Zlaya Korcha

The end of the millennium was approaching and when a plague of invisible fire broke out, cutting off limbs from the body and consuming many in a single night, the sufferers thronged to the churches and invoked the help of the Saints. The cries of those in pain could be heard in villages beyond the eighth or the tenth house and quite far off in the fields; the stench of rotten flesh was unbearable. Many were tortured and twisted by a contraction of the nerves; others died miserably, their limbs eaten up by the "holy fire" and blackened like charcoal. This fire permeated the wretched people with such cold that no means sufficed to warm them. The order of nature had been overturned. Hell seemed to have broken forth out of the depths of the earth, consuming men in an invisible fire whose nature resembled that of ice. The Devil came back for a long thousand years, killing millions of innocent people, but enriching those who waited for him to come.