“Hell is here!” the Tower Master breathed, and awe hollowed the word as if the sound itself had been struck through.0

Hell was the dwelling place of demons—a world that existed in another dimension. Its name had long belonged to sermons, curses, and battlefield prayers. But now, that very Hell hung above them in the sky. It was no metaphor. The realm itself had torn through the seam of reality and crossed into this world.0

Even seeing it with his own eyes, the Tower Master struggled to accept it. Denial rose and fell like a wave. In the end, there was only the fact that would not bend. Hell was moving toward them.0

“Wait…,” he said, his voice sharpening as the mage’s mind took back the reins.0

Hell was smaller than he had imagined. By the Tower Master’s first measure, it might be the size of one of the four continents. For a world that housed demons, it looked almost modest.0

But that smallness was only in comparison to other worlds; in itself, it still carried an overwhelming mass. The Tower Master did not have to think hard about what would happen if that much weight touched the Mortal Realm. The collision would end all living things. He flung up his hands and wove a hundred spells at once. Barriers rose in layers, a lattice of defenses that looked like a dome of glass over a toy city.0

The barriers groaned like ice about to break on a river in thaw. It was an old soldier’s trick against winter, pissing on one’s frozen boots for warmth that lasted only a heartbeat. Against a falling world, even the Tower Master could not brace enough. The planet came on.0

“This is bad,” Ketal said, his...0