A desolate, alien landscape with red and gray rocky terrain, dark water with floating abstract letters, and shadowy fish-like creatures.

Layer 332: Amphorash / The Shardlands / Kiln-Down Ruled by Selvadra of the Twenty-Fired [Independent] This layer is an inland basin under a chalky, low sky that never clears. The land rolls in slow swells of ceramic waste: endless beaches of crushed tiles, jar-necks, and busted amphorae that clatter underfoot like teeth. Every slope is a different era of pottery smashed together—vermillion slip, soot-black cooking ware, painted trade jars in shards, and biscuit-white blanks never glazed. Walk long enough and you hit bands where a single color dominates, like veins in rock. When the wind lifts, it carries a dry hiss through the shingle, and flings needles of clay that cut exposed skin to ribbons. Sand here is powdered kiln-brick and ground glaze; breathing it for long invites a hacking cough that dries the tongue and turns spittle the color of potter’s water. Where the shard-dunes sink, the basin floods into manuscript marsh. Water sits fat and slow as syrup, stained with dissolved inks. The ground is layers of swollen paper, warped boards, leather covers, and string, all press-packed until each step burps up a page or a strap. Pull too hard, and the page tears into stringy pulp that clings like cobweb. Letters leave these dead books constantly; they slough off into the water and drift like tadpoles, clustering into slick shoals that clog channels and stain hands midnight. Creatures feed on them—the quill-eels and the blotter rays most of all—swimming through the text to gulp See more