The whole goddamn spectacle, a hallucinatory blur of light and dread, detonated on a windswept, bone-gnawing stretch of forgotten earth at 'The Hirsel'—a desolate, brain-rattling frontier clamped savagely between the ancient, brooding, almost malevolent shadows of Scotland and England. And the sun? It had long since bolted, a coward's retreat, abandoning the scene as if the very cosmos deemed whatever unholy truth was unfurling too savage, too exquisite, too utterly *mad* for its celestial gaze.