Fire on the Black Lake

The march toward the Lake of Fire was a descent into an earthly inferno. Ten leagues south of Iron-Hollow, the terrain flattened into an endless plain of blackened volcanic slag, crisscrossed by glowing fissures where molten magma bubbled mere inches beneath the crust. Above the plain hung a permanent ceiling of thick black smoke that turned midday into an eerie, blood-red twilight. The heat rising from the ground was enough…