Hell's Paradise had stolen enough light from the earth to survive without the heavens.
From behind the floor-to-ceiling glass of Infinity Chaos Hotel, Maya watched the city blaze beneath a dark sky where neither moon nor star remained. Heavy clouds had swallowed everything above the island, leaving Paradise beneath a vast black ceiling that somehow made the city more beautiful for it.
Towers rose in silver, amber and white, thousands upon thousands of windows burning defiantly through the darkness, while roads wound between them in glowing rivers of headlights. Hell's Paradise Lake held pieces of that brilliance upon its black surface, breaking entire skyscrapers into trembling pillars of gold whenever the wind disturbed the water.
Beyond it all, the Endless Forest surrounded civilization in an enormous darkness of its own, broken here and there by distant estates whose lights seemed impossibly small from this height.
