Twenty years ago, the Sun Queen was killed - her divinity snuffed out, her immortality ended, and her curse uttered. What loyalists remained erected her stele, proclaiming it for the whole world to see.

Asor crumbled, and crumbled, and crumbled after the fall - its corpse picked apart like carrion. Men left the city in search of food, and in less than ten years it seemed that half of the city had packed up and left. For the first time, Asor was a house too big, and its bewildered inhabitants were left wondering where it had all gone wrong, and scrounging for what food they could. The great Fireworks went cold, and no more bronze poured from the city. The decadence and prosperity shriveled like a starved crop.

The texts say that it was like the world ended, but now I see that it is only truly ending now.

It is like a permanent green fog hangs over the city, and what people had stayed have gone either mad, died, or crazed. There is no matriarch running the city, only survivors. I am one of the lucky ones - the gods seem to have spared me, but I was left with the rotten work of hauling the dead into the Cadaver Districts - the vast parts of the city that had been abandoned after the fall. Now bodies lie in the streets like heaps. The dangerous insane are sent there when they are deemed beyond help.

It is not unlike a nightmare.

They gave me a sword. That's all they did - a sword and a prayer. I had to bring the cart of the dead downhill into the Cadaver Districts, the flies circling and the flesh rotting. And that smell, that horrible smell. The stench of death, and despair, and the end of the world.

My aurochs whined - it had become sickly. I was afraid old Voran would succumb to the plague and go mad like my other old cows that would haul. It had taken me long enough to find one that wasn't dying or already maddened - and I didn't want to put this old one down. I gently held my sword, and wondered where they had found it. Perhaps it was in one of the houses of the dead or the abandoned. It was bronze. It was also blunt. It wouldn't be much help.

Fortunately none of the Cursed attacked me on this trip. We were left mostly in peace, but the inane screams of two infected battling could be heard.

I heard a rasping noise from the cart, and bolted upright from my seat. I could've sworn it was one of the Cursed. But no, it was a man that they deemed dead too early. He was gasping for breath from under two other corpses. He was dying, and would not last longer. I could not tell if he was in pain.

My sword was shoved through his lung with a slick shlkh. The flesh was already slaughing off his ribs. He breathed his last, and the district was quiet once more, except for the faint sounds of crazed Cursed.

I thought briefly of my wife - my beloved Jana. She still prayed to the Old Goddess, Asor, for strength and wisdom. We were once farmers, and she was the village healer. But there was no more village now, so we moved to the city. At least there were still people here, still some trade happening. And she could still heal people. In a way, she flourished like a tulip amidst the death and gloom, probably smeared in pus and with flies flittering around her.

The Old Goddess had saved her, yes. She made weekly trips to the Celestial Palace, to leave an offering to the old Sun Queen. That I would be protected, and that she could ease the passing of others. I smacked a fly against my neck, and offloaded the corpses onto another part of the Cadaver district. They deserved better. I gave them what grave offering I could, but there were so, so many bodies. And so little I could do.

I was tired, and my eyes were drooping, so I had old Voran haul me back up to the hill on which we lived. The sun was getting low, and we were about to enter another night of the end of the world.