Dust and Echoes

The wind, a mournful sigh through the skeletal remains of skyscrapers, whipped Elara's threadbare cloak around her. Above, a perpetually overcast sky bled a bruised purple, mirroring the landscape below. She navigated the choked streets, a labyrinth of crumbled concrete and twisted metal, the air thick with the cloying stench of decay - a miasma of rot and dust that clung to the back of her throat, a constant reminder of the world's end. Dust motes, illuminated by the weak, ethereal light filtering through the fractured cityscape, danced in the air like tiny, mocking spirits. This was what remained of Porthaven, once a bustling metropolis teeming with life, now a graveyard of broken dreams. Jagged shards of glass, glinting like malevolent eyes, littered the streets, interspersed with the decaying husks of vehicles - silent, rusting monuments to a bygone era. Buildings stood like hollowed-out teeth, their once proud facades crumbling into dust, their interiors swallowed by the relentless march of time and decay. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the rasp of the wind and the occasional screech of metal on metal as some section of the ruined city succumbed further to gravity's relentless pull.