Last post-apocalyptic piece, I swear to god. =P
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No sound flies through the scorched wasteland; even the wind that drives forth the lonely cloud-streaks of the metal sky makes hardly a noise as it sweeps up small clouds of dust. Savage shadows wait in frozen rage behind the slumped and collapsed skeletons of buildings, each more menacing than the last, all hiding from the old, impotent sun. Yet the lord of these lies by the delta of the black river, where the water never foams - it starvedly lashes out from beneath crooked roots, which keep shackled to the earth the last reminder of life: a warped, aged, terrible tree.
A lone symbol adorns the ancient bark, faintly reminiscent of a pentagram, yet with many more lines. They come together in vicious points, run together in unnaturally straight lines, fatten and fast without warning; not truly sketched, but rather traced against a bladed weapon. Five circular burns crown the points of the wicked sigil, and a great black halo of soot spreads outward with flame-like protrusions. None are aware of the existence of the symbol - for even those that enter the barren never make it to its dead heart, whereat grapples the earth the terrible tree.
The whole world fell to its knees at the nameless cataclysm. Despite the many years of recovery, none dare settle even the outskirts the thousand-mile circle on the east cost of the great continent. And, for an event so great, none know how the apocalypse occurred - perhaps the two skeletons by the tree (the ones clutching a metal-bound, though badly burned, book) know what lead up to it, and the ones several hundred miles away know what it looked like, but none have witnessed the entire event - none save for the terrible tree.
