As the two of them made their way to the massive palace, the front of the uppermost section exploded into smithereens from within, sending stone debris skyward in a violent eruption.
Massive chunks of the palace roof and walls covered and mixed in ice shot into the air, raining down in a deadly cascade of debris, crashing to the ground in a thundering crash.
Alex looked into the gaping hole and saw thick, roiling clouds of smoke pouring outward, but on closer inspection, he realized that it was not smoke but clusters of ethereal beings, denizens of the spectral plane.
The forms of shadowy jinns flickered between transparent and solid as they moved with unnatural fluidity, each one ghostly dark with elongated limbs, their eyes glowing dimly from within the maelstrom of their smoke-like bodies.
The inside of the palace was cloaked in a thick layer of frost, frozen in jagged spikes of ice that pushed outward through the walls like a monstrous jaw.
