First Line Friday: August 17th, 2018

Over to Dylan for our fortnightly challenge:
https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/19271780/posts/1963801162Our line for this week is:

The sun simmered red as it slunk towards the jagged horizon.
It was an illusion of course, one of the last images from a dead world.
This sun no longer existed, nor the planet that once orbited it.
The warnings had been there, extremes of temperatures, lack of defining seasons, Nature completely out of kilter with bird migrations and reproductive cycles, flora and fauna confused as habitats were destroyed, Super Moons, tidal changes, earthquakes, dormant volcanoes erupting, melting icecaps, and the formation of new deserts due to a lack of rainfall where once it had been plentiful.
Governments threw money at projects totally irrelevant to detecting the cause for such change, some even scoffing at the prospect that the Planet and life as they knew it was nearing the end of its own.

The image had been captured over five thousand years ago. There was no turning back, no corrective solution and evacuation of the Chosen and vital supplies imminent on secreted space arks.
Nothing was broadcast, to do so was futile, so best to leave the general populus in awe of a last magnificent sunset.
The heat was immense and life terminated well before the final devastating solar flares burst forth like fiery fingers towards the planet’s surface, searing everything it touched before flaming tentacles reached back out into the sky.