A bolt of red lightning struck the highest tower. 

It wasn’t reminiscent of real lightning, blue-hued and following the quickest way to the ground. This wasn’t God’s hand reaching from the heavens. 

It was the devil's. 

It streaked like a hell-bent demon from on high, as if cast out of those heavens, vindictive and malicious. 

When it struck, the world, so it seemed, was cast in a bleak crimson gleam. 

And if one looked closely enough, with the properly imbued eyes, they would have seen a terrible sight. 

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A man, dressed in midnight blue robes, lay lifeless on the glassy floor. He had one arm outstretched toward a table, where, beside the mess of paper, lay a small, glowing orb. The man's wand lay useless on a distant chair. His face was contorted, fury and terror wrapped in one stuck mask. 

He had died badly, suddenly and torturously. 

Slowly, among the stricken silence of the room, blood from the dead man’s body began to pool. Not pulled by gravity through some puncture wound but as if drawn by invisible strings, in a great swath, from the very pores of the man’s skin. 

It pooled some feet away, spelling out several words in a wicked kind of cursive. 

A figure, hidden almost entirely by bending light, rippling waves of magically manipulated shadow, moved to stand over the dead man. Then, with a blur, he reached out to grab the silvery orb that lay on the table, mere inches from the frozen, outstretched hand of the man he’d just murdered. 

There was a loud pop and the man was gone, leaving the body to its stillness, the night to its darkness, the city to its indifference.