Kole could ignore the heat from the sun baking the top of his head. He had long ago had a conversation with his skin, and convinced it to simply 'not burn'. This was just one of the more practical skills he had learned while training with the Shinn.

The ruins of the city thinned out as he approached the mountains. Only a few of the taller buildings remained - this area had probably been a residential suburb of the city he was passing through.

Occasionally, he would see hints of the old world. Plastic remains. Objects that might have been tools, containers for food, or possibly children's toys. Most of the metals left of the old world had corroded into red dust, but that wasn't true everywhere. Since the great changes occurred, the laws of physics weren't predictable anymore. In some regions, time seemed to stand still; metals rusted slowly, and empty automobiles shells could still be found lying in the streets, the weeds only beginning to invade their hulls.

However, in other regions, the evolution of species accellerated and became unrecognizable within two generations. Common rats grew to dog-sized predators, and other common animals evolved into fantastic and bizarre creatures. Within the last few hundred years, strange beasts had been discovered that seemed to have no traceable origin. Creatures out of ancient mythologies and tales of the supernatural dwell in the areas that are called the Wildlands. This is where Kole travelled.

His journey started at the City-in-the-Sea. There, he was one of a group of guardians for the only known active gateway between the Outer Realms and Earth. The Demons had begun the invasion of the Earth over 900 years ago at that same city, and that fact has tainted the general perception of the area ever since. Even though the gateway was recaptured by the Human rebellion less than fifty years later, the mere mention of the city invokes hatred and revulsion in the populations of Humans at large.

Kole found a sense of beauty in the irony that the City-in-the-Sea will eventually be remembered as the beginning of a Golden Age. Already, the inhabitants of the city - merchants from the 144 Abysses, ambassadors from the Regions of Light, and explorers from all corners of the Nether - have evolved into a society that revolves around respect of differences and the exchange of ideas.

Of course, there was always an element of chaos present - consumers of innocence and distributers of corruption - as there is in any collection of sentient beings. That is the reason for the guardians and the Council of Elders. Justice was unpolitical. Life was relatively fair for all.

The terrain had changed. The broken concrete path Kole followed gave way to a wash of gravel and rocks. Some of the buildings were partially covered, as if a flood of stones had poured down from the mountains. Further ahead of him, Kole could see the buildings had been levelled by a wave of rocks. Only a disruption in the natural patterns into sharp squares betrayed the shape of the ancient manmade rocks.

The 'Century of Chaos' had brought dramatic geologic changes to the Earth; mountains and caverns exploded out of stable flatlands, coastlines were engulfed by oceans, and new lakes and firestorms reshaped what was left of the Earth. The City-in-the-Sea had once been called by another name a thousand years ago, when it was planted on dry land.

The sea of stones before him had most likely not existed before that time, nor the mountains. Infant mountains, still craggy from birth; erosion had not yet left any noticable sign. Somewhere, in their sharp envelopes hid one of the most despised characters in the history of the New Earth - the demon lord, Klalech...