It's dark and the room is bathed in a reddish hue, the faraway heat radiating in from the outside. The interior of the attic is damp, the floors unpolished. It is quiet, but not silent. The dull, constant roar of the fire makes its way through the walls from the outside. Occasionally, the wind will pick up, blow embers across the window and shake the sickly walls of the house. Impossible to tell whether it is daytime or nighttime- how long have I been sitting in the corner, covered in soot and struggling to breath through the unending cough? The door from which I entered remains unopened for what lies on the other side. All around, the heat of the inferno seeps through as the world weeps with the lamentations of a hundred dead towns and a hundred dead players.

It's a late March afternoon and the atmosphere hums with the electric bustle of activity. The swollen air of the rainforest rolls off the trees, down the walls and into the newly founded town, where men mill by the dozens. They lug great bags filled with cobblestone and dirt up the hill as others dig into the ground everywhere a building does not stand. Skyscrapers, most of them still in construction, have begun to litter the skyline.

Every morning I step outside, lock my doors and make my way down to the piano shop through the main avenue. The heavy tropical air dense with smog. The sight of a hundred chimneys billowing the black air of charcoal, A hundred factories working in unison. The smell of industry. The sooty charcoal deposits build up in the nooks and crannies, on the worker's clothes. On the windows of the houses who's owners have already silently disappeared.

The month of March passes us over like a migratory bird, the year moving on through its passage towards summer. The air is slightly warmer, it's rainy season now in the tropics and water falls almost every day. The puddles reflect the streetlamps at night and the rain pounds the roof and drips across the windows. The air is stuffier and the citizens are on edge, there is less joviality and every night the mumble is abuzz with the voices of politics. The man who addresses his nation is hawkish. His speeches rally the population against the Great Threat to the east and the now the armed forces stand guard at the central plaza. I sit on my roof in the midday sun and listen to the muffled sound of the loudspeaker in the distance.

March leaves us and April rolls in like the clouds that roll through what's left of the tropical valley, long since claimed by deforestation. The war came and with it came conscription, to defend the nation against the unseen threat. The diamondclads come in the night, Concordia Defense Force written on the back of their prot; the loud knocking down the road followed by the hushed murmur of voices, the sounds of doors slamming, sometimes a muffled yell. Come morning the house is empty and in a few days becomes dilapidated, shuttered, but no longer cleared for demolition.

April is firmly here, but more and more people aren't. A stroll around the neighborhood reveals a dozen shuttered houses. A fellow pedestrian is a rare sight, many stay indoors to avoid the diamondclads. More dangerous are the thieves that show up near the city's walls. In the daytime, there is more feverish debate on the mumble. Politics, uprisings, revolution. The governments succeed each other, every coup more violent than the last, every new voice over the mumble more alarmed than the one before it.

Yesterday, I passed my only remaining neighbour driving out of the city in his cart, his wife by his side. He waved to me as he usually does but I saw the look of dispair in his face as he passed by. I can't say I blame him.

The sharp twang of bowfire rings out in the night, the shouts and cries closer than usual. I flip the switch but the electricity is out. The night is spent huddled close to the door, bow in hand, until eventually the bowfire dies off and silence returns once again.

With early May the rains peter off as summer begins. Most of the time is spent on the rooftop, the interior of the house oppressively warm without the AC. The mumble has gone quiet now. No more voices, only static.

It has been almost two weeks since I saw another person. Not even a diamondclad patrol or a thief in the distance. The blackish smoke billowing from downtown for three days reminds me that I'm not alone in this server. I sit atop the roof, sweating, drinking awkward pots and watching as more and more buildings in the distance are engulfed by flames. The fire is out of control, the purest expression of the will to destroy. Inside, I load up all the belongings I can fit into my backpack and stash it under the wooden paneling.

The sun beats down on the pavement of the highway where cracks have begun to form. A thousand carts, abandoned haphazardly, strewn upon the road as if in a panic, clothes and belongings scattered about, some still fluttering in the wind. I pass the road signs, "CONCORDIA - 500 METERS", most already defaced with crude graffiti warning others to stay out. At first I peered into the abandoned carts, hoping to find something that hadn't already been stripped clean, but now I just walk.

In the distance, from where I came, the plume of smoke grows bigger and bigger. I notice an ember dance to the ground in front of me.

The cross-shard bridge stands mostly intact. Dusk hits as I walk methodically among the burned husks of carts and chariots. The singed air mixes with the whelming salty smell of the sea. When night falls upon my silent journey I see lights on the distant coasts, impossible to say whether they're lamps or fires. Eventually, I am too tired to continue, I crawl underneath a cart as the wind picks up and blows through the hollow supports of the bridge. I listen to the roaring ocean shaking the bridge and wonder if it is not ttk2 himself, bringing fury upon the world which He himself had created and had displeased Him.

Morning comes and the bridge stands to my back. Before me the highway stretches out endlessly over the wooded fields interspersed with plains, and where the horizon meets the sky the blackness of the fires rises up to dizzying heights. I set foot onto the highway as the embers blow across my face. I cough, not knowing were to go. Only my feet lead me.

The smoke is all around. The tall pine trees on either side of the infernal highway are engulfed in a crackling fire, the burning embers coming down like the tropical rains, singeing my hair and my arms. The cough is constant; I walk with water eyes and my head down until I can continue no more. I stumble into a field, plodding across what was once a crop field, cooked to dirt and nothingness, the no trespassing signs smouldering bright yellow and falling apart.

I find myself in an old village, mercifully intact. I crawl into a wooden cabin, coughing and sniveling, expecting death, like the old street ocelots of Concordia who would crawl into the drainage pipes when they felt their time was near.

However death did not arrive, only night, eternal night in an eternally empty world- so feverishly hell-like that one could only wonder whether there was any point in delaying death at all.