Sarah Z. Creates

In the World-Building Wednesday series, I’m doing just that: using writing prompts to flesh out Talah, one of the worlds in The Sundered Realms. Images are generated using Microsoft Copilot.

Calic tried not to let the gloom of the ruins creep him out.

That was easier said than done.

The moon was flirting with the clouds, leaving the ruins in more shadows than light. The night insects were silent, too, so the only real sound he heard was his own elevated heartbeat and harsh breathing.

And the occasional cry of some night bird.

It was definitely a bird.

Very definitely not the angry shade of a long-dead faerie outraged at the desecration of its sacred space.

Damné it, he should not have gone to the tavern with Morgan tonight. They knew he’d be in the ruins tonight, and so they’d told all the tales of fae vengeance and phampyr atrocities.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled.

“Just get it done, Calic,” he muttered into the eerie stillness.

He knelt next to the slowly eroding remains of a wall. Even a millennia past its abandonment, this structure boasted the elegance of its long-dead creators. It wasn’t crumbling or rotting. It was … evaporating, its magic slowly seeping back into the forest around it.

Except for where the wilders had struck. And where Calic and his master had prized bones from these structures to blunt the destructive strength of fae magic in human veins.

The cool night air nipped at his ears, making him wish he’d grabbed a hat along with his bag of tools.