The light was so bright the sky looked blue for a brief second. The cities were illuminated; the stars dimmed in the face of the bright, giant orb.
Henrik's cigarette dropped from his lips, forgotten. It hit the rooftop floor with a hiss, the ember dying in a sizzle of leftover rainwater. The concrete beneath them was cracked and weathered, with patches of green moss growing between the expansion joints. An old satellite dish sat rusted in one corner, its face turned toward the sky like a metal sunflower. The HVAC equipment hummed quietly in the background, its industrial bulk casting long shadows across the hotel's rooftop.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. They just stared at the inferno consuming the horizon, the heat of it reaching them even from this distance.
And then it left just as quickly as it came. Then the shockwave followed.
