The world had gone silent.
Not a single voice, not a single breath. The only sounds were distant sonic booms that echoed across the field seconds after their origin, and the crackling aftermath of destruction left behind in delayed shockwaves.
Chase and Valor had vanished.
To everyone else, the battlefield was suddenly devoid of them. Trees were severed in blinks. Chasms split open beneath sculptures of snow and bone. Entire boulders disintegrated from invisible impacts. But no eyes could follow the movements—only the sound of air being ripped apart, of space being fractured, arriving far too late.
Then—steel clanged against flesh.
