ridge Your name is a sin I breathe

No, that's not right. I know what I — hey! The man's slurred speech could've marked him as a drunkard, except it was the dead of winter and to expect anything to have survived through the other seasons was a pipe dream. His voice carried along the ridge; it was fortunate that in his dream-walking he'd managed to shout like that, or he'd have gone over the edge.

The sound of clattering stones further dredged him out of sleep. He wasn't home in the Hearthwood; the trees here were flame-licked and black within the hallucination, and seemed to moan around him in a familiar display. He thought of Onyx Hollow, which sparked the vision further to a violent blinding white light, and he stumbled back from this, squinting and afraid.

As he backed in to something solid, he came to a stop and sank in to the snow. What he saw around him wasn't a forest at all but fire, and the white of falling snow was black smoke, spooling out of where his legs met the ground. He was the smoke; he was the ruin, and around him the world burned. The only sound from him after that was a pitiful whine.