- Either we are going, or it was not worth starting all this.

- Stay a little behind. Do whatever I say the moment I say. Ready?

- Yes!

We almost simultaneously stepped across a strip of dead earth, and it began.

The light dimmed and the world frowned. A yellow swirling mist enveloped almost to the waist and unpleasantly phosphorescent, like a rotten one. The sky was dark, and not even the sky - a low, heavy veil, without a single gap, and the horizon was pulled up by its edges against all the laws of optics. The Temple building was dimly visible ahead, but much further away than...