The demon is liberated from its cage, and the world is scoured clean by a million artificial suns.
Civilisation is reduced to a frantic, white-hot flash, followed by a silence that lasts for an eternity of grey winters.
Radioactive storms dance over the glassed remains of empires, and our legacy is written in the ash of billions who never saw the dawn.
There is no poetry in the scouring, only the final, cold embrace of a planet that has forgotten the warmth of life.
...and the wheel turns, grinding through the cinder.